Chapter Three
Gabriella
“You can’t be serious!” It was hard not to throw the clipboard on the floor and do the Flamenco dance all over it. On day four of working with a greatly reduced staff, I was ready to break the Hippocratic oath and kill someone. That or curl into the fetal position and cry.
I was filling the role of three positions while half our nursing staff was down with an awful flu bug. The worst part of it all was that I was a fake, a phony, and way over my head.
After my visit from Papa, I knew I needed an escape plan and called my bestie, Sonja, or Red, as she preferred to be called. She was an IT genius, and her father—a member of the powerful Russian Bratva—had sent her to Canada to be educated.
We bonded over cannoli one day at a local restaurant on campus and became fast friends. When I told her my education was being cut short and needed a host of documents saying I’d finished the program with honors, she’d hacked into the system and gotten me what I needed.
Three days later, I left Toronto with a full set of identification under the name of Gaby Cala.
My photo ID showed my newly dyed auburn hair instead of black.
And the colored contacts I wore made my eyes blue instead of brown.
With the makeup job Sonja had done, I didn’t look like me at all.
If my father’s people were able to break into data banks, I was confident they wouldn’t find me.
The practicum experience I’d missed during my final year of school, I was now getting in spades at my new job.
Was it even legal to make a nurse work forty-eight hours straight?
But what could you do? As a newbie, I was used to crappy hours, but the burden of no sleep and too much caffeine was weighing on me.
And now they wanted me in the operating room as a surgical assistant.
Something I’d read about and seen, but had never performed that particular duty as yet.
Cursing my father and my lot in life under my breath, I trod down to the surgical ward.
Being brought up in a mafia family had taught me how to present a version of myself that wasn’t real.
Plant the fake smile in place and appear calm like Mother Teresa in the face of adversity.
No effort was spared in trying to control the shaking of my hands when I waltzed into the sanitization station and began scrubbing in.
When I was ready, I flipped through the file on the door to familiarize myself with what we were doing and saw the name Dr. Vitale listed as the head surgeon. The name was vaguely familiar, but my caffeine-addled, sleep-deprived brain couldn’t put the name and a face together.
I was busy laying out the instruments on the tray when I heard the door open behind me, then voices as the head surgeon and anesthetist entered the room.
Normally, there would be six of us assigned to this type of surgery, but with so many out ill, we were a skeleton staff of four and I was the only nurse present, which meant I had no one to rely on.
I listened to the voices, enjoying the rich, chocolatey tone of one of the voices behind me. It was so relaxing, like being wrapped in a warm blanket.
“Nurse!”
Shit! I’d fallen asleep on my feet, but it wasn’t my fault, I was exhausted. I turned suddenly, startled by the abruptness and my hip hit the tray. The sterile instruments went flying. A scalpel barely missing my foot.
“Shit!” I yelled before I could school my reaction. I dropped to my knees to pick up the now dirty instruments and got yelled at again.
“What do you think you are doing?”
I stood up abruptly knocking into the doctor that stood way too close and knocking his nose with the top of my head.
“Ouch,” I cried out and finally looked at the doctor with the velvety voice as I rubbed the top of my head.
Oh, no. It couldn’t be. It was Mr. Sexy tattoo man with the piercing eyes from the restaurant and the club.
“You!” we both said at the same time. Of all the people.
Of all the hospitals.
Of all the operating rooms.
It had to be him.
The stranger from Vinny's.
The stranger from Club Carnage.
The one man I'd noticed despite every effort not to.
Mortification crawled up my spine.
His eyes weren’t just piercing right now, but furious as they glared out from an otherwise fully covered face. But I knew what he looked like beneath the surgical mask.
Did the ugly blue scrub cap irritate the generous amount of hair he had slicked back?
The idea seemed hysterical, and a giggle escaped my compressed lips.
His eyes narrowed and I dropped my gaze to his powerful arms. His hands were slim, but powerful, with the precise confidence of a man accustomed to saving lives.
The baggy scrubs did nothing to hide the powerful body or the intense power radiating from him through his smoldering gaze.
Everything about him screamed dominant and controlled.
I bet those hands could make my body scream with pleasure.
My sex spasmed in reaction, my panties soaked with my release.
The doctor, who’d been hard at work reining in his temper, removed his mask and sniffed the air, like a predator picking up on the scent of my arousal.
His eyes darkened to almost black pools, which I was sure had been amber, just moments before.
His appearance was a contradiction. Despite the mask of cold anger, there was also hunger in those inky depths.
His lips had a sensual quality, but were held in a smirk of cold aloofness.
“Postpone the surgery until later today. And you,” he said pointing at me, “will follow me. Ms—?”
“Cala,” I answered in a strangled tone. Gulping, I attempted to dislodge the lump forming in my throat.
“First name?” he demanded.
“Gaby.”
My name hung in the air between us, making me more uncomfortable with every breath I dragged in through my labored lungs. There were questions that needed to be asked and answered, but waiting until we were in private offered me a few minutes to get my body’s sexual reaction under control.
“Let’s go, Gaby Cala, and decide if your career is worth saving.”
I watched him leave the operating room.
“You better follow him,” the anesthesiologist said. “The fact he hasn’t fired you yet is a small miracle, don’t push him by not following instructions.”
I scurried out of the operating room, tossing my scrubs into the bin as fast as I could and raced out in time to join him at the elevator. The doors were open, and he held them at bay waiting for me to step on.
Despite the press of bodies, there was a healthy distance between us and the other passengers, as if Dr. Vitale’s very presence demanded it.
Were the staff and patients picking up on his barely contained anger and wanted as much distance from him as possible, or was this deferential treatment due to his position at the hospital?
“Who are you exactly?” I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud until a gasp from another nurse had me looking from him to her.
He didn’t answer though; she did. “This is Dr. Gaetano Vitale, our CEO and chief surgeon. How could you work here and not know that?”
Yikes! My heart was pounding so hard, how could it not be heard in the sudden silence that followed? And now I knew why he looked so familiar, not just from the restaurant, but from the framed photos of him I’d seen around the hospital. He looked so different than in that stiff profile picture.
“That’s okay, Cynthia. I suspect Miss Cala is very new and has yet to meet all of the staff here at Mercy Hospital.”
That seemed to satisfy the nosy woman, who gave me a dirty look before turning around to face the doors once more.
At the next stop, the elevator emptied except for me and Dr. Vitale.
The lack of sleep, my massive mistakes in the surgical suite, and my unfortunate attraction to him played havoc with my emotions.
I wanted to scream, cry, run, and hide. None of those things were appropriate, so instead of caving to baser instincts, I bit down on my tongue and kept my mouth shut.
Because losing this job wouldn't merely be inconvenient.
It would be catastrophic.
I was building a new life around Mercy Hospital. Not just a new life, but mine. One I'd chosen for myself.
The apartment.
The paycheck.
The identity.
If Dr. Vitale fired me, I couldn't simply walk across town and apply somewhere else.
There were complications.
Too many questions led to too many records.
Too many records led to people looking.
And people looking was the one thing I couldn't afford.
For twenty years, I'd reigned queen supreme as a mafia daughter, never having to hold my tongue unless I was dealing with my parents. Here, I was a nobody, new to the food chain and accountable for my own actions.
I blew out a frustrated breath, unaware I'd vocalized my irritation with the rush of air.
“Do you have something to say, Miss Cala?”
The floor pinged and when the doors opened, I scurried out. “No, Sir,” I told him, trying not to accent the Sir sarcastically, but my ability to control myself was near breaking.
He didn’t remark then, but when we passed his secretary, he barked, “No interruptions,” before slamming and locking the door that led down a long hallway and opened into a massive space with a huge bank of south-facing windows.
I was sure you could see my apartment from here, but gazing out the window wasn’t on the agenda.
I was here to be taken down a notch and punished for my multiple infractions.
I shuddered at the thought. Punishment at his hands could take on a whole new meaning if this was personal.