Page 18 of Scorned Beauty (Scorned Fate #5)

Chapter

Twelve

Sloane

Spring

Today was not a day when I was thrilled about landing my preceptorship in the emergency department at New Jersey Medical.

In lieu of a Capstone project, I’d been offered a stint in the ER.

Making friends during my last semester of clinical rotation was at the bottom of my list because my life was an oxymoron, if not hypocritical.

I went to school to save lives, but I worked for the mob to erase evidence that they had taken one.

It was not enough that I had to downplay my looks, but I had to dumb down my skills, too. But the instructors had noticed my deftness in drawing blood, my aptitude in making patient assessments, and my calm when dealing with surly relatives and had suggested I would be a good fit for the ER.

I couldn’t tell them I had a lot of practice with the mafia.

Nurses weren’t allowed to do sutures. They were considered minor surgeries only doctors should do.

Nursing students weren’t allowed to run IV lines on patients without close supervision.

Procedures I had vast experiences with and were second nature to me.

That was one reason I didn’t make friends with nursing students.

I didn’t want them to be comfortable enough to ask me why I was so skilled with techniques which even a newly registered nurse would struggle with.

I made connections with the instructors and charge nurse who mattered to my goals.

I didn’t care if that didn’t make me well-liked among my student peers.

Because no one liked someone who was a know-it-all and made them look bad.

And even when I dampened my skills, I wasn’t one to wait around like my classmates who stood idle and complained of boredom because of nothing to do.

There was plenty to do. The nurses were just swamped.

So instead of wasting time, I hustled and asked the nurses who looked like they needed help.

I was proactive in reading the patients’ charts, so I’d already figured out what had to be done and all I needed was their approval.

And I carried my clinical handbook at all times and memorized what I could.

I drew blood, changed bedpans, fixed the beds, and familiarized myself with vitals.

Grunt work, but a vital step to become a nurse.

But being in the ER surrounded by the aftermath of violence, the conflict of my two worlds was colliding.

“GSW to the chest,” the EMT yelled as a gurney was wheeled in.

“Suspected hemothorax.” Unlike most of the GSWs coming through here, the man was dressed in an expensive suit and I spotted the equally pricy watch on his wrist. Dom had a similar one, and I was guessing it was the same brand that cost three times as much as a nurse’s annual salary.

ER personnel swarmed. Nurse Addy was one of them, and she was my preceptorship mentor. Her shift was my shift. Instead of my six to eight hours, I’d been going eight to twelve.

I was still confined to patient intake and drawing blood. But just to be exposed to the rush of the ER and the variety of cases that came in made the grueling hours worth it.

But tonight was different because I spotted Anton walking in. When our eyes clashed across the room, he spun around and exited.

“Did you hear me, Sloane?” Nurse Addy asked.

I dazedly looked at my mentor. All the blood had drained to my toes. “Uhm…I’m sorry.”

She frowned at me. “Here, finish taking the patient’s information.”

We burst into an ER exam room where X-rays were quickly taken.

But there was extensive damage. The patient coded, and after a few minutes of trying to revive him, the nurse called the time of death at ten twenty-four p.m.

This wasn’t the first death I’d seen during my shifts, but somehow this one hit me the hardest because there was a part of me that felt responsible. That I was part of the problem.

Later I would find out that the patient was a lawyer. He’d been shot outside his office building and the police who’d come in considered it a mugging. So many questions. The people responsible had taken his wallet but left his expensive watch?

I was a zombie for the last few hours of my shift. Finally, in the locker room, Addy and I were preparing to go home.

“You did good today, Sloane,” Addy said.

“Thanks.”

“I noticed this last GSW hit you hard,” she said. “We see all kinds of injuries in the ER and some deaths hit us harder than others. But there was nothing we could have done for him. His heart had too much damage.”

“I know,” I whispered, closing my locker.

“Take a break this weekend and recharge, all right?”

“Thank you, Addy.”

I had taken the bus to the hospital. Now I wished I had driven the van tonight, but it’d become temperamental lately and I didn’t have time to take it to the shop.

I debated whether I should call for a ride, but I didn’t want to waste money.

Besides, I could never hide from the bratva if they wanted to find me.

A shadow detached from the dark corner of the building. I hated it when I was proven right.

Anton stood in front of me.

“Is that your work in there?” I asked.

“Is he dead?” he asked.

All my disgust and guilt about the situation shot through my head.

Fury erupted, and I slammed my hands on Anton’s chest.

“Fuck you,” I snarled. “Who do you think you are?”

I must have shocked him with my defiance.

“My brother may have sold his soul to the bratva, but don’t think for a minute you can ask me for more. This hospital,” I hissed, “is my life. My sacred space. You do not ask me to sacrifice whatever decency I have left.”

Fingers grabbed my neck, and my head bounced off the wall. I started choking. Oxygen became a scarce commodity as my body fought for survival. Should I have kept my mouth shut? Should I have given Anton what he wanted? It wasn’t just a fight to live, but it was a fight for my dignity. My soul.

I couldn’t scream. My eyeballs bulged, so I couldn’t glare. But my mind screamed.

Fuck you!

“ Suka ,” he growled. “We own your brother. We own you. Just because we haven’t bothered you in months doesn’t mean you’re free.”

Black dots danced along the edges of my vision.

A rush of oxygen sent relief crashing through my limbs. He’d let me go. I hated that I sank to the ground, and I was close to tears.

He kicked my thigh. “Grigori likes you, but you’re nothing special. If you cease to be useful, then you can start digging your own grave because that’s how it’s going to end.”

He walked away. I didn’t know how long I sat there, seized by an involuntary shuddering. I wanted to hide in some small town or another big city and be done with this bullshit.

Another nurse coming off shift found me and I made an excuse that I had a blood sugar crash. I didn’t know how I got home.

I spent a long time in the shower as if the hot water would scald away my guilt. Finally, I crawled into bed. Ginger hadn’t fussed when I came home. Dom still bought the expensive tuna for her, but I knew I was going to be late today, so I left her enough kibble.

My cat jumped on the bed. I was on my side, and she burrowed into my arms.

Exhaustion drained me, but my sleep was fractured. I kept seeing Anton shoot the lawyer. I kept seeing the lawyer being wheeled in, leaving a trail of blood.

Of blood erupting from his chest cavity like a fountain.

Then the patient sat up on the exam table and pointed a finger at me.

Anton’s fingers tightened around my throat.

I started screaming.

“Sloane!”

But how could I scream when I was choking?

“Sloane, baby.”

My eyes opened to see Dom’s worried face.

“It’s you,” I rasped, and I winced at the pain needling my larynx.

The concern in Dom’s eyes slowly morphed into rage.

Wait, was he mad at me? But no, he was glaring at my throat.

“What the fuck?” His fingers traced my neck. “Who did this?”

Dom

Some fucker strangled Sloane. She had fingermarks around her neck. Someone was going to die.

“What piece of shit did this?”

She grabbed the covers and pulled them over her head. “I can’t right now.”

I dropped to my knees, trying to rein in my anger because if Sloane was a victim of violence, my fury was the last thing she needed to see. “Talk to me, baby, please?”

I gently drew back the blanket to expose her eyes. “What happened?”

“Why are you here, anyway?”

“You haven’t been responding to my texts tonight, and I got worried.”

“Didn’t you have a gala this evening?”

“Yes.” And my date was pissed because she thought she was going home with me. It was the third event in a row that I’d asked her to be my date. The evenings always ended up with me taking her home.

“How did it go?”

Frustration at my inability to protect her clawed at me. “You’re seriously asking me about an event when you’re lying here hurt?”

“I can’t talk about it.”

And there it was. Suspicions scrambled my brain.

It wasn’t a mugging. It couldn’t be the Italians, so it could only be the Russians.

But why? I made sure Billy got sent away to Florida, involving him in a high-stakes gambling operation I’d partnered with Grigori.

That way I had more control and cover for Billy in case he fucked up and keep the heat off Sloane.

Meanwhile, Grigori had kept me dangling on the properties.

He was saying he’d been in talks with their pakhan to sell them back to me.

But the properties weren’t my priority right now.

Luca had issued a lockdown last night. He wasn’t forthcoming with information, but everyone I contacted in the Moretti crime family denied or blocked my calls.

We were on edge not knowing what was going on, and that was why I panicked when Sloane wasn’t responding to my texts.

And I found her strangled?

“Was it the Russians?”

Her lips trembled. “You can’t do anything about it.”

“The fuck I can’t.”