Spring
Today was not a day when I was thrilled about landing my preceptorship in the emergency department at New Jersey Medical. In lieu of a Capstone project, I’d been offered a stint in the ER. Making friends during my last semester of clinical rotation was at the bottom of my list because my life was an oxymoron, if not hypocritical.
I went to school to save lives, but I worked for the mob to erase evidence that they had taken one.
It was not enough that I had to downplay my looks, but I had to dumb down my skills, too. But the instructors had noticed my deftness in drawing blood, my aptitude in making patient assessments, and my calm when dealing with surly relatives and had suggested I would be a good fit for the ER.
I couldn’t tell them I had a lot of practice with the mafia.
Nurses weren’t allowed to do sutures. They were considered minor surgeries only doctors should do. Nursing students weren’t allowed to run IV lines on patients without close supervision. Procedures I had vast experiences with and were second nature to me. That was one reason I didn’t make friends with nursing students. I didn’t want them to be comfortable enough to ask me why I was so skilled with techniques which even a newly registered nurse would struggle with.
I made connections with the instructors and charge nurse who mattered to my goals. I didn’t care if that didn’t make me well-liked among my student peers. Because no one liked someone who was a know-it-all and made them look bad. And even when I dampened my skills, I wasn’t one to wait around like my classmates who stood idle and complained of boredom because of nothing to do. There was plenty to do. The nurses were just swamped. So instead of wasting time, I hustled and asked the nurses who looked like they needed help. I was proactive in reading the patients’ charts, so I’d already figured out what had to be done and all I needed was their approval. And I carried my clinical handbook at all times and memorized what I could. I drew blood, changed bedpans, fixed the beds, and familiarized myself with vitals. Grunt work, but a vital step to become a nurse.
But being in the ER surrounded by the aftermath of violence, the conflict of my two worlds was colliding.
“GSW to the chest,” the EMT yelled as a gurney was wheeled in. “Suspected hemothorax.” Unlike most of the GSWs coming through here, the man was dressed in an expensive suit and I spotted the equally pricy watch on his wrist. Dom had a similar one, and I was guessing it was the same brand that cost three times as much as a nurse’s annual salary.
ER personnel swarmed. Nurse Addy was one of them, and she was my preceptorship mentor. Her shift was my shift. Instead of my six to eight hours, I’d been going eight to twelve.
I was still confined to patient intake and drawing blood. But just to be exposed to the rush of the ER and the variety of cases that came in made the grueling hours worth it.
But tonight was different because I spotted Anton walking in. When our eyes clashed across the room, he spun around and exited.
“Did you hear me, Sloane?” Nurse Addy asked.
I dazedly looked at my mentor. All the blood had drained to my toes. “Uhm…I’m sorry.”
She frowned at me. “Here, finish taking the patient’s information.”
We burst into an ER exam room where X-rays were quickly taken.
But there was extensive damage. The patient coded, and after a few minutes of trying to revive him, the nurse called the time of death at ten twenty-four p.m.
This wasn’t the first death I’d seen during my shifts, but somehow this one hit me the hardest because there was a part of me that felt responsible. That I was part of the problem.
Later I would find out that the patient was a lawyer. He’d been shot outside his office building and the police who’d come in considered it a mugging. So many questions. The people responsible had taken his wallet but left his expensive watch?
I was a zombie for the last few hours of my shift. Finally, in the locker room, Addy and I were preparing to go home.
“You did good today, Sloane,” Addy said.
“Thanks.”
“I noticed this last GSW hit you hard,” she said. “We see all kinds of injuries in the ER and some deaths hit us harder than others. But there was nothing we could have done for him. His heart had too much damage.”
“I know,” I whispered, closing my locker.
“Take a break this weekend and recharge, all right?”
“Thank you, Addy.”
I had taken the bus to the hospital. Now I wished I had driven the van tonight, but it’d become temperamental lately and I didn’t have time to take it to the shop. I debated whether I should call for a ride, but I didn’t want to waste money. Besides, I could never hide from the bratva if they wanted to find me.
A shadow detached from the dark corner of the building. I hated it when I was proven right.
Anton stood in front of me.
“Is that your work in there?” I asked.
“Is he dead?” he asked.
All my disgust and guilt about the situation shot through my head.
Fury erupted, and I slammed my hands on Anton’s chest.
“Fuck you,” I snarled. “Who do you think you are?”
I must have shocked him with my defiance.
“My brother may have sold his soul to the bratva, but don’t think for a minute you can ask me for more. This hospital,” I hissed, “is my life. My sacred space. You do not ask me to sacrifice whatever decency I have left.”
Fingers grabbed my neck, and my head bounced off the wall. I started choking. Oxygen became a scarce commodity as my body fought for survival. Should I have kept my mouth shut? Should I have given Anton what he wanted? It wasn’t just a fight to live, but it was a fight for my dignity. My soul.
I couldn’t scream. My eyeballs bulged, so I couldn’t glare. But my mind screamed.
Fuck you!
“Suka,” he growled. “We own your brother. We own you. Just because we haven’t bothered you in months doesn’t mean you’re free.”
Black dots danced along the edges of my vision.
A rush of oxygen sent relief crashing through my limbs. He’d let me go. I hated that I sank to the ground, and I was close to tears.
He kicked my thigh. “Grigori likes you, but you’re nothing special. If you cease to be useful, then you can start digging your own grave because that’s how it’s going to end.”
He walked away. I didn’t know how long I sat there, seized by an involuntary shuddering. I wanted to hide in some small town or another big city and be done with this bullshit.
Another nurse coming off shift found me and I made an excuse that I had a blood sugar crash. I didn’t know how I got home.
I spent a long time in the shower as if the hot water would scald away my guilt. Finally, I crawled into bed. Ginger hadn’t fussed when I came home. Dom still bought the expensive tuna for her, but I knew I was going to be late today, so I left her enough kibble.
My cat jumped on the bed. I was on my side, and she burrowed into my arms.
Exhaustion drained me, but my sleep was fractured. I kept seeing Anton shoot the lawyer. I kept seeing the lawyer being wheeled in, leaving a trail of blood.
Of blood erupting from his chest cavity like a fountain.
Then the patient sat up on the exam table and pointed a finger at me.
Anton’s fingers tightened around my throat.
I started screaming.
“Sloane!”
But how could I scream when I was choking?
“Sloane, baby.”
My eyes opened to see Dom’s worried face.
“It’s you,” I rasped, and I winced at the pain needling my larynx.
The concern in Dom’s eyes slowly morphed into rage.
Wait, was he mad at me? But no, he was glaring at my throat.
“What the fuck?” His fingers traced my neck. “Who did this?”
Dom
Some fucker strangled Sloane. She had fingermarks around her neck. Someone was going to die.
“What piece of shit did this?”
She grabbed the covers and pulled them over her head. “I can’t right now.”
I dropped to my knees, trying to rein in my anger because if Sloane was a victim of violence, my fury was the last thing she needed to see. “Talk to me, baby, please?”
I gently drew back the blanket to expose her eyes. “What happened?”
“Why are you here, anyway?”
“You haven’t been responding to my texts tonight, and I got worried.”
“Didn’t you have a gala this evening?”
“Yes.” And my date was pissed because she thought she was going home with me. It was the third event in a row that I’d asked her to be my date. The evenings always ended up with me taking her home.
“How did it go?”
Frustration at my inability to protect her clawed at me. “You’re seriously asking me about an event when you’re lying here hurt?”
“I can’t talk about it.”
And there it was. Suspicions scrambled my brain. It wasn’t a mugging. It couldn’t be the Italians, so it could only be the Russians. But why? I made sure Billy got sent away to Florida, involving him in a high-stakes gambling operation I’d partnered with Grigori. That way I had more control and cover for Billy in case he fucked up and keep the heat off Sloane. Meanwhile, Grigori had kept me dangling on the properties. He was saying he’d been in talks with their pakhan to sell them back to me.
But the properties weren’t my priority right now. Luca had issued a lockdown last night. He wasn’t forthcoming with information, but everyone I contacted in the Moretti crime family denied or blocked my calls. We were on edge not knowing what was going on, and that was why I panicked when Sloane wasn’t responding to my texts.
And I found her strangled?
“Was it the Russians?”
Her lips trembled. “You can’t do anything about it.”
“The fuck I can’t.”
“You and Grigori have business together,” she whispered. “Don’t think I don’t know that. Billy…you had Billy sent to Florida.” At the narrowing of my eyes, she added, “He sent money for Harriet and called me. We had a chat. But this has nothing to do with Billy. It’s just…my life associated with the mob is catching up with me.”
Did that include me? No. I was projecting my own guilt because I was a part of the world responsible for the marks on her neck. We kept our relationship a secret. It worked fine until the inability to protect her started eating at me, especially now that Luca was up to something. He was in a tit-for-tat war with the Russians in Chicago, which made my association with the New York bratva treacherous. One wrong move and we could end up in a bloody war.
“I don’t want to leave you here.”
She pushed up on her elbow and then slowly rolled to a sitting position, swinging her legs off the bed so we were face to face. “I think we shouldn’t see each other for a while.”
“What? No,” I growled. “I’m moving you to The Grindhouse.” The Grindhouse was our building in Hell’s Kitchen. The Syndicate and De Lucci crime family met in the basement we called The Underground. The first level housed the family’s boxing gym and Jabbin’ Java, Renz and Liz’s café bakery. Above it were apartments and the third-floor unit was frequently used by the De Luccis for safe houses or simply a place to crash in.
“And what? Just advertise to the entire underworld that we’re together?” She shot up to her feet and scampered out of the room, mumbling about needing water. I stalked after her. She filled an electric kettle and plugged it in.
“I need you to tell me what happened.” Frustration gnawed at me.
“And what, Dom? What will happen, exactly? There will be questions. We are nothing more than an affair and it’s becoming more complicated.”
I wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her, but I settled for lightly clasping them instead. I was glad she didn’t flinch, so whatever fucker strangled her didn’t leave lasting trauma, although it might be too soon to tell.
“We’ve been good together. It’s been working.”
“Has it? Or has it been working more for you? You bring women of your social standing and class to all—”
“Don’t you dare accuse me—”
“I’m not. It’s not working anymore because it’s hurting.”
An unexpected nausea pushed up from my gut. It must have shown on my face, because Sloane’s expression cracked with a misery that made me want to roar.
“I can’t see a beautiful woman on your arm one night and then have you fuck me the next evening. This last time you came straight to me and her perfume was all over you.”
“You made me shower it off, so it wasn’t like I fucked you with her smell all over me.” She flinched at my words, but I didn’t regret them. The reason Sloane and I worked was because we were honest about what this was and now she was changing the rules? I normally would have had more decency than to go straight to her from the arms of another woman even if it was just for show, but our affair, plus my responsibilities as the head of the De Lucci crime family, were weighing down on me. Sloane was my escape.
I wasn’t willing to give her up yet, and I certainly wasn’t down with her being in danger from the Russians.
“I’ll move you to Venezia Tower. It’s in Manhattan and I could get to see you more often and not have to make the hour and a half trip it takes to get to you.”
Fury replaced the misery in her eyes.
“You asshole,” she whispered.
“What? I’m the asshole?” I pointed at her neck. “This is what your desire for independence cost you.”
“I happen to go to school in New Jersey.”
“And look what happened!” I roared. “I have enough people I have to worry about and I don’t have room to worry about you too!”
That inexcusable statement escaped my mouth before I had the control to stop it.
Her throat snagged, and tears filled her eyes. “Then don’t.”
But what did I do? I doubled down. “We agreed this needs to be drama-free and—”
The electric kettle shrieked.
“And I’m causing drama?” she shot back, ignoring the annoying screech of the appliance.
I walked over to shut it off and went to the cabinet to get her a cup. “What tea do you want?”
“Stop it, Dom! Stop trying to take care of me. I don’t need your help. Get out.”
I slammed the cabinet and faced her. “Are you ending it with me?”
“You said if one of us wanted to end this affair, there would be no questions asked.”
“You think I’m going to abandon you after you got attacked?”
“There’s nothing you could have done. It’s not what you think, so don’t go stirring up shit with Grigori because then it’ll only make it worse.”
“Just tell me what happened!”
She crossed her arms. “No. I don’t owe you that. This ends now, Dom.”
“This isn’t over.” I slipped out my phone and texted her the address of the Venezia Tower. “When you come to your senses, I want you to give the apartment a look.”
“And become your mistress?”
“No.” I closed the distance between us. “More.”
“Mistress and more come with expectations, remember?”
I stroked the side of her cheek and gave her a firm kiss on her mouth. Anything more and I wouldn’t be able to leave, but I had an emergency meeting at The Underground in an hour. I wasn’t supposed to be in New Jersey. “Just give me time to sort my shit together.”
“I’m serious, Dom. We’re over.”
I didn’t answer her because I had none. I didn’t make promises I couldn’t keep. It killed me to leave her, but making sure she had protection wasn’t up for discussion. I didn’t have time to argue with her. I called in a favor to an associate in the executive protection business. This had to be covert. Knowing Sloane, she wasn’t going to appreciate someone shadowing her. The De Lucci side of my family, including the Archers, had their hands full with whatever was going down with Luca.
