The Mafia Don's Indebted Nurse

Chapter 1

Jack

The fluorescent lights of Boston General flicker twice before steadying.

I press my thumb into the bridge of my nose hard enough to see white sparks behind my eyelids.

Today has been sixteen hours of gunshot wounds that don’t want to behave under my hands, overdoses I’m too late one, and one teenager who wrapped his car around a pole on Commonwealth Ave.

Oh, and the elderly woman who I promised I’d help.

Then her heart decided on one last rebellion. It gave out while I held her hand.

I smell like antiseptic and failure.

My sneakers squeak against the linoleum as I push through the staff exit.

My badge is still clipped upside down to my scrub top because old habits die hard and muscle memory doesn't care how tired I am.

The cold March air hits my face hard enough to make my eyes water, and I let it burn the fatigue out of my lungs.

‘Breathe,’ I think in my mother’s soft, steady voice.

It’s too gentle which tells me it’s from before she worked three jobs and before the boyfriend who drank the grocery money.

She would encourage me to breathe rather than relax long before I learned that breathing was something a person had to be reminded to do when everything else was coming apart.

I check my phone out of habit and find no missed calls from Jamie. Good. He's probably studying, or pretending to study while he scrolls through engineering memes, or doing whatever nineteen-year-old college kids do when their older sisters aren't hovering.

The bus ride home takes twenty-three minutes.

I count the stops because counting keeps me awake and keeps my mind off the woman whose hand went slack in mine at 2:47 a.m. Mrs. Delgado was seventy-four.

She was widowed. Her daughter was stuck on I-93 and didn't make it in time to see the peaceful smile that told me she’d decided she wouldn’t fight anymore.

I click my pen three times, then four.

The bus drops me at my apartment building.

It’s all brick facade, iron railings, and features the stubborn geraniums Mrs. Patterson keeps in the window boxes even though nothing blooms this time of year.

My mind focuses on the shower I'm going to take, the leftover pad thai in the fridge, and the eight hours of sleep I've earned as I head to my door.

Then, I notice is that my kitchen light is on.

I didn't leave my kitchen light on.

My hand freezes on the doorknob, the keys biting into my palm.

I catch a low, male, unfamiliar voice speaking in an assured measured cadence.

He sits at the kitchen table in a charcoal suit that’s tailored to his shoulder.

His build suggests he actually uses his gym membership.

His dark hair is slicked back from a face that’s handsome like a knife. It’s sharp and built for damage.

Jamie stands by the stove with his back to the wall and his hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders hunched up around his ears. He looks twelve again. He looks like he did the night I found him hiding in the closet because Mom's boyfriend was throwing things.

His lip is split. The blood is still wet at the corner of his mouth.

"Jack." His voice cracks on my name.

The man at my kitchen table turns his head. He looks at me like I’m furniture he’s not sure where to place.

"Miss Rivera." The man gestures to the empty chair across from him like this is his table and his kitchen. "Please, sit."

I cross my arms instead. "Who are you, and why the hell is my brother bleeding?"

His lips curve into something that isn't quite a smile. "My name is Sandro Vitale. I work for people who extended your brother a substantial line of credit eight months ago. He was…uncooperative when we came to discuss repayment."

Eight months ago, Jamie had just started his second year of college. He'd called me excited about a professor who was talking about a summer research program. He'd sounded happy.

Jamie won't meet my eyes. The way he’s standing shows something that isn't just physical pain.

"How much?" I ask calmly.

Jamie flinches like I've hit him.

Sandro Vitale reaches into his jacket and produces a heavy, stock business card. There’s no name or logo on the front. He slides it across the table with one manicured finger, and I see the number written on the back in precise black ink.

Sixty thousand dollars. Beneath it is added interest, penalties, and the cost of whatever Jamie did to earn that split lip. Eighty-seven thousand, four hundred and twelve dollars.

My pen clicks in my hand. I don't remember pulling it out of my pocket.

"Jamie." My voice stays level and clinical. "Look at me."

His eyes are red-rimmed and desperate. For one second I hate him a little, which is worse than the fear or the fury, because I have never hated my brother for anything in my life. I refuse to start now.

"Tell me what happened. All of it. From the beginning," I instruct.

The story comes out in pieces, like shrapnel from a wound I'm trying to clean. The tuition shortfall when his aid got delayed. The rent when his roommate bailed mid-semester. The job that was supposed to cover the gap.

And then, quieter, a poker game he didn't want to tell me about.

Some guys from his statistics class knew a place, and he was good at it, Jack, he was really good, and he thought if he could just win enough to cover what he owed then I wouldn't have to know, I wouldn't have to worry, I'd already done so much.

"You borrowed sixty thousand dollars from the Italian mob to cover a gambling debt," I simplify.

His face crumples. "I didn't know who they were. Not at first. And then it was too late, the interest was already piling up, and I thought if I kept playing I could win it back, but the math never worked. The math never worked, and Jack, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

Sandro Vitale watches this unfold, mildly entertained and completely detached. "Your brother's circumstances are no longer my concern. What is my concern is the outstanding balance, which is now being resolved through alternative means."

"Define alternative means," I say.

He reaches into his jacket again and produces a second card. This has an address on Beacon Hill. It’s a logistics company I've never heard of.

"My employers have arranged for the debt to be consolidated,” Sandro continues. “The terms of repayment will be explained tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. I suggest you arrive on time."

He stands, buttons his jacket with unhurried movements, and walks toward the door without looking back.

"Mr. Vitale," I call.

He pauses.

"If anyone touches my brother again, I'll make sure they need a hospital stay,” I warn. “And I know exactly how to make those uncomfortable."

He doesn't quite turn around. "Tomorrow. Nine o'clock. Don't be late."

The door closes with a soft click that sounds like a cell locking.

Jamie and I stand in the kitchen without speaking. The clock on the microwave reads 11:47 p.m. Outside, a car alarm starts wailing, then cuts off like someone covered its mouth.

I sit down and pull the card toward me. I reread the number, then do it again. Maybe if I read it enough the digits will rearrange themselves into something I can survive.

"Jack." Jamie's voice is small. "I'll fix this. I'll drop out, get a job, pay it back somehow. You shouldn't have to be involved."

"Ice your lip. There's peas in the freezer. Twenty minutes, then bed."

He stares at me, opens his mouth, then closes it when he sees my face. The frozen peas crinkle. He holds them against his mouth and sinks into the chair beside me, his leg bouncing the way it always does when he's scared.

"I'm sorry," he says again, muffled.

I don't answer. I'm doing the math.

My salary and my savings aren't enough. My credit cards already carry balances from the month Jamie's car broke down and the month his laptop died and the month tuition went up and his aid didn't. There is no version of this math that works.

Sell the car. Not enough, and I need it. Second job. Not enough hours in the day. Bank loan. That’s a joke. The police would love to hear that the Italian mob loaned my brother sixty thousand dollars and now wants it back with interest. They wouldn’t absolve the debt.

By four in the morning I've written the address down in my own handwriting. Seeing it in my own penmanship makes it feel less like a death sentence.

I pack a bag with one change of clothes and toiletries.

I take off my mother’s charm necklace and hold in my palm a long moment before putting it back on.

The caduceus, twin snakes wound around a winged staff.

She gave it to me the day I graduated nursing school and told me it would remind me to take care of myself the way I take care of everyone else.

I have never once taken that advice.

The romance novel I'm halfway through goes in my bag too. It’s dog-eared at the chapter where the hero finally admits he's been in love since page forty-seven. Ridiculous, but I pack it anyway.

The sun isn't up when I check on Jamie. He's asleep with one arm flung over his face. The bruise on his jaw darkening toward purple. He looks like the kid I packed lunches for, drove to soccer practice, and promised I’d never leave.

I close his door and walk out into the dark.

The address takes me to a brownstone in Beacon Hill that looks like every other brownstone on the street except the windows don't quite give the light back. A brass plate by the door is tastefully understated.

8:57 a.m.

The front door is unlocked. The receptionist looks up and says nothing when I give my name, just gestures to a staircase at the back. I head to the second floor, then the third door on the left.

The office smells like whiskey and old paper. Leather chairs wait for me near a mahogany desk that costs more than my annual salary and wants me to know it.

The man behind it doesn't look up when I enter. A pen moves in efficient strokes across what looks like a shipping manifest. He has broad shoulders and dark hair shot with gray at the temples. His face would be handsome if it weren't so carefully emptied out into apathy.

He finishes whatever he's writing, sets the pen down, and then he lifts his head. His eyes are the color of whiskey held up to firelight when he looks at me.

"Miss Rivera," he says. His voice is low and steady. "You're early."

I stand in front of his desk with my bag on my shoulder and my mother's charm against my throat and every option I have crossed out behind my eyes.

"I'm here," I say. "Tell me the terms."