Chapter One Blood on My Hands.

The gunshot victim was bleeding on my table and I had sixty seconds to decide if I was the kind of doctor who let patients die just because someone was holding a gun to her head.

Spoiler alert: I wasn't.

"He's dying," the gunman said. The cold press of metal against my temple told me he wasn’t narrating the obvious. He was warning me.

I clamped the femoral artery with hands that miraculously weren’t shaking. Six years out of med school, and apparently my hidden talent was performing vascular surgery while someone threatened to redecorate the walls of my clinic with my medulla oblongata.

"He needs a neurosurgeon," I said, tying off the bleeder. The bullet is near his spine, one wrong move and he's either dead or paralyzed."

"Then don't make a wrong move."

"That's not how medicine works."

His hand moved before I could process it, catching my chin, tilting my face up with exactly enough pressure to make his point without breaking bone.

"That man is my brother. And he won't die in some back-alley clinic because the surgeon had a conscience."

My pulse spiked. All my nerves screamed: agree, comply, survive.

Instead, I met his eyes.

"If I try and fail, he dies. If I don't try, he might live long enough to reach someone qualified. Which do you prefer? Alive brother or ego intact?"

"You're not afraid of me."

"I'm terrified of you, but I'm more afraid of living with his death on my hands when I knew better. So tell me, do you want a live brother, or a dead one and someone to blame?"

He released me. Stepped back and pulled out his phone. "Someone will be here in twenty minutes."

"Who are you?"

"Frank Costello." He pocketed his phone. And you just saved my brother's life, which means you now have my complete attention, Dr...?"

"Jane." The lie came automatically. "Just Jane."

"Well, Just Jane." His gaze traveled over me like he was calculating my net worth. "I look forward to getting to know you better."

I didn't answer. Just focused on keeping his brother alive for twenty more minutes.

"Stay with me," I murmured, prepping the surgical field.

Fourteen minutes later, Marco's eyes fluttered open. His hand shot out, catching my forearm with surprising strength. 

"Inside... one of us…” His voice barely whispers. His grip went slack. Eyes rolled back, the monitor shrieked.

"Shit!" I grabbed the paddles. "Clear!"

His body arched off the table.

Nothing.

"Again! Clear!"

This time the monitor beeped. Irregular, but there.

I exhaled and my hands finally started shaking.

The door opened and a woman walked in. Tall, elegant, wearing heels that cost more than my rent.

"Dr. Rosabella Romano. Neurosurgeon." Her eyes scanned the wound. "L1 vertebra. Clean stabilization work. You know what you're doing."

"Can you fix it?"

"Here? No. But I can prevent further damage until we relocate him. 

"I assume you have a facility, Frank?"

"Already arranged." Frank's eyes never left me. "Dr. Jane will accompany us."

"Excuse me?"

"You started this. You'll finish it."

"I have patients."

"Your patients can wait. Marco can't." He stepped closer, filling my space. "The people who shot him saw your face, Doctor. They know where you work. What do you think happens when they come back to tie up loose ends?"

"You don't get to decide for me."

"I get to make sure you're alive to argue about it. You saved my brother. That puts a target on your back whether you like it or not."

I looked at my clinic. At the life I'd built from lies and desperation over two years of hiding. Then at the man bleeding on my table.

"When can I leave?"

"When I say you can."

They moved Marco at 3 AM.

I followed in a black SUV, watching the city give way to wealth, higher gates, bigger houses and longer driveways. We turned into a private road marked only by a stone pillar and a security camera.

The estate sprawled ahead. Three stories of pale stone, lit by floods that turned night into noon. Not a house. A fortress.

A man in a suit not Frank's suit, a cheaper version, working-class pretending at wealth opened my car door.

"Welcome to Villa Costello," Dr. Rosabella said from behind me. "Your new residence for the foreseeable future."

"This is insane."

"This is Tuesday." She walked me through rooms with polished floors and crystal chandeliers, down a hallway that smelled like furniture polish and old money, through double doors into—

"Jesus."

A full surgical suite. Stainless steel, LED lights, equipment that belonged in a hospital.

"Frank doesn't do hospitals." Dr. Rosabella adjusted the surgical lights. "Bad for business."

"What business?"

She stared at me like I'd asked what color the sky was. "You really don't know who he is?"

"Should I?"

"Frank Costello. Head of the Costello crime family." She paused. "The mafia, Jane. You just operated on a mob boss's brother."

"I'm going to be sick."

"Bathroom's down the hall. But make it quick. Marco's vitals are dropping."

We worked for three hours.

Stabilized his spine. Repaired what we could. Prayed for the rest.

At dawn, Marco was alive, stable and sleeping. I, however, was wide awake when Frank found me in the recovery room, staring at monitors and trying not to think about inside, one of us.

"We need to talk."

"About?"

"About why a talented surgeon is running an illegal clinic in the worst neighborhood in my city." He sat close to me, uncomfortably intimate. "About who you're running from."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't lie to me. I ran your background. Dr. Jane Evan. Residency at Boston Memorial. Then you vanished. Reappeared here two years later with a fake medical license and a death certificate filed in Boston with your real name on it."

“No. No, no, no.”

 "I didn't run your background today, Jane. I've known who you are for six weeks."

"What?"

"I've had someone watching your clinic for six weeks. Tracking your patients, movements, schedule. I needed a doctor I could trust. He leaned closer. “And trust requires leverage. So I waited.”

"You... you planned this?”

He didn't answer. He stood and walked close to me. "The question is who are you hiding from that scared you badly enough to fake your own death?"

My mouth opened. Closed. No words came.

"Frank!" Dr. Rosabella's shout shattered the moment. "Marco's crashing! He was stable and then his blood pressure dropped."

He released me instantly. "Stabilize him."

I rushed through the OR doors, adrenaline spiking, every nerve screaming, because whatever danger I was in, a man was dying.

And despite everything, I was still a doctor.

Everything else could wait.