My Surgeon Fiance Beat Me For Years — He Didn’t Know My Next Patient Ran The Underworld
Part 1
I preferred the graveyard shift at the private emergency wing because it meant fewer people were around to ask questions.
It meant fewer colleagues noticing the way I flinched violently every time a metal clipboard dropped to the floor.
It meant no one asked why I wore a thick, suffocating turtleneck scrub top in the sweltering heat of a brutal July.
The sterile, humming quiet of the hospital was the only true peace I had left in my miserable life.
My apartment was a pristine, terrifying prison waiting for me at the end of every exhausting shift.
My fiance, Craig, was the hospital’s golden boy chief of surgery and a man the entire city deeply respected.
He fixed failing hearts, shook hands with wealthy politicians, and smiled flawlessly for the local news cameras.
Behind closed heavy doors, he was a calculated monster who ensured I lived in a constant state of suffocating fear.
Tonight, the quiet sanctuary of the emergency room was shattered into a million jagged pieces.
The heavy double doors of the trauma bay nearly blew completely off their reinforced metal hinges.
Three men in blood-soaked designer suits burst through the entrance, moving with a chaotic, violent energy.
They were screaming at the top of their lungs while pushing a wheeled gurney frantically over the linoleum floor.
On the gurney lay the bleeding, shattered body of a man I recognized instantly from the metro section of the daily papers.
His name was Dan, the ruthless acting boss of the city’s most feared and incredibly powerful crime syndicate.
Right now, his expensive charcoal dress shirt was saturated with a terrifying amount of dark arterial blood.
A rival underworld faction had finally managed to put a high-caliber sniper bullet directly into his broad chest.
“Get a doctor right now or I swear to God I will burn this entire building to the ground!” a mountain of a man bellowed at the terrified front desk clerk.
Craig was supposed to be the attending senior surgeon on call tonight.
But my fiance had disappeared to his private office over an hour ago to sleep off his latest indulgence.
I was completely alone with the most dangerous, armed men in the entire city.
I snapped on my latex gloves, the sharp sound echoing loudly in the suddenly silent room.
I pushed my way past the heavily armed guards without a second thought for my own safety.
“If you want him to live, get out of my way,” I said, my voice remarkably steady despite the frantic hammering in my chest.
The massive guard with a jagged scar across his eye raised a heavy hand to strike me down.
“Let her work, Paul,” a low, gravelly voice commanded weakly from the bloody gurney.
Despite the gaping gunshot wound inches from his heart, Dan’s dark eyes were completely lucid and piercing.
He didn’t look like a man who was rapidly bleeding out on a sterile hospital cot.
He looked like an apex predator who was merely temporarily inconvenienced by a hunter’s trap.
I stepped up to the gurney and applied agonizing, direct pressure to the massive gunshot wound.
Dan didn’t scream or thrash wildly against my pressing hands.
He just inhaled sharply, his square jaw clenching so hard I could hear his teeth grinding together in the silence.
“The bullet missed your subclavian artery by a fraction, but we need to get you to an operating room immediately,” I murmured instinctively.
I leaned closely over his broad chest to adjust the heavy, soaking pressure dressing.
Dan didn’t even glance down at the devastating, bloody wound in his chest.
His intense, calculating gaze was locked entirely onto my pale face.
He studied the dark circles of pure exhaustion under my eyes and the slight, nervous tremor in my bloody hands.
He was a man who survived purely by reading people and noticing the microscopic details that everyone else entirely missed.
I reached across his body to grab a fresh metal clamp from the sterile stainless steel surgical tray.
The harsh fluorescent lighting caught the firm fabric of my scrub top as it slipped sideways for a fraction of a second.
Dan’s breath hitched loudly, and I knew instantly it wasn’t from the agonizing physical pain of the gunshot.
The pale skin of my exposed collarbone was marred by three distinct, deep dark purple bruises.
They extended up the fragile side of my neck in a violent, undeniable pattern.
Someone had grabbed me by the throat hard enough to burst capillaries and leave a haunting testament of pure rage.
Suddenly, a blood-slicked hand shot up from the gurney with terrifying, unexpected speed.
His grip was surprisingly strong as his heavy fingers wrapped tightly around my fragile wrist.
I froze completely, a small, terrified gasp escaping my slightly parted lips.
I looked down into the mafia boss’s dark eyes and saw a sudden, terrifying shift in his entire demeanor.
The calm, calculated mobster had vanished completely into the ether.
Something primordial, dark, and violently protective replaced the coldness in his unrelenting stare.
“Who put those bruises on you?” he demanded, his voice dropping an octave and slicing through the chaotic noise of the busy room.
My blood ran entirely cold in my rapidly pulsing veins.
I quickly yanked my wrist free and nervously pulled my thick collar back up to my chin to hide the evidence.
My cheeks flushed hotly with a toxic mixture of profound shame and absolute, paralyzing terror.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I just fell down the stairs,” I stammered weakly, refusing to meet his gaze.
He refused to break eye contact even as the frantic surgical team finally burst into the room to wheel him away.
“Fingers leave a signature, and whoever gave you this one is going to lose his hands.”
