I Saved the Man He Shot, So the Mob Boss Kept Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Back Room
Lena opens a taverna back room on a man with a gun standing over a man bleeding on the floor, seals the wound herself and orders the driver to drive.
I opened the back-room door and a man was standing over another man with a gun.
The man on the floor was breathing wrong.
Each breath pulled air through a hole under his left collarbone.
It made a wet sound I knew from work.
His white shirt was going dark around it.
The man with the gun was the biggest person I had ever seen indoors.
He held the pistol low in his right hand, and he was out of breath.
The door to the dining room, on the far side, was still swinging on its hinges.
Under the coat hooks a young man sat against the wall in a good white shirt.
Both his hands were over his face.
I had come through the kitchen of my sister's restaurant to bring her a clinical badge she had left at my apartment.
I had heard the shot from the kitchen, and so had the cook, and the cook had said, "Don't."
I am an ER nurse, and I have never once heard a bang and gone the other way.
"Put that down," I said, "and give me your hand."
The big man looked at me and did not lower the gun.
"Lady, go back to the kitchen."
I was already on my knees.
The floor was wet and warm through my scrubs.
"I need plastic wrap," I said. "Anything that doesn't breathe. And tape."
He did not move.
"Now," I said.
He turned his head toward the kitchen door and said something in Greek.
A hand came through the door holding a roll of kitchen wrap and a roll of packing tape.
I tore off a square.
I laid it over the hole and taped it down on three sides.
I left the fourth side open so the air could get out, and the sound under my hands changed.
The man on the floor dragged in a breath that went all the way down.
"There you go," I told him. "Stay with me."
His eyes were gray and wet and furious, and they found my face.
"Who the hell are you?" he said.
"Your nurse. Don't talk."
The big man put the pistol into his right jacket pocket without looking at it.
I took his wrist and set his hand on the dressing, and laid my own hand over it.
"Flat," I said. "Don't lean. Keep it sealed."
His palm covered the back of my hand and half my wrist.
It was the biggest hand I had ever touched, and it was warm, and it did not shake.
There was blood to his cuff and he did not flinch.
He did not flinch at the blood, or at the sound the man made when he coughed.
He looked down at both of us with no expression at all.
I noticed that, kneeling there, and I hated that I noticed it.
"His name is Hugh Cullen," the big man said.
"I have a surgeon eight minutes from here who will not call this in."
"He needs an ambulance," I said.
"He needs to not be in a hospital tonight."
"That isn't a medical reason."
"No," he said.
He did not say it was an order, and he did not have to.
His voice was low and even, and he was already sliding his other arm under Hugh Cullen's shoulders.
I understood that this man was going to move the patient with me or without me.
If I stood up, someone else would be holding that dressing in a moving car.
Nobody in this building would know to watch the chest.
I could hear my sister laughing out front, over the dinner noise, with no idea what had happened forty feet from her.
"If he drops on the way," I said, "I call 911 myself from the back seat."
"Fine."
"I give them everything I see. And I'm not asking."
"I heard you," the big man said. "Keep him alive."
He lifted Hugh Cullen in both arms, with the tape and my hands still on him.
He carried him through the kitchen past the cook and the dishwashers, who all looked at the wall.
A black SUV sat in the back lot with its engine running and its rear door open.
The young man from under the coat hooks came out behind us.
He stood in the light from the kitchen door and watched us load the seat.
His face was wet.
"Yianni, go home," the big man said without turning. "Go to Yiayia's. Don't speak to anyone."
The young man nodded and did not move.
I climbed in after the patient.
There was no room on the seat, so I knelt on the floor between the front and back.
I put both hands on Hugh Cullen's chest, and I felt the dressing hold.
The big man shut the rear door and got into the front passenger seat.
He turned to look at me over the headrest, and for the first time something moved in his face.
I could not tell what it was.
The driver was waiting for a word.
"Drive," I said.
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