Six nurses had quit in five weeks, and the last one fled the mansion sobbing so hard she left her coat behind. Everyone expected me to run too, but I needed the money badly enough to face Chicago’s most feared crime boss, and before my first week ended, I was about to break the one rule every nurse had been warned never to break. / Chapter 7 / 10

Chapter 7 - The Price of SurvivalThe muffled crack of Liam’s pistol shattered the stillness of the room.

The bullet caught Marcus square in the shoulder, spinning him violently backward into the doorframe. His submachine gun clattered uselessly against the hardwood floor. Before the two masked thugs could raise their weapons, the heavy oak doors burst open wider behind them, and Leo stepped into the hallway, his own firearm leveled at their chests.

“Drop your weapons or you join Marcus on the floor,” Leo commanded, his voice cold as ice.

The two thugs froze, looked at their wounded leader clutching his bleeding shoulder, and slowly let their rifles slip from their hands, raising them in the air.

“Tie them up and throw them in the basement with the rest of the garbage,” Liam ordered, lowering his smoking pistol slowly onto the blanket. His breath came in heavy, ragged gasps, and sweat poured down his temples as the sheer physical exertion strained every single pin and suture in his leg.

Leo nodded sharply, motioning for his remaining loyal guards to haul Marcus and his men away.

As the commotion faded down the hallway, I dropped the heavy metal IV pole with a loud clatter and rushed to Liam’s bedside. My professional training immediately kicked back in, overriding the lingering shock of the firefight.

“You absolute idiot,” I muttered frantically, tearing open his surgical kit and checking his abdominal bandages. “Your stitches are bleeding through again! Your heart rate is through the roof!”

I peeled back the gauze, my fingers working with swift, practiced precision to clean the wound and apply fresh pressure. Liam watched me silently, leaning his head back against the pillow, a faint, lopsided smile touching his lips despite the obvious pain wracking his body.

“You handled yourself pretty well for a nurse,” he whispered.

“I told you,” I said, pressing down firmly on the gauze to stop the bleeding. “I need you alive until Friday. Today is Thursday afternoon. You have twenty-four more hours to hold it together.”

Liam reached out, his warm fingers lightly brushing against my forearm—not to stop me this time, but to steady himself. “And what happens tomorrow at noon?”

“At noon,” I said, looking up to meet his intense gaze, “you hand me my ten thousand dollars in cash, I walk out that front door, and I catch a cab straight to the hospital to pay for my brother’s trial.”

Liam held my stare for a long moment, the air between us crackling with an unspoken tension that had nothing to do with danger or money.

“And if I ask you to stay?” he asked quietly.