From the inside.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. I spun around, pressing my back against the wood. In the dim, ambient moonlight filtering through the storm-lashed windows, a silhouette detached itself from the shadows near the bathroom door.
It wasn’t Enzo. It wasn’t Marco.
It was a woman.
She wore a dark trench coat dripping with rain, her wet hair clinging to the sides of a face so sharply contoured it could have been carved from marble. In her right hand, she held a silenced pistol, the barrel pointed lazily toward the floor.
She didn’t look like a sixteen-year-old girl hiding from the mob. She looked like an executioner.
“Sofia,” I breathed, the name slipping out before I could stop it.
The girl didn’t look at me. Her dark, hollow eyes—the exact replica of the man lying in the bed—were fixed entirely on the figure rising slowly from the sheets.
Nicholas Castellano sat upright.
The man who had supposedly been paralyzed, brain-damaged, and rotting away for three months swung his legs over the side of the hospital bed. Every movement was slow, deliberate, and painful, but there was no mistaking the raw, terrifying authority radiating from his frame.
He didn’t look like a king returning to his throne. He looked like something that had clawed its way straight out of hell.
“You’re late,” Nicholas said.
Sofia lowered the gun by a fraction of an inch, a cold, humorless smile touching the corner of her lips.
“Traffic was hell, Father. And someone had to clear the lobby.”
She finally turned her gaze toward me, scanning my trembling form from head to toe. Her eyes lingered on the photograph still clutched in my paralyzed fingers.
“You must be Clara,” Sofia said, her voice smooth, icy, and entirely devoid of warmth. “The nurse who reads bedtime stories to ghosts.”
“I—I should call security,” I stammered, though my legs felt like water.
Nicholas stood up completely. He swayed for a fraction of a second, gripping the metal IV pole to steady himself, before his posture straightened into something unyielding. He looked down at the floor, picking up the photograph Marco had left me, his eyes narrowing as he read the handwriting on the back.
“Security belongs to Marco,” Nicholas said softly, his voice dropping an octave as he turned his dark gaze toward the locked door. “For now.”
He took a step forward, the harsh hospital light catching the jagged scar near his temple. The fragile illusion of the helpless patient was gone, shattered forever on the cold floor of Room 412.
“Pick up the money, Clara,” Nicholas commanded without turning around.
I stared at him, my breath catching in my throat. “What?”
“Pick up the money,” he repeated, his voice brooking no argument. “You’re going to need it. Because starting tonight, you aren’t leaving this hospital as a nurse.”
Sofia walked past me, sliding a heavy keycard into her pocket with a sharp click, and drifted toward the window overlooking the Chicago skyline.
“Welcome to the family,” she whispered.
