CHAPTER 23 THE LAST CLINIC STANDING
The alarms blared through the clinic’s back corridors, red emergency lights painting the sterile walls the color of fresh blood. Evelyn Crane slammed her palm against the security panel, teeth gritted as the system rejected her override code for the third time.
"It's locked me out," she said. "Someone's already in the system."
Dario Vitale stepped into the glow of the alarm lights, his suit immaculate despite the chaos. "Then we're past compromised. This is your last functional clinic, Evelyn. Decision time." His voice carried no urgency, just cold assessment. "Withdraw now or lose more than real estate."
She whirled on him. "I'm not leaving my staff to Marsh's wolves."
A sharp crack echoed from the front of the building—glass shattering. Evelyn didn't flinch.
Dario caught her wrist before she could bolt toward the noise. "Sentiment gets people dead. You know how this ends if we stay."
"Then help me evacuate them." She wrenched free, already moving toward the staff lounge. "Or get the hell out of my way."
He exhaled through his nose but fell into step beside her. "Five minutes. After that, I drag you out."
The lounge door burst open under Evelyn's shoulder. Two nurses and an orderly looked up from where they were already packing medical supplies into duffels. Good. They'd been trained for this.
"Back exit," Evelyn ordered. "Go straight to the safehouse on Twelfth—Marsh's team won't have it flagged yet."
One of the nurses hesitated. "The controlled substances—"
"Leave them." Evelyn shoved a fire axe off the wall and into the woman's hands. "If they corner you, make it expensive."
Dario watched the exchange with detached interest before checking his watch. "Three minutes."
The clinic's PA system crackled to life. "Dr. Crane." Daniel Marsh's voice oozed through the speakers, tinny and triumphant. "You really should've taken the deal when you had the chance."
Evelyn palmed a scalpel from an open tray. "Bastard."
Dario didn't react to the insult or the weapon. "He's stalling for sweep teams to flank the building." Another alarm joined the first—the front doors breaching. "Time's up."
She hesitated just long enough for Dario to curse and bodily steer her toward the emergency exit. The staff scrambled ahead, the orderly kicking open the door to reveal the clinic's delivery alley. Distant shouts echoed from the street.
Dario pushed Evelyn behind a dumpster as two black SUVs skidded into the alley mouth. "Change of plans." He drew a compact pistol from his shoulder holster. Not his usual piece—something untraceable. "When I move, you run."
She gripped his sleeve. "Those are Marsh's—"
"I know." Dario's smile didn't touch his eyes. "But he's not the only one who brought friends."
Gunfire erupted from the rooftops—three precise shots that blew out the SUVs' front tires. Marsh's men dove for cover as dark figures descended fire escapes on either side of the alley.
Evelyn didn't wait to see more. She sprinted after her staff, the scalpel still clenched in her fist. Behind her, Dario's voice carried over the chaos, calm as a man ordering dinner:
"Tell Daniel next time he wants a meeting, he should call first."
The last thing Evelyn heard before turning the corner was the wet crunch of a nose breaking. Then the alley swallowed the sound whole.
Evelyn skidded around the corner, the scalpel's grip slick in her palm. The alley dead-ended at a chain-link fence topped with razor wire—no fire escapes here, no helpful dumpsters. Just the distant wail of sirens and the acrid sting of gunpowder clinging to her tongue.
Dario's men had cut off Marsh's retreat. She'd misread the play entirely—this wasn't an ambush. It was a fucking invitation.
A shadow detached itself from the brickwork.
Dario stepped into the jaundiced glow of a streetlight, rolling his right shoulder like a man working out a kink.
Fresh blood darkened his knuckles. "You run like someone who expects to be chased," he observed.
"But you brought Marsh to my doorstep, Evelyn. That's not running. That's delivering."
She backed toward the fence, the links rattling behind her. "I didn't bring him. He followed me."
"Semantics." Dario flicked something off his sleeve—a tooth, maybe. "Point is, you understood the rules well enough to use them. Just not well enough to see the trap."
The new understanding hit her like a sucker punch: she'd been the bait in his world all along.
Marsh's voice echoed from the main alley, raw with panic. "Crane! Get your ass back here!"
Dario didn't even glance toward the shouting. His attention never wavered from her face. "You wanted my attention. You've got it." He held up three fingers. "Three questions. Answer them, and I'll call off my shooters."
Evelyn's pulse hammered against her ribs. Somewhere behind Dario, glass shattered. A man screamed.
"First question." Dario folded down one finger. "Why does a coroner carry a scalpel that isn't hers?"
The blade in her hand suddenly weighed a thousand pounds. She'd lifted it from an autopsy six months ago—one of Dario's people, brought in with a suspicious overdose. The Y-incision scars on that body hadn't matched the tox report.
Dario smiled at her silence. Folded down the second finger. "Who taught you to throw a knife like that?"
Her father's face flashed behind her eyes—the way he'd adjusted her grip in their garage when she was twelve, the way the target's outline had blurred through her tears after his funeral.
Glass crunched under Dario's Oxfords as he stepped closer. The third finger stayed raised between them. "Last question." His voice dropped to something almost intimate. "Did you really think I wouldn't notice you cataloging my dead?"
Evelyn's breath stalled. Every unexplained mob death in her morgue for the past year—she'd tracked them all. Patterns in the wounds, consistencies in the staging. Enough to sketch the edges of a war Marsh didn't even know was happening.
Dario closed the final inch between them. His cufflink scraped her collarbone as he plucked the scalpel from her grip. "You're not nearly as subtle as you think, sweetheart."
Behind them, Marsh's voice cut off mid-curse. Something heavy hit the pavement.
Dario didn't look away from her face. "Tell me," he murmured, "was it the overdose falsifications that tipped you off? Or did you actually think we'd leave a body in your cooler without checking your work first?"
The sirens wailed closer. Evelyn's fingers found the fence's cold metal, the razor wire's lethal curve. Every exit strategy she'd planned dissolved like smoke.
Dario pocketed the scalpel. "Welcome to the real game, Dr. Crane." His smile showed teeth. "Now you get to decide whose side you're really on."
From the alley came the wet thud of a body being loaded into a van. The sirens abruptly changed direction—diverted, somehow.
Evelyn understood, too late, the difference between reading the rules and surviving them.
Evelyn Crane stood in the dimly lit parking lot behind her clinic, the faint hum of the fluorescent lights above casting uneven shadows.
The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and exhaust, a reminder of the city just beyond the chain-link fence.
She’d come here after hours, as she always did, to check on the supplies and lock up. But tonight, something felt off.
Her fingers tightened around the keys in her hand as she scanned the lot.
No cars. No movement. Just the usual quiet of this part of the city at night.
Yet the prickling sensation at the back of her neck wouldn’t ease.
She’d learned to trust that feeling over the years—it had kept her alive more times than she cared to count.
“You’re being paranoid,” she muttered under her breath, forcing herself to take a step toward the clinic’s back door. But then she froze.
There, on the ground near the dumpster, was a cigarette butt. Fresh, still damp from the rain earlier in the day. Evelyn crouched, examining it without touching it. Marlboro Red. Not her brand, and not the kind her staff smoked. Someone had been here. Recently.
She straightened, her pulse quickening. The clinic was supposed to be safe. Neutral ground. But the rules she’d relied on for years were crumbling, and she couldn’t afford to be careless. Not now.
The sound of a car engine broke the silence, distant but approaching.
Evelyn ducked behind the dumpster, her breath shallow as she peered around the edge.
A black sedan rolled slowly past the front of the clinic, its headlights off.
She couldn’t see the driver, but the car’s slow, deliberate pace told her everything she needed to know. Surveillance.
Her thoughts snapped through options—not with panic, but with calculation. Who was watching her? The Morettis? Someone else? And why now? She’d been careful. Too careful. But someone had found her last safe haven, and that meant she was running out of time.
The sedan disappeared around the corner, but Evelyn stayed put, counting seconds.
When she was sure it wasn’t circling back, she stepped out from her hiding spot and moved quickly to the clinic’s back door.
Her hands trembled slightly as she unlocked it, but she forced herself to stay calm. She couldn’t afford mistakes.
Inside, the clinic was dark, the familiar scent of bleach and bandages wrapping around her like a shroud.
She flipped on the lights, scanning the room for anything out of place.
The cabinets were closed, the counters clean.
But then she noticed it—the faintest smudge on the edge of the reception desk, as if someone had leaned against it. Someone who didn’t belong.
Evelyn’s jaw tightened. They’d been inside. Her sanctuary, her last refuge, had been violated. She pulled out her phone, her fingers hovering over Dario’s number. He’d know what to do. He always did. But calling him would mean admitting she needed his help, and she wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
Instead, she opened the clinic’s security feed on her phone, scrolling through the footage from earlier that evening.
The cameras were discreet, hidden in corners and behind shelves, but they caught everything.