Chapter 4
Maya
The work never ended. The steady stream of poor people, immigrants, criminals or those with incriminating injuries never stopped. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
The enforcer.
I didn’t have time for fantasies, for dreams. I had the dying to attend to.
The suture needle slipped between my fingers for the third time in ten minutes. I caught it before it could contaminate itself on Roberto's blood-soaked flannel, but my hands—my steadiest feature, the only part of me I trusted completely—were betraying me.
"Hold still," I told Roberto, though he hadn't moved. The command was more for myself, trying to anchor my wandering mind back to the present. Back to the gash running from his elbow to mid-forearm, courtesy of a circular saw that had kicked back during an under-the-table renovation job.
He was a construction worker, immigration status uncertain, insurance status in no doubt. The injury was bad, but could have been a lot worse.
Roberto gripped the table edge with his good hand, knuckles white.
No anesthetic except the whiskey his brother had poured down his throat in the van outside.
He'd wanted lidocaine, but I was out—Frank's last supply run hadn't included any, and I couldn't risk another trip to the hospital loading docks.
Not with Dr. Brand suddenly back on the picture.
For some reason, the enforcer’s face popped back into my mind—as though he could protect me from Dr. Brand. As though he could guard me from my past.
I forced the needle through Roberto's skin, keeping my stitches exactly four millimeters apart.
Muscle memory took over while my mind betrayed me again, conjuring the stranger's voice when he'd thanked me in Russian.
"Spasibo." Soft. Reverent. Like I was something precious instead of something useful.
Like I'd given him a gift instead of performed a basic trauma repair that any third-year resident could have managed.
"Jesus, Doc," Roberto hissed through clenched teeth. "That hurts like hell."
"Almost done." I tied off another suture, moved to the next section.
Twenty-three stitches total—I'd already placed seventeen.
Six more and I could send Roberto on his way, could stop pretending that my distraction was about exhaustion and not about dark eyes that had tracked my every movement with an intensity that made my hands want to shake.
I hadn't slept in three days. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him.
Six-five, two hundred forty pounds of muscle and scars and barely contained violence.
The kind of man who'd shown up at my door with a bullet in his shoulder and a knife wound in his abdomen, still gripping a gun like it was soldered to his palm.
The monster I'd been running from for six months wore a suit and a medical degree.
This one had worn blood and Bratva tattoos and looked at me like I'd hung the moon.
"You okay, Doc?" Roberto's brother asked from the corner where he'd been chain-smoking despite my no-smoking rule. "You seem . . . off."
Off. That was one word for it. Another would be compromised. Or stupid. Or dangerously distracted by someone whose world was exactly the kind that had destroyed mine.
"I'm fine." I placed the next suture with unnecessary force, making Roberto wince. "Just tired."
Tired of running. Tired of hiding. Tired of the way my brain kept replaying how the enforcer's massive frame had trusted my small hands completely, how he'd obeyed when I'd commanded him to drop his gun. Men like him didn't obey anyone, but he'd listened to me like my words were law.
No, Maya. Stop this.
I tied off the last suture with mechanical precision, then reached for the bandages. Roberto would heal fine—clean wound, no nerve damage, no major vessel involvement. He'd have a scar, but men in his line of work collected scars like trophies anyway.
"Keep it dry for forty-eight hours," I told him, wrapping gauze around his forearm. "Change the bandage daily. If you see red streaks or smell anything sweet, go to an emergency room immediately." It was like a mantra.
Roberto's brother counted out bills—six hundred, mostly twenties, wrinkled and soft from too many hands. I took the money without counting it. They'd been here before. They knew the price.
After they left, I stood in my empty clinic, staring at the table I'd already bleached twice since the enforcer's visit.
No trace of his blood remained, but I could still see him there—the way his body had trusted mine even as it shut down, the way he'd fought to stay conscious just to watch me work.
He was supposed to come back today. Three days, I'd told him. Come back in three days so I could check for infection, make sure the wounds were healing properly.
I should have told him never to come back. Should have made it clear that this was a one-time exception, that I didn't treat Bratva soldiers.
But I hadn't. Because some treacherous part of me wanted to see him again. And not just to check him for infection.
Stupid. Dangerous. Fatal.
Men like him were predators. They identified weakness and exploited it.
They took what they wanted and left wreckage behind.
I'd learned that lesson from Dr. Richard Brand, who'd smiled at me with paternal concern while destroying my life.
The enforcer might look at me with something like wonder now, but wonder turned to possession, and possession turned to control, and control turned to a basement in Brighton Beach where no one could hear you scream.
I yanked off my bloody gloves with more force than necessary.
When he came back—if he came back—I'd be professional.
Clinical. Distant. I'd check his wounds quickly, confirm they were healing, then tell him to find another doctor for any future medical needs.
Make it clear that this wasn't anything except a business transaction that had concluded.
No attachment. No vulnerability. No one who could turn my softness into a weapon.
I'd survived six months by following those rules. I wouldn't break them now for a stranger with dark eyes and a voice that said my professional title like it was a prayer.
When he knocked on my door in a few hours, I'd be ready. Sutures checked, antibiotics prescribed, connection severed.
Simple. Clean. Safe.
I ignored the way my hands started shaking the moment I thought about never seeing him again.
The knocking came at 11 AM. This had to be him.
I stayed frozen by the utility sink where I'd been washing the same coffee mug for the third time, listening. The knocking came again, frantic. Then, a voice.
Not his.
A woman’s. "Please, doctor, something's wrong, please help, I know you're there—"
I crept to the door, peered through the peephole. Two women—one older, maybe fifty, supporting a younger one who could barely stand. No men. No obvious weapons. The younger one was clutching her side, face twisted in pain.
I opened the door a crack, keeping my body behind it. "I'm closed."
"Please," the older woman said, in accented English. "I am Oksana. I clean houses here, Brighton Beach, twenty years. This is my niece, Kateryna. She had surgery last week, but something is wrong. Very wrong."
Kateryna swayed, and I saw the telltale glassiness in her eyes that meant fever. Post-surgical infection, probably. If I turned them away and she went septic, she'd be dead within days.
I opened the door wider, let them slip inside, locked all three locks behind them. "Get her on the table."
Oksana helped her niece onto the surgical table, murmuring reassurances in a foreign tongue. Kateryna was young—maybe twenty-five—with fresh-faced prettiness.
"When was the surgery?" I asked, pulling on gloves.
"Tuesday. Last Tuesday." Oksana wrung her hands. "At Brighton Medical Center. Free clinic for new immigrants. They said gallbladder removal, routine, she'd be fine in few days."
Brighton Medical Center. My hands stilled for a moment before I forced them to continue their examination. The same hospital where the enforcer had been shot three nights ago. The same hospital he'd clearly been investigating when someone put a bullet in him.
"I need to see the incision sites," I told Kateryna in Ukrainian, keeping my voice gentle. "Can you lift your shirt?"
She nodded, wincing as she pulled up the hem of her t-shirt. I expected to see the typical laparoscopic incisions for gallbladder surgery—four small cuts, each less than an inch, placed strategically for camera and instrument access. They were there, neat and healing normally.
But there was also something else.
A larger incision along her right flank, maybe four inches, partially healed but angry red at the edges. The placement was wrong for gallbladder access. Wrong for any abdominal surgery except—
My blood turned to ice water in my veins.
"Kateryna," I said, keeping my voice carefully neutral, "did they tell you they were removing anything besides your gallbladder?"
She shook her head, confused. "Just gallbladder. Why? Is something wrong?"
I palpated her abdomen, feeling for the familiar landmarks. Liver edge where it should be. Spleen normal. But when I pressed deeper on the right side, searching for the inferior pole of the kidney, there was nothing. Just empty space where an organ should be.
I moved my hands to her back, palpating from behind. The left kidney was there, normal size and position. The right side—nothing. A void where there should have been the distinctive firmness of renal tissue.
They'd taken her kidney.
The room seemed to tilt for a moment. I gripped the edge of the table, forced myself to breathe normally.
Kateryna was watching my face with growing alarm, and I couldn't afford to panic her.
Not when she was already fighting infection, already traumatized, already victim to something so evil I wanted to scream.