Six nurses had quit in five weeks, and one of them had left the mansion sobbing so hard she forgot her coat.

“Stay in the car!” the guard in the front seat barked, drawing his weapon as panic erupted in the alleyway.

“He’s hit!” Leo’s voice screamed over the radio unit on the dashboard. “We need medical! Ballroom floor! Carmine’s men had automatic weapons hidden in the service elevator!”

I didn't wait for permission.

I kicked the SUV door open, grabbed my trauma kit, and sprinted through the rain toward the rear entrance of the hotel, ignoring the screams of the guards behind me.

I took the service stairs three at a time, my boots slipping on the slick marble, following the acrid trail of gun smoke rising through the stairwell.

I burst through the grand ballroom doors.

The room was a disaster zone—shattered chandeliers, overturned banquet tables, and bodies scattered across the carpet.

In the center of the room, sitting on a velvet chair surrounded by his standing soldiers, was Liam.

Carmine lay dead on the floor ten feet away, his weapon dropped beside him.

Liam’s suit jacket was torn open. A bullet had struck him in the upper right shoulder, missing his heart by inches, blood gushing over his crisp white dress shirt.

“Clara!” Leo yelled, holding a cloth over Liam’s shoulder. “I told you to stay in the vehicle!”

“Shut up and let me work!” I screamed, dropping to my knees beside Liam’s chair.

Liam’s eyes were half-closed, his skin dangerously pale from rapid blood loss, but when he felt my hands on his neck, his eyes fluttered open.

“You... didn't stay in the car,” he rasped, a weak smirk touching his pale lips.

“You’re terrible at following medical advice,” I sobbed, pulling a arterial clamp from my kit and reaching into the bullet wound to stop the pumping hemorrhage.

Liam let out a sharp gasp, his hand instantly clamping around my waist, holding me close as I worked with surgical speed.

“Pressure dressing!” I shouted at Leo. “Hold this clamp!”

Working together under the crystal chandeliers of the Drake Hotel, we stabilized his bleeding, hooked up an emergency plasma bag from my trauma kit, and bound his shoulder tightly before the city sirens began to wail in the streets below.