My Patient Was Hunted By Assassins — So I Swung An Oxygen Tank And Became A Mafia Queen

Part 2

I wasn’t going back to my quiet life, and that reality set in fully as gravel crunched beneath the massive bulletproof tires of the armored Maybach.

I pressed my face against the tinted window, taking in the sprawling forty-acre estate.

The Valenti compound was less of a home and more of a heavily fortified medieval castle disguised as a modern architectural marvel.

Armed men in tactical gear patrolled the manicured lawns alongside Dobermans.

Craig Valenti led the way, his long purposeful strides forcing me to hustle to keep up.

My heavy thighs chafed slightly beneath my scrubs.

“We have converted the East Wing solarium into a fully functioning intensive care unit,” Craig announced, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings.

I stepped into the makeshift hospital room and stopped dead in my tracks.

Floor-to-ceiling bulletproof glass overlooked the turbulent waters of Lake Michigan.

Maria rested against a pile of plush, custom-monogrammed pillows in a state-of-the-art hospital bed.

Standing beside the bed was a slender, sharp-featured butler named Luis holding a silver tray with a porcelain teacup.

I dropped my heavy medical bag onto a nearby crushed velvet armchair and shifted immediately into my professional persona.

“Unless that chamomile tea is cleared by me, she doesn’t drink it,” I ordered, walking over to check Maria’s IV drip rate.

Luis blinked, clearly unaccustomed to being commanded by anyone other than Craig.

Craig leaned against the mahogany door frame, his dark eyes fixed entirely on me.

He offered a single, curt nod.

“As the nurse instructs.”

I established a strict, unyielding routine over the next forty-eight hours.

I was a woman who commanded space, not just with physical size, but with absolute medical authority.

I physically blocked Craig’s terrifying right-hand man, Frank, from entering the room in his dusty leather jacket.

On my third night at the estate, I was sitting in the dimly lit solarium charting Maria’s vitals.

A floorboard creaked, and I looked up to see Craig entering the room.

He poured two fingers of amber liquid from a crystal decanter into a lowball glass.

“You look exhausted, Brenda,” Craig noted, his dark eyes tracing the heavy bags under my eyes.

“Your mother’s cardiac enzymes are normalizing,” I replied automatically, self-consciously tugging my oversized scrub top down over my stomach.

“You keep pulling at your clothes when I look at you,” Craig observed softly.

I felt a hot flush creep up my thick neck.

“I know I’m not exactly the type of woman you usually have wandering around your mansion.”

He closed the distance between us until I had to crane my neck to look up at him.

His large, calloused hand gently brushed a stray lock of brown hair behind my ear.

“Glamour does not wrestle professional assassins to the ground,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble.

Before I could process his words, the steady rhythmic beeping of Maria’s cardiac monitor abruptly spiked into a frantic, high-pitched alarm.

I shoved past him with explosive speed.

Maria was thrashing in the bed, gasping for air as her hands clawed at her chest.

“Code blue!”

I grabbed the defibrillator paddles and charged them.

I shocked her frail body twice before her steady, rhythmic heart rate miraculously returned.

Craig stood paralyzed in the corner, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles were white.

I frowned, my sharp medical mind cutting through the adrenaline.

I inspected the IV bags and the empty teacup still sitting on the nightstand.

I grabbed a portable tox screen kit from my bag and tested a single drop of the leftover tea.

The testing strip aggressively turned a vibrant, unmistakable shade of purple.

“Digitalis,” I whispered, my blood running cold.

Craig stared at the purple strip as the absolute betrayal registered on his chiseled face.

“Luis,” Craig said, the name tasting like ash.

Craig ordered Frank to drag the butler to the soundproof cellar, and a single muffled gunshot echoed from deep beneath the mansion floors.

Craig returned a few minutes later, completely devoid of the tender vulnerability he had shown me just moments before.

“His loyalty was bought by my uncle Vincent,” Craig stated without inflection.

Before I could process the sheer violence of his world, a shrill, deafening klaxon shattered the quiet of the mansion.

The Baccarat crystal chandelier above us vibrated with the sound as the main lights snapped off.

Frank burst into the room, a submachine gun already strapped to his broad chest.

“Boss, three heavily armored SUVs just crashed the north gates.”

With the estate plunged into darkness and the sound of automatic gunfire tearing through the front gates, how was I supposed to keep an elderly woman alive when a hit squad was actively hunting us?