Page 3 of Fierce Protector

While we’re technically peers, both heads of our departments, this prick goes out of his way to make sure everyone knows his seniority and specialty make him superior. I can’t deny, he’s a skilled doctor, but he’s also a narcissist with a god complex. He scrubs up reasonably well when he has to impress the hospital board, concealing his heinous personality behind a veneer of charisma, but whenever I see his charm in action, I’m reminded that no matter how you try to present yourself, it doesn’t change what you are. Even a waxed cunt is still a cunt.

I bite the inside of my cheek before I rattle off the chain of events that led to me cracking the patient’s chest. After a back and forth on the best course, we work quickly to get the patient stabilised. I expect Doctor Jenkins to dismiss me as soon as the danger has passed, and I’m ready to start a fight over needing to stay to ensure the hours of work resecting this colon haven’t been compromised. Instead, he surprises me by asking me to harvest the graft he needs for the bypass.

I can’t tell whether it’s because he rates me as a surgeon, or he just wants a captive audience to bask inhis greatness. Either way, after waiting for the leg to be draped by the surgical nurses, I move into position to harvest his saphenous vein for graft. It doesn’t take long and then I’m relegated to the position of Doctor Jenkins’ surgical bitch, holding his clamps for the next three hours. There’s an art to his technique, though, at times, I wonder if his skill is born from talent or obsession.

By the time I make it to my locker, my head is pounding, and every throb sends pulses into my neck and shoulders, doing nothing but highlighting how tight they are. All I want to do is collapse, but instead, I lean forward and rest my head against the door, closing my eyes. Maybe I should just sleep in the on-call room tonight. I’m back on in ten hours anyway.

Then I remember that Danny’s on shift tonight, which means he’ll be pestering me every thirty minutes with things onlyIcould help him with. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good nurse, but I swear if he doesn’t get over this little crush soon, I’m going to end up in front of HR for punching him in his lost little puppy-dog face. We went on one date and it was a disaster. He needs to move on and stop holding out for more.

There’s a loud buzzing and an offensively harsh vibration through the door of my locker, which makes me flinch and rub my temples. Opening the door, I reach straight for my phone, which lights up instantly with notifications. Fifteen missed calls and seven texts from Stefano Tiero.Shit. Something must be wrong. I scramble to call him without reading a single text.

He answers on the first ring, and before I can ask what the emergency is, he jumps in first. “What the fuckare you playing at, Katerina?” I wince as he shouts down the phone.

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard him raise his voice to anyone. I straighten my back as much as my aching muscles will allow, as if trying to bolster my resolve and remind myself that while this may be one of the most powerful men I know, he has no business telling me off. “Why the fuck are you shouting at me?” I say through gritted teeth.

There’s a pause, followed by a staccato cough as he clears his throat.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice is strained, but now at least it’s quieter, and my heart breaks a little when I realise that he must have found out about Aurora.

“Oh, I don’t know,UncleStefano… maybe because the son of a rival don had just killed his father-in-law as part of a fucking coup, left his wife for dead, and I was sworn to secrecy until she was safe. Until Aurora knew who she could trust, I had to keep my mouth shut. I couldn’t even tell Dad, so why are you givingmeshit?” I rasp, my voice barely above a whisper as my eyes dart around the locker room, double checking I’m alone in here.

There’s another long pause and I’m baffled why, of all people, the Bianchi consigliere is contacting me about a situation as important as this one.

“That’s not what I— never mind. I met with Aurora, Enzo, and Nico today, and we need to talk,” he says, his voice more controlled but still sounding so very unlike him. “When do you finish your shift?”

“I’m heading home now,” I say, unable to hide the weariness and letting out a half yawn.

“I’ll meet you there.” He hangs up before I can object.

It’s been a long fucking day and the last thing I need is to face the man I’ve been avoiding being alone with for just over four years. I cringe when I remember how I embarrassed myself at Aurora’s wedding.I should never have had those kamikaze shots.

Looking down at my blood-covered scrubs, I remember I still need to change. I reach to pull out my clothes, and a folded piece of notepaper flutters to the floor. I can’t stop the roll of my eyes as I bend to pick up today’s offering and unfurl it.

This day is going from bad to worse.

Did you know that the gold flecks in your irises are luminous under the OR lights? You come alive when you have a scalpel in your hand; it’s scintillating to watch you work. You have a graceful elegance that few women possess.

I drag my hand over my face. I don’t have time for my secret admirer today. He’s persistent, I’ll give him that, but I’m so over it now. It’s not every day, and it’s not like they’re offensive, but they border on creepy and are just enough to give me pause every time I find one. I know it’s just a locker, but it feels like an invasion of privacy to find them among my things. It’s been going on for weeks now, and I’m rapidly running out of patience.

I shove the note back in my locker and head to the showers to wash the day off before I head home to face Stefano Tiero. As I step under the spray, I make a wishthat the water will wash away the flush of heat that chases a path across my skin when I think of seeing him tonight. I’ve had a long time to try and quash my feelings for him, and evidently, the only success I’ve had has been in fooling myself.

CHAPTER THREE

STEFANO

Every minute I wait, the harder it is to maintain my composure. I check my watch for the hundredth time and realise that I’ve been sitting on the steps of Katerina’s front porch for over an hour.What the fuck is taking her so long?

I know I’m being impatient, but I’m on edge after the clusterfuck of a meeting this afternoon. Of all the things the underboss and I suspected when we couldn’t get hold of Don Bianchi, him being murdered by Max De Luca was not even on our list. To say that I’m in shock is an understatement. I’m fucking numb.

I’ve been Mateo Bianchi’s consigliere, his right-hand man, for well over a decade. He’s closer to me than my own brothers. I dip my head and swallow, trying to suppress the emotions that threaten to choke me.Wascloser.

Listening and remaining calm while his daughter,Aurora, told me how he died was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The grief settled in my body at a cellular level. Then, when I found out what Max De Luca did to Aurora, I wanted to tear the skin from my body. Every member of the Bianchi family has failed her, and it feels like there’s nothing I’ll ever be able to do or say that will make it right.

What makes it worse is there’s nothing I can do until we can uncover more information about who else sold their soul to the devil and betrayed Mateo. Betrayed us all.

That thought weighs on me so heavily, I feel helpless. I was close to losing it, struggling not to be overrun by the rage coursing through me, but the minute Nico mentioned Katerina, I snapped out of it.

He’d taken me aside, and with his usual disregard for details, told me ‘Someone’s bothering the doc’. In his defence, that’s all I needed to know. The idea of there being any type of threat to Katerina has my stomach tied up in knots and my temper simmering somewhere close to rage.

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