Chapter 0004

Layla

Eight years later

Sunlight streamed through the wide plate-glass window, glinting silver off the city skyscrapers, as I stripped bloody blue gloves from my hands. Like a celebration of yet another successful surgery—an emergency bypass this time.

I gave myself only a moment to bask in that celebratory sunshine. Wouldn’t be long before someone else rushed in, needing me; there was hardly a dull moment in a New York City emergency room surgery.

So in that spare moment between crises, I lifted my phone to my cheek to call home.

“He’s fine, Layla.” Nonna didn’t bother with a greeting. She knew why I was calling. Still, relief washed through me in a wave.

“Can you put him on? I only have a minute.”

Nonna grumbled. “And every time, I’m hoping you want to talk to me.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. Always a character, my Nonna. A damned force of nature, just like her granddaughter.

My smile only widened when a small voice purred, “Mommy?”

“Hey, Eli.” My heart clenched painfully behind my ribs at the sound of my son’s voice. “Is Nonna being nice to you today?”

In the eight years since I’d left behind Alaska, my life had been nothing but hard work. Studying. Work. Interning. More work. Work. Work. It was all for that little voice at the other end of the line.

“Nonna and I went to the park to feed the pigeons!”

Nonna. Not Mommy. All this work to feed him, clothe him, give him the best money could buy—and the tradeoff was that I hardly ever saw him. Nonna cared for him, of course, just like she’d cared for me.

“That’s so good—”

“Dr. Bennett!”

I bit back the sigh of frustration at my intern’s beckoning. Of course, my peace wouldn’t last. This phone call, my few moments of time with Eli—they wouldn’t last. “I have to go now, honey. But I’ll be home later, okay?”

“For dinner?”

My heart clenched harder in my ribs, pain like a vice around it.

“Dr. Bennett! We need you now!” My intern appeared in the doorway of the theater, his eyes concerningly round.

“Maybe,” I lied, yet another empty promise. I wouldn’t be home for dinner. “I love you, Eli.”

“Love you, Mommy.”

“Dr. Bennett!” The intern flapped at me—an uncharacteristically frazzled move, even for him—right before someone shoved him out of the way. He stumbled forward into the room as a small cadre of suit-clad men rushed in behind him.

“What the—” I sprang away from the suddenly full door. “You can’t be in here! This isn’t a public …”

But the words died on my tongue as I caught sight of the guns on their hips and the knives on their thighs. The hard set of their faces. The bloody body on the wheeled hospital bed behind them.

The pieces clicked into place.

These weren’t just men in suits barging into my hospital. They were Mafia. Gangsters. Thugs, just like the bastard who’d fathered my child and left us both without a backward glance.

“He needs treatment.” One of the men bellowed, his face red as he bore down on me. “Now!”

My eyes fell to the man bleeding on the bed. Bullet wound, right through his chest. Probably shattered ribs, pierced lung, might have damaged his heart.

Just like the man my father had refused to treat, twenty-four years ago. My father had let that scumbag die.

How many children had he saved from that man’s drugs?

And he’d left a daughter without parents. Maybe the thug had had kids of his own, rendered fatherless.

“Doctor!” The man snapped his fingers in front of my face, yanking me back to the present. “You gonna treat him, or what?”

I still had the newspaper article about the car tossed over the bridge. Two dead, one daughter left behind. But his words weren’t a threat—not like they should have been. I should have had a gun to my head.

“If this man lives,” somehow, he still wasn’t threatening me, “the Marcello family will reward you handsomely.”

Marcello. I knew that name. Had heard it before, here. Many times over, actually, after some new Godfather had apparently taken over the family. A man who, evidently, fancied himself a magnanimous thug.

That’s why I was being offered a reward rather than threatened. Because the new don had implemented a ban on any disrespect towards medical personnel.

My gaze focused on the bleeding man. I know what my father would have done. What he had done. Why he’d done it.

What it had cost him.

Would the new godfather’s ban on threats to medical personnel extend to me if I failed to save this man?

He needed medical attention. Now. Either I treated him or he died. And in the end, I’d have to reckon with my choice—to save a mobster or usher in the demise of a bad man.

But somehow, all that disappeared as I stared at the stranger on the bed. Because that’s all he was. A stranger. A man, bleeding out, who needed my help. Who I could save.

Now or never, Layla.

I reached for my gloves, met my intern’s eyes. “Cut his clothes off.”

His eyes bubbled into rounded coins of surprise.

“Now!” I barked, scalpel already in hand. The answer was suddenly so clear, as I bent over that body. I was a doctor, not a god, not a jury. My job was life—to save it, to protect it, to promote it.

It was not, had never been, my role to decide if someone deserved to die.

My scalpel cut through his skin. The clock started now, the one counting down the precious minutes of his life, and I wouldn’t—couldn’t—waste any more.

My mind cleared as I worked. There was no right and wrong, no mortal or ethical dilemma. It was just me, my scalpel, the blood on my hands and the body beneath them.

I could save this man.

I don’t know how much time flowed past as I worked. I only know that finally, finally, I was stripping off my gloves again.

At long last, I looked up—to find half the Mafia members still positioned around the room. The man who’d snapped at me, then offered me a reward, straightened off the wall to approach.

“Will he live?”

“He’ll live.” I wiped sweat from my brow with the back of my forearm. Exhaustion clawed at my eyes, dragged my bones down. “But he needs rest now.”

“You saved him,” the man murmured. “Thank you.”

“I did.” I turned away to lean over the sink. I had enough blood on my hands for one day. “But not because of who he is. I saved him because I’m a doctor—no other reason.”

“Marcello will—”

“I don’t want Marcello’s money.” I brushed past the man without waiting for an answer. I didn’t want their money, their reward, their respect. I wanted them all out of my hospital so I could move on with my life.

Why did the Mafia keep popping back up?

Outside the operating room, I paced the long, white hall towards the exit. Towards my car. Towards home and my son and my goddamned bed. So close …

A man in a suit hurried past me—more Mafia. Another trailed at his back. I was so tired it took me a moment to realize they weren’t headed towards the room I’d just vacated, but away from it.

My steps slowed, faltered, as two more men hurried past.

A third rushed by, his right hand pointedly hovering at his hip. Like he was preparing to whip out a gun. In my hospital! What the hell was going on?

Two more suited men rushed up, and I pressed my shoulders to the wall to let them pass. One muttered into a bluetooth, fingers lifted to his ear. The tension in the air hung so thick, I could’ve cut it with a knife.

Unease prickled my skin, lifting the fine hairs on my arms.

I needed to get out of here. Now. No way was I sticking around for whatever the hell was about to go down. No, it was time to go home to my Nonna and Eli.

I set my sights on the elevator at the end of the hall and increased my pace to just short of a jog. So close. The silver doors loomed in front of me.

Almost there—

A gunshot cracked the still air.

I dropped to the ground without thinking, instinct driving me to flatten on the floor. Someone shouted, but I didn’t know where it had come from. Another man in a suit raced past, gun drawn.

He plunged into the elevator.

My heart thudded so loudly, I could barely hear over the sound of my own racing pulse. Panic churned my stomach. My breath came too fast, too shallow, my throat squeezing out air.

What should I do? I couldn’t take the elevator—it was currently occupied by a mobster! I needed to run, or no, hide! I should—

Another gunshot cracked. Too close! Where had that come from? Another shout … more men running past. I curled in on myself, knees to chest, back against the wall.

Praying.

Begging.

Please please please don’t see me. Don’t notice me. Let me live—

A warm hand curled around my arm. Pulling. My mouth opened in a silent scream as that too-large hand dragged me up, to my feet. But I couldn't scream, couldn’t make a sound, not with how the panic clutched my chest in an iron vice.

My back hit something warm. Hard. A firm chest pressed against me, and a heavy arm wrapped around me. Warm. Solid. Safe.

The word popped into my brain even as I registered the acrid burn of gunpowder. The coppery tang of blood. Safe.

I couldn't see the man behind me, holding me hostage—a second man down the hall stole my focus. Racing towards us.

Gun lifted. Ready to shoot.

I squeezed my eyes shut as my captor lifted his own arm. Gun in hand. The arm that held me slid upwards, so warm fingers turned my head into that chest. Covered my ear. Holding me close.

Safe. Close.

Two shots rang out.

Two more.

Silence.

At long last, I dared to lift my head. To look up—but something caught my gaze. The hand wrapped around me bore a ring on the middle finger. A familiar ring.

I’d given that ring to a man eight years ago.

That was my Vasco’s ring.