Chapter 1 - THE SECOND SCAR
Four nurses had already fled the penthouse before midnight, and the fifth was stuffing medical supplies into her bag when security warned me that Chicago’s most feared mafia boss might attack me the moment he woke up. But when Gabriel Moretti finally grabbed my wrist with enough force to bruise it, I noticed something every doctor before me had missed—and the scar on his back suggested someone inside his own family wanted him dead.
“You have five minutes to leave before he wakes up.”
The warning came from a broad man with a broken nose, a tailored black suit, and one hand resting beneath his jacket.
I kept washing my hands.
Behind me, another private nurse hurriedly shoved gauze into her medical bag.
“The last nurse lasted nine hours,” the man said. “The one before her lasted six. Mr. Moretti threw a lamp through a window because she touched his shoulder.”
The nurse looked me over and shook her head.
“Let her stay. Maybe she’ll have better luck.”
I ignored her.
At thirty-six, I was five-foot-six with an athletic build, dark hair, and the kind of steady hands that had carried me through enough emergencies to stop caring whether strangers underestimated me. Years ago, I had wasted too much time trying to speak more softly, smile at the right moments, and make myself less intimidating.
Life eventually taught me that survival required the opposite.
“What’s his temperature?”
The security chief blinked. “What?”
“Gabriel Moretti. His temperature.”
“103.8.”
“How long?”
“Since this afternoon.”
“And nobody sent him to a hospital?”
He laughed humorlessly.
“You know who he is?”
“I know he’s a patient with a fever.”
“He’s Gabriel Moretti.”
“Then Gabriel Moretti is a patient with a fever.”
For the first time, Luca Ferraro actually looked at me.
Chief of security. Forty-one. Former amateur boxer.
No medical authority.
That last detail mattered most.
“He won’t go to a hospital,” Luca said.
“Then he can die here with a spectacular view.”
Chicago glittered fifty-eight stories below us.
Three weeks earlier, Gabriel had been shot outside a private restaurant. The bullet supposedly entered near his left shoulder and exited without hitting bone.
He should have recovered quickly.
Instead, his legs weakened.
Then stopped working.
Then came the fever.
The confusion.
The rage.
The elevator swallowed the departing nurse, leaving me alone with Luca.
“I offered to double her pay,” he muttered.
“Triple mine.”
“You haven’t survived an hour.”
“Then you can save the money.”
A growl came from the bed.
Gabriel Moretti was awake.
Pictures hadn’t prepared me for him.
He was thirty-nine, powerfully built, with broad shoulders, scarred knuckles, black hair soaked with sweat, and the body of a man accustomed to violence.
But his face was gray.
His pupils were too wide.
His breathing was dangerously shallow.
Then his hand shot out.
His fingers locked around my wrist.
Luca reached beneath his jacket.
“Don’t,” I snapped.
Gabriel squeezed harder.
“Who sent you?”
“My agency.”
“Who?”
“Midwest Private Care.”
“You’re lying.”
“You’re delirious.”
His fingers dug into my skin.
“You smell like antiseptic.”
“I’m a nurse. It would be concerning if I smelled like gasoline.”
Confusion briefly interrupted his fury.
“Listen carefully,” I continued. “Your pulse is around 140, your oxygen is dangerously low, and your temperature is cooking whatever judgment you have left. You can crush my wrist, or give me ten minutes to figure out why you’re dying.”
Something changed in his eyes.
Not trust.
Curiosity.
He released me.
Luca stared. “He usually doesn’t let go.”
“Everybody lets go eventually.”
I checked Gabriel’s oxygen saturation.
Eighty-six.
Far too low.
I adjusted his oxygen, but Gabriel suddenly grimaced.
“My back.”
“Your shoulder?”
“My back.”
“Where?”
“Lower.”
Luca frowned. “He’s complained about that since the clinic.”
I froze.
“What clinic?”
“The private surgical center that removed the bullet fragment.”
My eyes narrowed.
“The report says the bullet passed through.”
Luca hesitated.
“A fragment remained near the wound. Dr. Adrian Vale removed it.”
I remembered the agency file.
Gabriel’s younger cousin, Vincent Moretti, had arranged the procedure.
I pulled the sheet down to Gabriel’s waist.
“Roll him.”
Luca stepped backward.
“No.”
“What?”
His face hardened.
“Nobody touches his back.”
I looked at Gabriel.
Even through the fever, something like fear entered his eyes.
“Why?”
Neither man answered.
So I reached carefully beneath Gabriel and helped turn him.
That was when I saw it.
Not one surgical scar.
Two.
The second incision was several inches below the gunshot wound—small, recently stitched, and deliberately hidden where no bullet fragment could possibly have been.
My stomach dropped.
“Luca.”
His face went white.
“What?”
I stared at the forbidden scar.
“Someone operated on him twice.”
Gabriel’s eyes opened.
May you like
And in a voice barely above a whisper, he said the one name nobody in that penthouse expected.
“Vincent.”
