Page 2 of Bound to the Crime Lord

I had seen that gaze many times before when I attended to a causality. It was when they could feel death dragging them toward its home as they desperately tried to cling onto life.

I placed my hand over his and gave him one nod. “You're not going to die today, okay? Not if I have any say on it.”

In med school, one of the first things they taught us was never to promise a patient anything. Doctors were not gods; we were merely skilled healers who tried to defy the odds of nature. We cheated death every time we held a scalpel or administered a medicine. But with every procedure, operation or medication, came a risk. There was no give without take. There was nothing that was without risk of complication. And yet, I stood over this boy who was petrified and promised that I would keep him alive.

I had to keep my promise.

He released my hand and turned his gaze to the ceiling. I looked at the two men he had come in with and gave them a hard stare.

“We gave him a localized anesthesia, but it’s still going to hurt like hell. I’m going to need you two to hold him down.”

The two men moved into action. They pinned his arms down, making sure that he wouldn’t move. One look at the three of them and I could tell that they were all close. It was the despair in the two men’s eyes that confirmed it for me.

I steeled my back, readying myself. “What’s his name?”

One of the two men replied, “Aiden.”

“Okay Aiden,” I felt around the wound. “This is going to hurt a little, but the less you move, the better. It will be over before you know it.”

He nodded, setting his jaw into place.

The bullet was currently holding back the bleeding, but I was almost certain that it had not hit a major artery. The clinic was not equipped for procedures like this, but I had seen enough of these wounds to know my way around them.

“One… two…three…” I sliced through his skin.

“Ahhh!” He let out a blood-curdling scream that could be heard far across the city. He writhed against the two men who held him down.

This was going to be a long procedure.

I walked out of the procedure room, the screams of the man still echoing in my mind. I removed my mask and leaned my back against the wall. I tilted my chin up to the sky and let out a shaky breath.

“Breathe, Juliette… Just breathe.” I closed my eyes and counted to twenty in my head.

Ah, yes, the selfless life of an emergency doctor.

A cold shiver ran down my spine as my mind recapped what had just happened.

Living in Chicago, I was used to seeing gunshot wounds, stab wounds, and burns. I saw more gore in one morning than an ordinary person saw in a lifetime. And yet, some cases still stuck with you.

It was the panic in his eyes that had gotten to me. The fear of him possibly losing his life. And his fear was justified. The boy could not have been more than 20 years old. He even had little acne spots on his face. And yet he had made it onto my table with bullet wounds.

He was lucky to be alive.

“I take it the boy is well,” a thick voice broke through my loud thoughts.

My eyes snapped open and found the tall, leering figure in the corner of the waiting room. He stood in black slacks with atucked-in white button-down, the sleeves rolled up all the way to his elbows showcasing a large tattoo that traveled under the shirt.

“What are you doing here? This is a prohibited area,” I retorted. “Please, go into the waiting room.”

Even under the harsh fluorescent lights, his whiskey eyes glistened brilliantly. I had never seen eyes quite like his before. They were smooth like fine liquor, yet held so much power their gaze was unnerving.

He pointed to the door I had just walked out of. “That boy in there is mine.”

“Your son?” There was no way that the two of them could be related. They looked nothing alike, and this man couldn’t be more than 32.

He rubbed his stubbly jaw. “One of my men.”

My body tensed. “Los Fuertes.”

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