Chapter 1 - The Weight of a Stethoscope
The blood didn't belong to her, but it felt like it did. Every drop that soaked through Elena’s sleeves carried the phantom echo of a life she had burned to the ground three years ago. Back then, they called her Dr. Vasquez. Back then, her hands were steady under the blinding white lights of Chicago General’s trauma ward, saving the very people the streets threw away. Now, they were stained with the gore of a crime boss's prize-winning Cane Corso, and the only sound in the ruined dining room was the heavy, ragged intake of Brutus's breath.
Dante Marchetti didn't move. For a man who controlled half the shipping ports on Lake Michigan, a man whose word could close banks or open graves, he looked utterly unmoored.
"The bullet didn't hit the scapula," Elena said, her voice cutting through the ringing silence like a scalpel. She pressed her thumb hard against the entry wound, feeling the wet, hot slide of muscle tissue. "He's bleeding internally, but it missed the main artery. If we don't move him right now, he'll drown in his own blood."
"Move him?" One of Dante’s lieutenants, a thick-necked brute named Sal with a fresh scar across his chin, stepped forward with his hand resting on his holster. "You don't tell the boss—"
"Sal," Dante said. His voice was no longer a crack; it was flat, heavy, and absolute. He didn't take his eyes off Elena. "Get the doors."
"Boss—"
"Get the doors," Dante repeated, his gaze locking onto Elena’s face. He saw the cold, detached precision in her eyes—the look of someone who had seen death a thousand times and refused to let it win today. "Can you save him?"
"I can if you stop talking and help me compress this artery," Elena snapped back, surprising even herself. Nobody talked to Dante Marchetti like that. Not the city aldermen who sat in his private booths, not the rival capos who sent severed fingers to his front gate, and certainly not the waitresses who served his scotch.
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Dante didn't flinch. Instead, he dropped to his knees right beside her on the shattered glass, ruining the custom Italian wool of his trousers, and pressed his own palm down over her hands, sealing the pressure against Brutus’s chest.
"Tell me what to do," Dante commanded.
