7. Leander
Leander
What does he want this time?
I turn off the faucet at the scrub sink as my phone vibrates on the counter, dry my hands with a paper towel, and pick it up.
"I’m in the middle of rounds, Roberto," I tell him before he can speak.
"Save the excuses, Leander," Roberto’s voice comes through, low and gravelly, carrying the faint background hum of his study at the estate. "The annual charity gala is this Saturday at the Grand Continental. You will be there."
"I have on-call rotation," I lie, my voice even.
"If you attempt to feign a surgical emergency this time," Roberto starts, his tone shifting into a dangerous, measured cadence he uses when he’s setting a trap, "I will personally call the city health commissioner and have Metro General’s trauma wing subjected to an emergency safety audit.
It will shut down your floor for three days. You won't be operating on anyone."
This bastard. I know he’s not bluffing.
I hold the phone away from my ear for a beat, staring at the sterile tiles on the wall.
Roberto has enough council members and city inspectors in his pocket to make that happen with a single phone call.
Shutting down the trauma wing means redirection of critical emergency transfers across three districts. People would die in transport.
"Fine," I concede, bringing the phone back to my ear. "Two hours. I show my face, I shake a few hands, and I leave."
"And you will bring a guest," Roberto adds smoothly.
My brow narrows. "I don't bring dates to your events."
"You are thirty-two years old, a senior surgeon, and a Moretti," Roberto croons, the authority in his voice absolute. "Showing up alone makes you look isolated. Bringing one of the capos' daughters shows stability. Cosimo has two nieces who—"
"I’m not taking anyone from your network," I interrupt coldly.
"Then find someone else," Roberto counters. "If you walk through those doors alone, I will personally seat you next to Cosimo's youngest daughter for the four-course dinner. Have your guest ready by eight on Saturday."
The line goes dead before I can respond.
I toss the phone onto the counter, taking a slow breath through my nose.
If I pick a woman connected to Roberto’s world, it sends a clear signal to the family that I’m stepping toward the fold.
It opens the door for political matches, subtle pressuring, and constant surveillance.
I need someone entirely separate from the mafia hierarchy.
Someone who won't be intimidated by high society snobs or Roberto’s heavy-handed presence.
Kara.
The thought hits me before I can process the risks. She’s an attorney. She knows how to navigate roomfuls of wealthy, arrogant hypocrites without blinking. She doesn't flinch when people try to corner her, and she certainly doesn't care about pleasing my father.
And more than that, after the night at my condo and the agreement we made at the scrub sinks, she’s the only person currently running through my head.
I grab my chart folder from the desk, step out of the surgical locker room, and make my way down the quiet administrative hallway toward the legal wing.
I do hope she agrees to go with me though.
The frosted glass door to Kara's office is half-open.
She’s sitting behind her desk, wearing a tailored cream blazer with her hair pinned up in a sleek clip. Her eyes are fixed on a thick legal binder spread out in front of her, a black gel pen resting between her fingers.
I knock twice against the doorframe.
Kara looks up. Her eyes lock onto mine, and for half a second, the air between us tightens. The memory of her skin under my hands, her breath against my neck, and the way her body felt pressed against my dining table flashes through my mind like a live wire.
She clears her throat softly, setting her pen down. "Dr. Sartori. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"I need a favor." I mumble, stepping into the room and letting the door swing shut behind me. I stop on the opposite side of her desk, keeping my hands in the pockets of my dark navy scrubs.
Kara tilts her head, her dark eyebrows rising slightly. "A favor? From the legal department? I thought you handled all your problems with physical force."
"Only when necessary," I reply dryly. "My father is hosting a charity benefit this Saturday at the Grand Continental. He’s requiring me to attend."
"Sounds miserable," she drawls, leaning back in her leather chair and crossing her arms. "What does that have to do with me?"
"I need a plus-one," I tell her. "And I don't want to bring anyone who expects a romantic relationship out of it."
Kara stares at me for three long seconds. Then a small smile of dry amusement touches the corner of her lips.
"Let me get this straight," she starts. "You want me to put on an evening gown, sit through a tedious dinner with your family, and act as your buffer so you don't have to talk to people?"
"Precisely," I nod. "It’s a simple corporate fundraiser. Overpriced food, long speeches, rich donors pretending they care about hospital equipment. You sit next to me, we eat dinner, we stay for ninety minutes, and I drive you home."
Kara rests her chin on her hand, her eyes scanning my face with analytical precision. "Why me, Leander? You work with forty nurses and three female attending physicians who would probably jump at the chance to attend a high-society ball with you."
"Because you don't like me," I reply. "Which means you won't misinterpret the invite. And because you don't get flustered when arrogant men try to talk down to you."
And because I can't stop thinking about the way you looked at me four nights ago.
I don't say that part out loud.
Kara stays silent for a moment, her thumb absently tracing the edge of her desk pad. She’s weighing the inconvenience against whatever benefit she thinks she can pull from this.
"Is there free scotch?" she asks quietly.
"Single malt," I reply. "As much as you want."
"And you'll sign off on the risk-assessment audits for Trauma Bay 2 without complaining about the paperwork next week?"
"I'll sign whatever forms you put in front of me."
Kara lets out a short, quiet breath that sounds almost like a laugh. She stands up from her desk, smoothing down the front of her blazer.
"Eight o'clock on Saturday," she mutters, looking up into my eyes. "If the food is cold, I'm leaving early."
"Deal," I quip.
I turn toward the door, my hand catching the brass handle before I pause and look back over my shoulder at her. "Wear something comfortable. My family can be... loud."
"I grew up in this city, Dr. Sartori," Kara replies, her tone cool and steady. "I know how to handle loud families."
I nod once and step out into the corridor, closing the door behind me.
By three in the afternoon, the ER is a zoo.
A three-car pileup on the expressway brought in four trauma patients at once, leaving the floor nurses scrambling for beds and the junior residents looking like they were about to pass out from exhaustion.
I spent two straight hours in Bay 1 suturing a torn liver before handing the patient off to the ICU team.
I step out into the main ER hallway, pulling my surgical mask down around my neck, my shoulders stiff from leaning over the table.
Before I can make it to the nurses' station to grab a bottle of water, a loud, violent crash echoes from the ambulance bay doors at the end of the hall.
"Get the hell out of my way!" a harsh, raspy voice shouts.
I turn my head. Five guys in leather jackets, sagging jeans, and boots come bursting through the automatic double doors. They look like low-level street thugs from the river docks, rough, smelling of stale liquor and cheap tobacco, their knuckles bruised and bloodied.
Two of them are holding up a third guy who’s clutching a deep, bleeding knife wound across his lower abdomen, his face pale and slick with sweat.
"I need a doctor right now!" the leader yells, shoving a young triage nurse backward into a row of plastic waiting chairs. The nurse gasps, dropping her clipboard with a clatter.
Julian steps out from Trauma Bay 3, holding his hands up in a calming gesture. "Hey, take it easy! Bring him into Bay 4, we'll get him on a gurney—"
"Shut the fuck up!" the leader snaps, pulling a heavy steel wrench from his jacket pocket and brandishing it violently in Julian's face. "No waiting! No forms! You fix my cousin right here on the floor or I start smashing equipment!"
The other three thugs step up behind him, blocking the hallway, shouting threats at the terrified patients sitting along the wall. The floor clerk reaches nervously for the security panic button under the counter.
Oh, come on!
Security at Metro General takes four minutes to respond from the basement level, and these idiots are two seconds away from hurting one of my nurses.
I step around the triage desk, my footsteps deliberate against the linoleum tile.
"Drop the wrench," I command. My voice carries an icy clarity that cuts straight through the shouting in the hallway.
The leader turns around, his bloodshot eyes fixing on me. He’s about six-foot-one, heavy built, with a jagged tattoo across his neck. He looks me up and down, my navy scrubs, my bare arms, the calm expression on my face and scoffs.
"Who the fuck are you?" he sneers, stepping toward me and raising the steel wrench. "Move aside, Doc, before I break your—"
He doesn't get to finish the sentence.
I step straight into his space, my left hand shooting out like a piston, catching his wrist right behind the joint. Before he can react, I drive my thumb hard into the nerve bundle between his forearm bones.
His fingers spasm instantly. The wrench clatters loudly onto the floor.
I don't stop. I twist his wrist downward, leveraging his momentum, and slam his upper body face-first onto the stainless-steel triage counter. A sickening CRACK echoes through the hallway as his nose hits the metal surface.
He lets out a muffled, gurgling scream, his legs kicking wildly against the floor.
"Hey!" one of his buddies shouts, reaching into his coat for something.
I don't give him the chance. Keeping my left hand pinned firmly against the leader's neck, holding him flat against the counter, I reach over with my right hand, grab the glass hand sanitizer dispenser from the desk, and hurl it straight into the second guy's chest.
The dispenser hits him like a brick, knocking the wind out of him and sending him stumbling backward into his friends.
"Listen to me very carefully," I mutter softly, leaning down right next to the leader's bleeding ear. My voice is so cold, so devoid of human warmth, that the man stops kicking entirely. "This is a hospital. You do not raise your voice, you do not touch my staff, and you do not make a scene."
"Okay! Okay, man, fuck!" the leader whimpers, tears mixing with the blood pouring from his broken nose onto the counter. "Just fix my cousin!"
"Higgins," I call out over my shoulder, my tone entirely level, as if I were asking for a fresh pair of gloves. "Get a gurney for the knife wound."
Nurse Higgins, who was standing frozen near the desk, blinks twice and moves instantly. "Yes, Dr. Sartori!"
I release the leader’s neck and grab him by the collar of his leather jacket, yanking him up from the counter. He stumbles back, clutching his face, his eyes wide with absolute terror.
I point a finger at the three other thugs standing near the doors. "You three. Sit down in those chairs. If any of you stands up before the police arrive, I will personally break your legs."
The three men look at their bleeding leader, look at me standing in front of them with dark, unblinking eyes, and immediately scramble into the plastic waiting chairs, placing their hands flat on their knees like obedient schoolchildren.
Julian walks up beside me, staring at the thugs, then looking at me with a raised eyebrow.
"You know," Julian mutters under his breath, "normal doctors usually just call security."
"Security is slow," I reply, stepping over to the wall dispenser to sanitize my hands. "Take the knife wound into Bay 4. He’s losing blood."
"Right," Julian quips, shaking his head with a faint grin. "Remind me never to cut in front of you in the cafeteria line."
Within five minutes, the patient with the abdominal wound is prepped on the exam table in Bay 4.
I step into the bay, snap a pair of sterile nitrile gloves over my hands, and pick up the scalpel tray. The wounded guy is trembling, looking up at me like I'm the Grim Reaper holding a needle.
"Is... is he gonna be okay?" the wounded man stammers, his voice shaking.
"If you shut your mouth and hold still, yes," I answer coldly, leaning over the wound to assess the damage. "If you move, the thread slips, and you bleed out. Understood?"
"Understood," he squeaks, keeping his eyes glued to the ceiling tile.
I work in silence for twenty minutes, placing neat, precise sutures along the fascia, closing the bleeding vessel with practiced efficiency.
By the time I finish tying off the final knot and cleaning the skin, two city police officers enter the bay to take down statements from the thugs in the lobby.
I strip off my gloves, toss them into the biohazard bin, and step out into the hallway.
Kara is standing near the central pillar twenty feet away.
She’s holding her leather tote bag, her coat over her arm, clearly on her way out for the day. She must have walked down to the ER right as the incident was resolving.
She’s looking directly at me.
Her eyes are wide, sharp, and intense. She saw what I did to the guy with the wrench, how fast I moved, how effortlessly I took control of the room, and how little effort it took to terrify four grown men into submission.
She doesn't look frightened. She looks calculated, like she’s fitting a missing piece into a complex puzzle in her mind.
I walk over to her, stopping three feet away.
"Heading home?" I ask, my voice calm, as if nothing happened five minutes ago.
Kara looks at my knuckles then she looks up into my eyes.
"You move very well for a trauma surgeon, Dr. Sartori," she croons, her voice carrying a quiet curiosity.
"I have good reflexes," I reply while shrugging.
"That wasn't reflexes," Kara counters, leaning in half an inch, her voice dropping so only I can hear her. "That was muscle memory."
I stay silent, holding her gaze. I don't confirm it, and I don't deny it.
A slow, subtle smile touches Kara's lips. She adjusts her tote bag over her shoulder and turns toward the glass exit doors.
"I'll see you Saturday night, Leander," she calls out over her shoulder.
I stand in the center of the ER hallway, watching her walk out into the cool evening air, her heels clicking rhythmically against the pavement.
Muscle memory, her words echo in my mind.
She’s sharp. Smarter than she lets on, and far too observant for my own good.
I turn back toward the surgical bay, letting out a low breath through my nose.
Saturday night is going to be a long evening.