Chapter 86
I stepped into the hospital lobby. The bright light and harsh scents of antiseptic stung my senses, and yet, it was like coming home. It’d been months since I’d been here, walked these halls, visited patients. Saved lives.
Everything was the same—the fluorescent lights, the human smells lurking beneath the chemicals, the steady beep of heart monitors, the low murmur of constant chatter, the patter of rushed rubber shoes against tile floor …
And yet, it felt so different.
I was different.
And not just in name—I was Dr. Layla Marcello now, and that would take some getting used to after so long being Dr. Bennett. Layla Marcello: wife of a Mafia boss. A woman who’d fought for her life and that of her son and husband.
A woman who’d spilled blood. Taken lives.
A woman who was now here to save them.
“Layla!” One of the nurses waved at me across the lobby, and I smiled back. Forced a long, slow breath through my nose. I was here, I was back, and I would return to my duty as a life-saving doctor.
So why did my smile feel so false? Why did my bones feel so heavy with unease?
Thankfully, before I could get too lost in my own thoughts, my pager detonated in my pocket.
My feet moved without thinking, my body falling back into the rhythm like no time had passed at all—coat on, into room, nurses around me delivering their reports and updates, file in my hand …
Young man, twenty-four, soaked in blood. Blood stained his white shirt, his neck and cheeks, the fingers hanging limp at his sides. His chest rose and fell in shallow, pain-filled breaths, and white showed around his panicked eyes.
“You’re going to be okay,” I said, even as one of the nurses cut away his shirt to reveal the bullet lodged in his side.
My heart clenched, like someone had punched a bullet through my own flesh, but my body moved of its own accord. My hands didn’t falter, even as my mind spun with questions.
How had this happened? Who’d done it? Was it a street fight? A random act of violence? Or was this something deeper—something connected to the underworld I had married into?
I worked quickly to stabilize the man. His breathing evened out, his eyes closed, and blood stopped pouring from his wound. Luckily, the bullet hadn’t struck anything critical, and the damage was minimal. He’d live, with likely no lasting long-term effects.
It wasn’t until he was wheeled away that the final question flitted into my mind … and stayed.
How many of my patients over the years had suffered injuries like this—and worse—because of men like my husband? Because of people like Aldo Marcello, like Layla Marcello?
That night, I lay awake, staring into the shadowed depths of the ceiling. Lost in thought. Beside me in bed, Aldo was still upright, reading a financial report of some kind, the warm glow of the bedside lamp sketching his face in angles of dark and light.
Like he could feel my churning thoughts, or maybe just the weight of my eyes on his cheek, he turned towards me. “You okay?”
My fingers clenched around the soft million-thread-count sheets. How many beautiful luxuries like this had been paid for in the blood of young, innocent men like the one who’d made his way into my operating room?
“I had a gunshot victim today at work.” The words tumbled from my mouth in a soft spill. For an ER doctor, they didn’t sound so consequential, did they?
Maybe that was why Aldo’s features pulled tight in consternation. “I’d think you get a lot of them in this city?”
“Yeah.”
“Did … he die?”
“No. He’ll be fine.” I slid up against the headboard, pulled my legs to my chest, and wrapped my arms around them. “That’s not the point.”
Aldo set down his report, turned towards me. His fingers cupped the curve of my knee, warm and soft and comforting—like home. “Tell me.”
“It’s different now.” My eyes scanned his face, the open, soft lines. Attentive, caring. Listening. Whatever I said, he’d hear it, take it to heart. Try to fix it, probably.
He was my Vasco, the man who’d earned my love and cared for it so gently. “Different how?”
“Because I can’t help wondering if he was Mafia. If his pain is our fault—my fault.”
Because I’m condoning this lifestyle, I didn’t say, by lying in this bed. By training with you. By being your wife.
He didn’t flinch, but his shoulders tensed beneath the soft t-shirt. “Layla—”
“I don’t know how to live in both worlds,” I continued, my voice barely above a whisper. “How can I call myself a good doctor when I’m part of a world that breeds constant violence?”
Aldo exhaled slowly, and his fingers tightened over my knee. “You’re a good doctor because you save lives, Layla. Because you care. What I do—what my family does—it doesn’t change that.”
“But how could it not?” I shook my head, drew my knees tighter against me. “I stitch people back together while at the same time supporting a lifestyle that’s the reason they’re bleeding in the first place. It’s hypocrisy.”
Aldo’s jaw tightened, and his fingers slid from my knee, leaving it cold in the wake of his warmth. Silence hung heavy in the room, like a blanket, like smoke: thick and stifling.
His gaze tilted down to study his hands atop the blanket—the scars and cuts, the callus and veins and rough edges of a life hard-lived and hard-fought. A life of blood.
“I can’t change the past.” He didn’t look up from his hands. “But I swear to you, I can try to build something better for the future.”
“Better?” I tilted my head, studying the angles of his profile. Beautiful, but cold. Crafted from stone, perfection, and yet danger etched every line of his visage. “How, Aldo. Will there ever be a day when we’re not fighting in blood and violence? You think I like that my son is learning to fight instead of playing soccer or football, like normal kids his age?”
Aldo’s jaw ticked in frustration. “He likes MMA, Layla. He’s damn good at it, too. Even if we lived an entirely different life—”
“He’s good at it because he thinks he needs to be!” The words snapped out of my mouth, too loud, too forceful. Aldo flinched.
I wished I could take them back.
“Believe me, Layla,” he murmured, his gaze finding mine. “I would like, more than anything, to give him something else. A real childhood, the promise of a good, safe, comfortable life. And believe me when I say that I think about how to accomplish that every single goddamned day.”
I studied his face, those hard, unreadable lines, searching for the truth in those words. Searching for something like hope or promise that might be fulfilled. I wanted so badly to believe there was a future with something else written in our stars.
But deep down, I knew that this world was eternal. That there was no walking away. I’d made my choice and now … now I’d live with the consequences. Eli would live with the consequences.
Aldo’s fingers swept under my chin, tilting it up to meet his eyes. “I promise you, Layla. We will build a beautiful life for our son, one way or another.”
I wanted, so desperately, to believe such beautiful lies.
