I pocket both phones and check my Glock. Loaded, safety on, exactly where it should be. In a couple hours I'll sit across from my uncle and discuss business. The Bratva pushing into our territory. The message we need to send. The violence that's coming.
But right now, I'm just a man who's been watching a woman for months now and planning exactly how I'm going to make her mine.
Another text, this one from the associate I've hired for tonight's performance.
All set. MacDougal and West 3rd, 8:30pm. You sure about this?
I type back:
Positive. Grab the purse, shove her, run. Don't touch her skin. Don't hurt her.
His response is immediate:
Got it, boss.
Perfect. Frankie's shift ends at eight. She'll take her usual route home, cutting through the Village the way she always does. By eight-thirty she'll be exactly where I need her, and I'll be close enough to intervene when my associate makes his move.
A staged mugging. Nothing too aggressive, just enough to scare her. She'll stumble, maybe fall. Her bag will hit the ground. And I'll be there to stop it. To save her the way she saved me. She'll be grateful, shaken, and I'll offer to walk her home. Buy her coffee. Play the concerned citizen who just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
And she'll never know I orchestrated the whole thing.
She'll never know how many times I've been in her apartment. Never know I have close to a thousand photographs of her on a burner phone. Never know I've spent months learning everything about her life while she doesn't even know I exist.
I pull out and head toward Little Italy. Don Marco wants to discuss the Bratva. Fine. I'll give him what he needs. Violence is what I do. What I've always done. I'm good at it.
But my mind is already on tonight. On the moment when I'll finally speak to her again. When I'll see recognition flash in her eyes as she remembers the man she saved months ago.
She saved my life in that ER. Now I'm going to save hers. From loneliness. From danger. From ever belonging to anyone else.
Tonight, everything changes for my Francesca, and she doesn't even see it coming.
2
FRANCESCA
The ER is already a shitshow when I arrive for my shift, which means today is going to be one of those days where I don't sit down until someone forces me to take a break.
I clock in, change into my scrubs—hospital policy, they don't leave the building—and stash my street clothes and bag in my locker before heading straight to the nurses' station. The night shift nurse, Maria, looks like she's aged a decade in twelve hours. Her hair is falling out of her ponytail, and there's blood spatter on her scrubs that she probably hasn't noticed.
"Thank God you're here," she says, shoving charts at me. "Bed three is a pneumonia, needs IV antibiotics. Bed seven is chest pain, waiting on troponin results. Bed twelve is a laceration repair, discharge paperwork when the doctor signs off. Bed five is our regular, back pain, we both know what he really wants."
I scan the charts. "Anything else?"
"Yeah. It's a full moon." She grabs her bag and bolts.
I chuckle as I start to make my rounds—if you don't have a sense of humor, you'll never survive a big city ER. The pneumonia patient is elderly and confused, pulling at his IV line.The chest pain is a middle-aged investment banker who keeps checking his phone between complaints about the wait time. The laceration repair is a drunk college kid who thinks his stitches are hilarious. The frequent flyer in bed five is scrolling through his phone with one hand and hitting the call button with the other, demanding more pain medication even though his vitals are perfect and he walked in without limping.
By mid-morning, I've sent the chest pain to the cath lab with an elevated troponin, admitted the pneumonia upstairs, and discharged the drunk kid with wound care instructions he won't follow. I'm documenting in the system when I hear the ambulance bay doors slam open.
"GSW to the abdomen, entry lower right quadrant, no exit!" The paramedic's voice cuts through the noise. "BP's dropping fast, pulse climbing. Two large-bore IVs wide open, gave him fluids on the way in."
I'm already moving, snapping on gloves. The other nurses converge on the trauma bay, pulling equipment, prepping the room. Dr. Patel is scrubbing in, and I can see from his face that he already knows how this is going to end.
The kid on the gurney is maybe twenty-two. His skin has that gray-pale color that means he's already bled out more than his body can handle. His eyes are wide and terrified, darting around the room like he's looking for an exit. There's blood everywhere—soaked through the gauze the paramedics applied, pooling under him on the gurney, dripping onto the floor in a steady rhythm that sounds too loud in my ears.
The smell hits me. Blood and shit and fear. The kid's bowel was perforated, which means sepsis, which means even if we stop the bleeding, he's probably already dying.
"What's your name?" I lean over him, blocking out the chaos so he can focus on my face.
