Page 11
She hesitates, glancing at the raised letters on my card. “If Dr. Romano asks, should I tell her you did this?”
“No. You don’t know who paid. And if she has other patients who need help, please call me.”
“Why?” she asks.
“Do you need it or not?”
The receptionist nods and runs the card.
When she slides the plastic back across the counter, I pocket it and walk toward the door, shrugging off my jacket to hang it across my left shoulder. My wound aches and my thoughts churn.
Lucia’s eyes flash in my head. I can still picture the green flames of her eyes when she fought for that boy. While I’ve known beautiful women, none of them have ever left an impression like this on me.
Che cazzo stai facendo? What the fuck am I doing?
The hell if I know.
Chapter 3
Lucia
I’ve survived twelve hours of screaming monitors, bodily fluids in places they should never be, and an administrator who thinks of medicine as a subscription service.
Now that I can finally catch a break, I’m slumped in one of the lounge chairs and peeling the lid off a separated, watery yogurt. Jenna walks in with a grim face, looking like she’s about to confess to a crime.
“Lu.” She picks at her badge lanyard. “About the Delgado patient’s bill…”
My tongue rolls the spoon in my mouth to a corner. “What about it?”
She gently nibbles her lower lip. “Someone paid for it. Forty-three thousand.”
That gets my attention. My teeth unclamp from the little yogurt spoon, and it falls back into the cup. “By who?”
She looks everywhere but at me. The vending machine. The clock. The floor.
“An anonymous donor.”
A startled laugh slips out of me. “Anonymous donors don’t drop from the skies, Jen. You look like you already know the identity of our benefactor.”
“They requested anonymity.”
A buzz starts inside my skull as I stare her down. She refuses to release the doorknob she’s holding, and she looks as if she’s bracing to pivot and run.
That sets off alarms. Jenna doesn’t hover or fumble for words. Only guilt can dampen her bubbly personality.
Why would she feel guilty? My stomach tightens as the image of Jenna and the mafia man in the lobby flickers through my mind. “No. Tell me it wasn’t him.”
Her amber eyes widen. “What?”
My yogurt sloshes over the rim of its container as I shoot to my feet. “I saw him with you earlier in the lobby.”
Jenna nods, miserable. “He told me not to tell you, but it’s your patient. I think you have a right to know.”
Confusion cuts through my exhausted brain. Marco Santori has shown up at my hospital twice in two days. He left here yesterday as an infuriatingly obnoxious patient, and now he’s left as a benefactor?
That man gets under my skin. It’s as if he was made in a lab to get a rise out of me, and that’s saying something. I can always keep my cool around people, no matter how much I dislike them. It’s different with Marco Santori.
I’d thought maybe I was done with him after he walked out earlier today, turns out he’s not done with me yet. That’s the only reason he paid for the surgery.
