Serafina
Itell myself last night was an anomaly.
Except it wasn't last night. It was forty minutes ago. The body is barely cold and I'm still in the same scrubs, still have the same dead man's secret sitting in my gym bag, and I'm standing in the Bellevue corridor trying to look like a doctor who has everything under control.
I check my bank app between patients.
Account access temporarily suspended. Please contact your financial institution.
Shit.
I stare at the screen for a full ten seconds.
Then I try my building's security app — the one that lets me see the lobby camera. The doorman on screen is nobody I've ever seen before. Young. Blank-faced. Standing very still in a way that has nothing to do with being bored and everything to do with being trained.
My stomach goes cold.
I close both apps and go back to work, because what else am I going to do? I have zero time for a meltdown while my carefully constructed civilian life unravels around me in the middle of the night.
Totally fine. Completely under control.
Fuck.
I've been lying to myself since I was eighteen. I'm very good at it.
The SUV is there twenty minutes later when I step outside for air.
It's barely 1 a.m.
Black. Tinted windows. Idling at the curb directly outside the staff exit I always use. The one that isn't on the main entrance map. The one that zero people outside this hospital should know about.
I go back inside without breaking stride.
I run the math. Bank account locked. Stranger in my lobby. Car outside my private exit. All within an hour of a dead man pressing a drive into my pocket.
Either someone is sending a very clear message, or I'm developing a paranoia problem.
Given what's sitting in my gym bag, I'm going with option one.
I'm halfway back to the surgical floor when I hear my name.
"Serafina."
Not Dr. Virelli. Not the way anyone at this hospital says it.
The way my father's world says it. Soft. Familiar. Like we're old friends who just bumped into each other at the grocery store, and isn't this lovely.
It's not lovely.
I turn around.
Marco Succi. Fifty-something, silver-haired, always smiling in a way that never reaches his eyes. My father's velvet hammer. The man he sends when he wants something done with a pleasant face on it.
"Marco." I keep my voice neutral. "You're a long way from Brooklyn."
"Your father wanted me to check on you." He falls into step beside me like I asked for it. "After what happened tonight. Terrible business. He's worried."
"Tell him I'm fine."
"He'd feel better hearing that from you directly." The smile widens. Still doesn't touch his eyes. "You know how he is. Old-fashioned. He likes his family close."
There it is.
I stop walking. "Is that what we're calling it?"
Marco tilts his head. Patient. Immovable. The human equivalent of a locked door. "He just wants you home, Serafina. Where it's safe."
"I have an apartment I'd like to return to tonight. I can walk to work from there."
"You have a family." His voice stays warm. His eyes don't. "In our world, that comes first. You know this."
Our world.
"Tell my father I appreciate his concern." I take a step back. "And that I'll call him when I'm ready."
I turn and walk before he can answer. Fast. Purposeful.
Behind me, Marco says nothing.
That's almost worse.
I don't go back to the surgical floor.
I take a left at the end of the corridor, then another, cutting through radiology and down a back hallway most attendings don't bother to learn. I know every exit in this hospital. I mapped them in my second week, the way my father taught me to map every room I enter.
Know your exits, Serafina. Always.
Thanks, Dad. Actually useful for once.
The staff stairwell door is heavy, gray, and gloriously unmarked.
I push through it and take the stairs down toward the parking level, gym bag over my shoulder, already running calculations.
Different exit. Different route home. Lose the SUV, deal with the bank tomorrow, figure out what the hell is on that drive before anyone else.
I round the landing between the first and second floors.
And stop.
He's just standing there.
Luca Moretti. Black suit, impeccable. Jacket on, hands in his pockets, standing in the middle of a concrete landing like he was placed there specifically to ruin my morning.
How long has he been there?
How did he even know about this stairwell?
My pulse does something stupid, and I want to kill it. He's even worse up close. Of course he is. Sharp jaw, cruel mouth, built like someone designed him specifically to make women make poor life decisions. The fluorescent stairwell light should make him look harsh and institutional.
It doesn't.
It's deeply, cosmically unfair.
"You followed me."
"I was here first." His voice is low. Unhurried. The kind of voice that's never had to raise itself to be heard.
"Semantics."
"Accuracy." His gaze moves over me. Quick. Thorough. The way you assess a situation, not the way you admire one. "You made Marco Succi in under ten seconds. Then you ran."
"I walked."
"You ran." The corner of his mouth shifts. Not quite a smile. "Smart."
I tighten my grip on my bag strap. "Whatever you want, the answer is no."
"You don't know what I want."
"You're a Moretti standing in my stairwell soon after one of your men died in my trauma bay." I hold his gaze because looking away first is not something I'm willing to do. Not with him. Not ever. "I have a pretty good idea."
His expression gives nothing.
He pushes off the wall and straightens to his full height, and okay, that's just biologically unreasonable. He's got at least six inches on me and he uses every single one of them. Not moving toward me. Just standing there — tall and broad, taking up space I didn't offer him.
The beast in the nice suit, my brain supplies unhelpfully.
Shut up, I tell my brain.
"There are men outside this hospital who are not mine," he says. Even. Factual. Like he's reading from a report. "They've been en route for the last twenty minutes. They know which exit you use. They know your building." A pause. "They know about the drive."
The floor tilts.
"You knew they were coming," I say slowly. "That's why you're here. You got here first."
Something close to satisfaction flickers across his face. "I got here ten minutes ago. You took longer than I expected to lose your father's man."
I keep my face blank. Years of practice.
His eyes say he knows anyway.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes, you do." He takes one step closer. Just one. Enough to make his point without touching me.
He smells like whiskey and dark amber cologne, expensive and warm, with skin and heat underneath that my body has no business responding to and is responding to anyway. Full mutiny. Zero consultation with my brain.
He smells like a decision I'm not supposed to make.
"And in about thirty seconds, the men your father sent are going to come through that door"—he nods at the landing above me—"and your options get significantly worse."
"And your option is better?"
"My option keeps you alive."
"How generous." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "And what do you get?"
The corner of his mouth tilts. "The drive."
Of course.
"I'm not going anywhere with you."
"Then we'll have this conversation with an audience." He doesn't move. Doesn't threaten. Just waits with the patience of a man who already knows how this ends.
I hate him.
I hate that he's right.
I hate that he smells like that, looks like that, and is currently the most viable option I have, which says truly terrible things about my morning.
"If you touch me—"
"I won't." Flat. Immediate. "Not unless you ask me to."
Heat crawls up my neck before I can stop it.
An actual blush. I haven't blushed since I was sixteen years old, and I am not doing this right now. Not in a stairwell. Not with a Moretti. Not while my father's men are thirty seconds from kicking down a door.
I look down at my bag strap and make a production of adjusting it. Buying myself two seconds to get my face back under control.
When I look up, he's already watching.
He noticed. Of course he did. And the worst part is what's in his eyes right now. Not smugness. Not victory. Interest. The focused, unhurried interest of a man who just filed that reaction away for later use.
Shit.
"You're coming with me."
It's not a question. It's just a fact he's decided on.
Behind me, above me, the stairwell door slams open.
Heavy footsteps. Multiple. Moving fast.
I look up.
Then back at Luca.
His expression doesn't change. He just watches me, dark eyes patient, waiting for me to catch up to what he already knows.
The footsteps get louder.
Damn it.