Chapter 2 - THE NURSE WHO REFUSED TO KNEEL
"You can have the ring back."
Norah pulled the diamond from her finger and placed it on Dominic Russo's desk.
The sound was small.
The consequences were not.
Two armed guards standing near the door exchanged startled looks. Victor, who had returned with a message from Alexi Tarasov, stopped in the doorway.
Dominic looked at the ring.
Then at her.
"Explain yourself."
"You can tell me where I live. You can decide who accompanies me outside. You can probably buy every billboard in Chicago and announce that I'm your fiancée. But you do not get to erase the six years I spent becoming a nurse."
His expression hardened.
"I am trying to keep you alive."
"And I'm telling you that being alive isn't the same thing as having a life."
Nobody spoke.
Norah could barely believe the words had come out of her mouth. The man standing across from her had threatened to break her legs less than twenty minutes earlier.
But something about losing her career frightened her more deeply than his anger.
Her mother had been a nurse.
Before cancer took her, Eleanor Hastings had worked eighteen-hour shifts in a struggling neighborhood clinic and taught her daughter that a person's dignity did not depend on how much money they possessed.
Norah had followed her into medicine because she believed that helping frightened people mattered.
The thought of surrendering that purpose to become a decorative wife in a mansion made her feel physically sick.
Dominic picked up the ring.
"You think the hospital is safe?"
"I think nowhere in this city is safe anymore."
"Then you're beginning to understand."
He opened a drawer and removed a thick folder.
Her name was printed on the front.
Norah stared at it.
"Did you investigate me before I walked into this room?"
"Within three minutes of your arrival."
"That's disturbing."
"It's how I've survived thirty-five years."
He pushed the folder toward her.
Inside were photographs of Norah entering her apartment, visiting the grocery store, and working outside the hospital's ambulance entrance.
Some had been taken that afternoon.
Others were older.
One showed Liam standing beside an unfamiliar woman outside a waterfront storage facility.
Norah snatched it up.
"Where did you get this?"
"From a private investigator."
"When?"
"Yesterday."
She looked at him sharply.
"You knew about Liam before I came here?"
Dominic's silence was answer enough.
Something cold settled in her stomach.
"Why?"
"Because your brother was looking for someone in my organization."
"Who?"
"That's what I'm trying to determine."
Norah placed the photograph on the desk.
Her brother was twenty-two, brilliant with computers, careless with money, and incapable of keeping a secret for more than forty-eight hours.
He had never been involved in organized crime.
At least, that was what she had believed.
"Is he alive?"
"I don't know."
"Then help me find him."
Dominic looked at her for a long moment.
"You're making a considerable number of demands for someone who came here asking for protection."
"Then perhaps you should have chosen a quieter fiancée."
Victor made a sound suspiciously close to a cough.
Dominic turned toward him.
"What?"
"Nothing, sir."
"Then leave."
When the door closed, Dominic returned the diamond ring to Norah.
"You may continue working. But under conditions."
She waited.
"No night shifts without additional security. No leaving through employee entrances alone. Your schedule goes to Victor. And if I tell you there is an immediate threat, you leave the building."
Norah considered the terms.
"I want that in writing."
Dominic stared.
Then, unexpectedly, he laughed.
It was not a particularly warm sound, but it changed his face enough to make him look younger.
"You negotiate like a prosecutor."
"My mother said I argued with the pediatrician before I could speak in complete sentences."
"Your mother sounds exhausting."
"She was wonderful."
The smile disappeared from Norah's face.
Dominic noticed.
He did not ask what had happened to Eleanor Hastings.
Instead, he held out the ring.
"Put it back on."
Norah took it but did not immediately obey.
"One more condition."
His eyes narrowed.
"Careful."
"Separate bedrooms."
"Fine."
"No touching me without permission."
His expression changed.
Not anger.
Something more complicated.
"Agreed."
"And if this marriage ever becomes real, it happens because we both want it. Not because you think a ring gives you permission to decide everything."
For several seconds, Dominic said nothing.
Then he nodded.
"Agreed."
Norah replaced the ring.
This time, she did it herself.
The distinction mattered.
---
By eleven that night, a black SUV was parked outside her apartment building.
Norah entered with Victor and two guards.
Her home looked painfully small under their scrutiny.
The kitchen table wobbled. The wallpaper peeled near the window. A half-finished crossword lay beside an empty coffee mug.
Victor examined the flimsy front lock.
"Someone forced this recently."
"Your observation skills are remarkable."
"I wasn't criticizing your apartment, Miss Hastings."
"Good. Because it's the only place I've ever paid for entirely by myself."
She packed three changes of clothes, her nursing license, photographs of her family, and an old paperback copy of Jane Eyre.
From the back of her bedroom closet, she retrieved a wooden music box.
It had belonged to her mother.
When she opened it, a tiny brass ballerina turned beneath a cracked mirror.
Norah wound the mechanism.
A familiar melody filled the room.
For a moment, she was fourteen again, sitting beside Eleanor while Liam practiced piano badly in the next room.
She closed the lid before she started crying.
Victor waited by the entrance.
"Is that everything?"
"Almost."
She went to Liam's room.
Her brother had moved out months earlier, but he occasionally slept on her couch when money was tight.
A stack of computer manuals remained beside the bed.
Norah opened the top book.
Something slipped from between its pages.
A folded receipt.
She nearly threw it away.
Then she noticed the handwritten message on the back.
NORA — IF THEY SAY I STOLE IT, DON'T BELIEVE THEM. FIND THE SEVENTH FLOOR.
Underneath was a sequence of eight numbers.
Before she could examine them, a crash came from the living room.
One of the guards shouted.
"GET DOWN!"
Norah dropped behind the bed.
The apartment window shattered.
Three rapid gunshots cracked through the hallway.
She heard Victor curse.
Then another sound.
A woman's scream from the neighboring apartment.
Norah reached for her medical bag.
"Stay down!" Victor yelled.
"Someone's hurt!"
"That is not your concern!"
"It is if she's bleeding!"
Norah crawled toward the hall despite his warning.
The neighbor, Mrs. Alvarez, lay near her open doorway with blood spreading across her sweater.
A stray bullet had struck her shoulder.
Norah pressed a towel against the wound.
"Look at me, Rosa. Stay with me."
Outside, tires squealed.
The gunfire stopped.
Victor called for an ambulance.
As Norah stabilized the injured woman, her phone vibrated.
An unknown number.
She answered without thinking.
A man spoke in a low, accented voice.
"Pretty ring, Miss Hastings."
Norah froze.
"Who is this?"
"You should have paid your brother's debt."
The line disconnected.
Three minutes later, Dominic Russo arrived.
He found his fiancée kneeling in broken glass, her hands covered in someone else's blood.
He looked at Victor.
"What happened?"
"Tarasov shooters. We drove them off."
Dominic's face became frighteningly still.
Then Norah stood.
She held out the folded receipt.
"Before you start a war," she said, "I think you need to see what my brother left me."
Dominic took the paper.
His eyes moved over the eight numbers.
For the first time that evening, Norah saw genuine shock cross his face.
"Where did you find this?"
"In Liam's room."
Dominic looked at the message again.
And whispered something she had never expected to hear from him.
May you like
"God help us."
---
