Chapter 7 - The Mind of the Surgeon
Maya Miller felt a cold sweat break out along her spine. She had interrogated hitmen, psychopaths, and gang leaders, but she had never sat across from a man whose logic was so seamlessly inverted, so impeccably structured in its own madness.
"You aren't a savior, Nicholas," Miller said quietly, trying to regain control of the room's momentum. "You're a narcissist with a god complex. You suffered a loss six years ago—your wife, Sarah. She died of terminal bone cancer in a private clinic while you watched her suffer for fourteen months. You couldn't save her, so now you play God with the lives of strangers."
For the first time since his arrest, Nicholas’s eyes darkened into a pitch-black abyss. The subtle smile vanished from his lips.
"Do not speak her name," Nicholas whispered, his voice vibrating with a lethal, suffocating threat.
"She died in pain, didn't she?" Miller pressed, leaning closer, recognizing the raw nerve she had finally touched. "You watched the machines pump her full of useless chemicals while her bones dissolved. You couldn't stop her pain. So you decided to cure the world by killing everyone who hurts."
Nicholas stared at her, his breathing slow, deep, and measured.
"Sarah suffered because the doctors were cowards," Nicholas said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. "They prolonged her agony for fourteen months to collect insurance payments. They called it 'preserving life.' I call it torture. Life is not sacred simply because a heart is beating, Detective. Life is only valuable when there is dignity, joy, and peace. When those are gone... prolonging existence is an act of pure evil."
"And you get to decide when someone's dignity is gone?" Miller asked.
"Someone has to," Nicholas replied smoothly. "The state won't do it. The churches won't do it. You won't do it. You hide behind laws and codes while thousands of human beings freeze to death in your alleys every winter. I stepped into the mud. I did the work no one else had the courage to do."
He leaned back in his chair, the iron cuffs clinking softly against the metal table.
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"Search your own heart, Maya," Nicholas murmured, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper. "When you saw Clara sitting on that curb with her starving baby... didn't a small part of you think they would be better off sleeping forever than spending twenty years in this city's gutters?"
Miller felt a sickening knot tighten in her gut. She didn't answer. She couldn't.
