Page 36 of Broken Vows (Empire City Syndicate #2)

Melinda

The ER at Mount Sinai feels different when there’s armed security in the parking garage—and backup waiting two minutes away.

Elena pulled strings with admin. On paper, I was on unpaid leave. Off the record, they let me back quietly—and I didn’t ask questions.

A few months into motherhood, and I'm back to stitching up the city's damage while my own scars are still healing.

The irony isn't lost on me—saving lives while belonging to a family that ends them.

"Dr. Russo," Elena calls out, still adjusting to my married name. She approaches with a trauma bay assignment, her expression carefully neutral. "MVA victim, multiple GSWs. ETA three minutes."

The name change threw everyone off. Half the staff whispers about my sudden marriage to Vincent Russo, the other half pretends they don't know exactly what that means.

But there's a new respect in their voices, a wariness that wasn't there before.

They've figured out that the quiet trauma surgeon has teeth.

"Prep bay two," I tell her, pulling on fresh gloves. "And Elena? Make sure housekeeping clears the hallway. This could get messy."

She nods, already moving. Six months ago, she would've questioned my authority. Now she follows orders without hesitation. Power has its own gravity, and everyone feels the pull.

The ambulance screams through the rain outside, and I meet the paramedics at the door. "What've we got?"

"Twenty-three-year-old male, three gunshot wounds—chest, abdomen, left thigh. Vitals are holding but he's lost significant blood volume."

I glance at the victim's face as we transfer him to the gurney. Young, olive-skinned, expensive clothes despite the bullet holes. The kind of patient that makes smart doctors ask fewer questions.

"OR prep, now," I call out, but my hands are already moving, checking pulse points, assessing damage. Professional autopilot kicks in even as my mind catalogs the familiar pattern of wounds.

In the trauma bay, I cut away his blood-soaked shirt and freeze. Three entry wounds, precise placement—chest shot to disable, abdominal wound to cause pain without immediate fatality, thigh shot to prevent running. This isn't random street violence. This is an interrogation that went wrong.

Or interrogation that went exactly as planned.

The pattern matches what I've seen before.

"Doctor?" Elena's voice cuts through the flashback. "His pressure's dropping."

I blink, forcing myself back to the present. Patient first. "Get me two units of O-neg and prep for emergency surgery. This one's going upstairs."

My hands are steady as I work, establishing IV access, controlling bleeding, stabilizing vitals for transport. The kid doesn't respond to questions—either unconscious or smart enough to stay quiet. In this city, silence keeps you breathing.

"Beautiful work," Dr. Martinez observes, watching me thread a chest tube between ribs with surgical precision. "You always this calm under pressure?"

"Pressure's just perspective," I reply, securing the tube. "Some situations require steadier hands than others."

The surgery takes three hours. I remove two bullets, repair a nicked intestine, and close everything with stitches that'll heal clean if he's smart enough to rest. He'll live, probably walk again, maybe even think twice about whatever choices led him to my table.

Afterward, I find Elena in the break room, nursing coffee that smells like motor oil. She looks up when I enter, and I see the question in her eyes before she voices it.

"That pattern of wounds," she says carefully. "I've seen it before. Usually on guys who crossed the wrong people."

I pour my own coffee, buying time. "Trauma patterns repeat. Violence has its own logic."

"Melinda." Her voice drops. "We've worked together long enough. I know when you're dodging."

I sit across from her, studying the steam rising from my cup. Elena deserves honesty, or at least some version of it. She's covered for me, protected me, treated me like family when my actual family felt like a prison.

"You ever wonder how I know so much about treating unconventional injuries?" I ask. "Why I can field-dress a gunshot wound like I've done it a hundred times?"

She's quiet, waiting.

"Because I have done it a hundred times. Before medical school, before I tried to build a clean life." I meet her eyes. "The Hippocratic Oath says 'do no harm,' but what happens when the people you love are the ones causing the harm?"

"You tried to leave that world."

"I did leave. For years. But it followed me back." I touch my wedding ring, Vincent's mother's diamond that now marks me as permanently claimed. "Sometimes the choice isn't between right and wrong. Sometimes it's between protecting the innocent and surviving long enough to keep protecting them."

Elena processes this, her expression shifting from concern to something like understanding. "The patient upstairs—you know who did this to him."

"I know the methodology. The precision. It's professional work." I pause. "And professional work in this city usually traces back to families like mine."

"Your husband's family."

"My family now too." The admission tastes like copper pennies. "I can save the ones who make it to my table, Elena. But I can't save them all. Sometimes the best you can do is make sure the good guys have better armor than the bad guys."

She nods slowly. "The security upgrades, the armed drivers, the way you check corners when you walk—you're not just protecting yourself."

"I'm protecting my daughter. My husband. The future we're trying to build." I stand, empty coffee cup in hand. "And sometimes that means accepting that the tools you use to save lives came from the same place as the tools that end them."

Back home, the penthouse buzzes with controlled activity. Vincent's in his office coordinating security rotations while I sort through wedding planning materials spread across the dining table. Small ceremony, we agreed. Family only, minimal exposure, maximum protection.

I'm reviewing catering options when I spot papers that don't belong—intelligence reports mixed in with venue contracts. My name appears in several documents, along with security assessments and threat analyses. I shouldn't look, but my eyes catch on a familiar name: Marco Russo.

The file is thick, recent. Photos of safe house surveillance, medical reports from his recovery, and at the bottom, a single line in red ink: "Subject relocated. Current whereabouts unknown."

My blood turns to ice. Marco's escaped.

"Melinda." Vincent's voice from the doorway, carefully controlled but tight with tension. He's seen me with the files.

"How long?" I ask, not turning around.

"Forty-eight hours. Maybe more." He moves closer, each step deliberate. "I didn't want you to worry?—"

"Bullshit." I spin to face him, still holding the reports. "This affects me. It affects our child. You don't get to protect me from information anymore."

His jaw clenches, but he nods. "You're right. I should have told you immediately."

"Yes, you fucking should have." I toss the papers on the table. "What's the plan?"

"Enhanced security protocols. Tony's tripling the detail. We're moving the wedding up—public confirmation of our alliance makes direct action more complicated for Marco."

"And after the wedding?"

"We hunt him down and eliminate the threat permanently." Vincent's voice carries the cold certainty of a man who's solved problems with violence before. "But I need to know you're on board with accelerating the timeline."

I think about the patient upstairs, about Elena's questions, about the way my hands stayed steady while extracting bullets that might have been fired by my brother-in-law. About the choice between the clean life I wanted and the protected life my daughter needs.

"How soon?" I ask.

"This weekend. Private ceremony, minimal exposure."

"Do it."

Three days later, I stand in Woodlawn Cemetery as rain patters against my umbrella. Antonio Russo's grave is modest for a man who ruled half of New York—simple granite, elegant inscription, no mention of the empire he built with blood and bullets.

Vincent would lose his fucking mind if he knew I was here alone, but some conversations require privacy. I kneel on the wet grass, placing white lilies on the headstone.

"You tried to kill me," I tell the marble. "Your own grandchild. Because tradition mattered more than family."

The rain intensifies, drumming against my umbrella like distant gunfire.

"But your son—he's different. Stronger. Smart enough to see that power without purpose is just destruction." I trace Antonio's name with my finger. "Your organization protects my baby now. The same machine that would have destroyed us both keeps us safe. There's poetry in that, don't you think?"

Wind whips through the cemetery, bending trees and scattering leaves across the headstones. In the distance, I can see Vincent's security team maintaining discreet positions. They don't know I spotted them, but I appreciate their presence.

"I'm not the woman you thought I was," I continue. "I'm not weak. I'm not afraid. And I'm not going anywhere." I stand, brushing dirt from my knees. "Your legacy lives on, Antonio. But it's going to look different than you planned."

The walk back to the car feels like crossing a threshold. Tomorrow I'll marry Vincent officially, making our alliance formal and permanent. Tonight, I'll rock my daughter to sleep in a house protected by the very forces that once hunted me.

I am Dr. Melinda Russo, trauma surgeon, mother, and guardian of a bloodline that will bridge two worlds.

The woman who stitches wounds by day and plans strategic marriages by night.

The daughter who honors her oath to do no harm while accepting that sometimes harm is the only thing that keeps innocence alive.