And eyes so black they swallow the fluorescent light whole.
Fuck.
He's devastating. The kind of devastation that wrecks your credit score and your self-respect in the same weekend. The kind that makes smart women do stupid things and then write about them in their journals like they're the first person to ever lose their mind over cheekbones.
I am standing over a dead man with a stranger's secret pressed against my hip, and my brain decidesthatis the relevant observation.
Years of medical training. Two board certifications. And my nervous system still has the survival instincts of a woman who dates like she's trying to get a cautionary tale named after her.
He's not looking at the body.
He's not looking at his men.
He's looking at me. Like he walked in here for that specific purpose. Like he already knows who I am and has decided what to do about it.
Cold. Certain. Completely unmoved by the flatline still screaming behind me.
Dangerous. That's what he is. Dangerous in a suit that fits like a sin and a face that belongs on a warning label.
My pulse spikes. One savage kick against my ribs that I feel all the way to my fingertips. I want to murder my own circulatory system, because this man is a threat, not a goddamn invitation, and my body cannot tell the difference.
He's a Moretti. His family and mine have been trying to destroy each other for decades. A man just died on my table and whispered my father's name with his last breath.
This is not the moment.
My pulse doesn't give a damn about the moment.
His gaze drops — just for a fraction of a second — to my scrub pocket.
Then back to my face.
He knows.
Heat prickles up the back of my neck. Not fear. Something worse. Something that has no business existing in the same room as a flatline and a body bag. Something low and electric that coils tight in my stomach and stays there, pulsing, like a second heartbeat I didn't consent to.
My father's voice surfaces from somewhere I keep locked tight.
Information is either a weapon or a death sentence, Serafina. Which one you carry determines whether you live.
The drive burns against my hip.
The man in the doorway still hasn't spoken. Hasn't moved. Just watches me with those obliterating dark eyes like the dead man between us is a formality we'll get to eventually.
Like he has all the time in the world, and I have none.
I lift my chin.
He almost smiles. Almost.
Like defiance on me is something he wants to see again.
We both know this is only the beginning.
2
LUCA
My phone rings at 11:45 p.m.
