I've been out of that world since I left for college in California at eighteen. Over a decade of keeping my head down, my name clean, my father's legacy as far from my operating table as geography and sheer stubbornness would allow.
And this man — dying, desperate, bleeding out beneath my hands — looked at me like I was the last play in a game I didn't know I was part of.
"I don't know what you?—"
His hand goes slack.
The monitors scream.
"V-fib!" Dani shouts.
"Charging." I grab the paddles. "Clear."
The body jumps. The line stays flat.
"Again. Clear."
Flat.
I work him for nine minutes. Every escalation. Every protocol. Every technique I've trained for to drag people back from edges they shouldn't survive. I have never accepted a flatline without a war first.
The line doesn't move.
"Time of death. 12:07 a.m."
I say it clearly. The moment deserves that much. A name I don't have, a time, a witness. This man was alive. He made a decision in the final minutes of his life, and it cost him everything.
The least I can do is mark it.
I strip my gloves.
The thing in my scrub pocket presses against my hip like a live coal.
I don't touch it. I move through the post-resuscitation protocol on autopilot. Equipment count, notes, the procedural quiet that follows every loss. My face is composed. My hands are steady.
The war is a lie. Don't let them have it. Not Enzo. Not your father.
He knew my name. He knew my father. He pressed a dead man's secret into my pocket and died on my table.
And now I'm standing in a trauma bay trying to look like a doctor instead of a woman whose entire carefully constructed life just cracked straight through the center.
I turn toward the door.
And stop.
There'sa new man in the doorway.
He wasn't here before. I notice everything in my trauma bay. It's the only room in the world where I'm allowed to be in complete control.
And he's here now, filling the frame like he was built specifically to make it look small.
The three escorts who came in with the gurney have gone very still.
That tells me everything.
He's not one of them. He's above them. The way a blade is above the sheath.
A suit that costs more than my rent. Black. Impeccable. Not a crease despite whatever the hell his night has looked like so far. Dark hair pushed back from a face that's all angles and intent. Jaw that could cut glass. A mouth made for saying things you'd regret hearing in the morning.
