The man with the gunshot wound shouldn't be talking.
Norah Sutherland knows this the way she knows the Lord's Prayer—automatic, bone-deep. Five years as a trauma chaplain at Baltimore's Sacred Heart Hospital have taught her that men with holes in their chests don't grab your wrist hard enough to leave bruises. They don't whisper names like they're confessing sins.
But Enzo Ricci does.
"Chamberlain," he chokes out, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. His fingers dig into her skin. "Vincent... Chamberlain's... daughter."
The monitors shriek. His blood pressure's dropping, heart rate spiking into dangerous territory. The nurses rushed out thirty seconds ago to grab Dr. Patterson. She's alone with a dying man who somehow knows her father's name.
"I don't understand." Norah leans closer despite every instinct screaming to pull away. "What about Vincent Chamberlain?"
"Debito." His voice cracks, switches to Italian. "Figlia... they know... Carusi is coming..."
The flatline alarm cuts through his words like a knife.
Norah jerks back. His hand goes limp in hers, eyes still open but suddenly empty. She's seen this transformation dozens of times—that moment when a person becomes just a body, when whatever made them human simply stops.
"Mr. Ricci?" She presses two fingers to his neck anyway, checking for a pulse she knows isn't there. "Enzo?"
The crash team explodes through the door. Three nurses and Dr. Patterson, already calling for the defibrillator. Norah stumbles backward, making room. She should leave. Protocol says chaplains step out during resuscitation attempts.
Her feet won't move.
Chamberlain. Carusi. They know.
"Time of death, 22:47." Dr. Patterson pulls off his gloves after six minutes of trying. He glances at Norah, expression softening. "Sorry you had to see that. Did he say anything before he went?"
She opens her mouth. Closes it.
What would she even say? Yes, Doctor, this dying mobster whispered my dead father's name and some Italian words I didn't understand, and now I feel like I'm falling even though I'm standing still.
"He asked me to pray for him." Not entirely a lie. "I did."
Dr. Patterson nods, already moving to the next crisis. Death is routine here. It's supposed to be routine for her too.
It's not.
Norah walks out of the ICU in a daze, her sensible shoes squeaking on linoleum. The hallway lights are dimmed for sleeping patients. Her shift ended twenty minutes ago. She should go home to her studio apartment, heat up leftover Chinese food, fall asleep watching Netflix.
Instead, she pushes through the heavy wooden doors into the hospital chapel.
The small room is empty. Just rows of simple pews and a plain altar with a brass cross. No stained glass, no incense. This is a utilitarian space for grief, not grandeur.
Norah collapses onto the front pew and drops her head into her hands.
Vincent Chamberlain's daughter.
Her father's been dead three years. Heart attack behind the wheel of his Mercedes, the medical examiner said. Quick. Painless. A mercy, considering the embezzlement charges he was facing, the federal investigation that had frozen every asset the Chamberlain family once had.
Norah hasn't spoken his name in months. She changed her last name back to her mother's maiden name—Sutherland—after the funeral. Trying to distance herself from the scandal. Trying to become someone clean.
"Why would a dying man know my father?" she whispers to the empty room. To God, maybe. To no one.
The chapel door opens behind her.
Norah doesn't turn. Probably another chaplain, or a family member seeking comfort. She should leave, give them privacy.
"Norah Sutherland."
It's not a question.
The voice is male, low and controlled, with an accent she can't quite place. Italian-American, maybe. Smoothed by generations but still there in the vowels.
She turns.
The man standing in the chapel doorway is tall—well over six feet—and dressed like he just stepped out of a boardroom. Charcoal suit, perfectly tailored. White shirt, no tie. Dark hair swept back from a face that's all angles and intensity. He's maybe thirty-five, and he's staring at her like she's a problem he's already solved.
"Do I know you?" Norah stands, instinctively putting the pew between them.
Something about this man feels wrong. Dangerous.
"No." He steps inside. The door swings shut behind him with a soft click. "But I know you. We need to leave. Now."
The calm authority in his voice makes it sound reasonable. Like of course she should leave the hospital chapel with a strange man in the middle of the night.
"Excuse me?" Norah's hand moves to the pager clipped to her scrubs. If she presses the button, security will come. "I don't—"
"Enzo Ricci died twenty minutes ago." He takes another step closer. "You were with him. He said your name."
Norah's blood goes cold. "How do you know that?"
"Because I was supposed to get here before he did."
He reaches into his jacket.
That's when she sees it.
The gun.
Just a flash of black metal in a leather holster under his left arm, but it's enough to turn her knees to water. Her hand fumbles for the pager.
He crosses the space between them in three long strides.
He doesn't grab her. Doesn't touch her at all. He just stands close enough that she can smell his cologne—something expensive and woody—and says, very quietly:
"My name is Dante Carusi. If you press that button, you'll be dead before security gets here. Not by me," he adds, seeing the terror in her eyes. "By the people Enzo told about you before he died."
"I don't understand." Norah's voice comes out thin and reedy. "What people? What did he tell them?"
"That you're Vincent Chamberlain's daughter." Dante's dark eyes hold hers. Something flickers there. Regret, maybe. Or pity. "That they've found you."
"Found me?" She's shaking now, full-body tremors she can't control. "Nobody's looking for me. My father's dead. Whatever he did—"
"Created a debt." Dante's hand moves toward her. She flinches back against the pew. He stops, raises both hands. "A debt that passed to you when he died. And I'm here to collect it."
The words land like physical blows.
"You're insane." Norah's fingers find the pager. "I'm calling security."
She reaches for the button.
This time Dante does grab her—not roughly, but with enough firmness to stop her hand mid-motion. His fingers are warm against her wrist.
She thinks about Enzo Ricci's grip. Cold and desperate.
They know. Carusi is coming.
"Listen to me carefully," Dante says, and his voice has gone even quieter. Almost gentle. "In about five minutes, two men are going to walk through that door. They're not here to talk. They're here to take you, and they won't be as polite as I'm being. You have a choice right now. Come with me willingly, or wait for them. But once they arrive, the choice is gone."
Norah stares at him, trying to find the lie in his face. Trying to convince herself this is a psychotic break, that she's actually unconscious on the ICU floor and this is all a nightmare.
But his hand on her wrist is too solid. Too real.
"Why would anyone want me?" The question comes out small. "I don't have money. I don't know anything about my father's business. I'm nobody."
"You're Vincent Chamberlain's daughter." Dante repeats it like it explains everything. "That makes you somebody whether you want to be or not."
Footsteps in the hallway. Heavy. Fast.
Dante's entire body goes tense. His hand tightens fractionally on her wrist. He looks at the door, then back at her.
"Time's up. What's it going to be, Norah?"
Her heart is trying to punch through her ribs. This can't be real. This can't be happening.
But Enzo Ricci's last words echo in her skull.
They know.
Dante releases her wrist and steps back, giving her space. The footsteps in the hallway are getting closer.
"Please." The word sounds entirely human. Vulnerable, even. "Let me get you out of here."
Norah looks at the door. Looks at this stranger with a gun under his jacket and secrets in his eyes.
The footsteps stop right outside the chapel.
"Okay," she whispers.
Dante's shoulders drop half an inch. Relief, she realizes with shock. He was actually worried she'd refuse.
He moves to the side door—the one that leads to the staff corridors—and gestures for her to follow. Norah's legs feel like wood, but they carry her forward.
Behind them, the main chapel door starts to open.
Dante's hand finds the small of her back—not pushing, just guiding—and they slip through the side door half a second before the other one swings wide.
The corridor beyond is empty. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead. Dante moves fast, pulling her along, and Norah has to run to keep up with his long strides.
Her pager is still clipped to her scrubs. She could press it. Should press it.
She doesn't.
They burst through a service exit into the parking garage. October night air hits her like a slap. Dante doesn't slow down, just keeps moving toward a black SUV with tinted windows parked in the shadows.
"Get in." He opens the passenger door.
Norah hesitates. One foot on the ground, one hand on the door frame.
This is the moment. Once she gets in that car, everything changes.
She can still run. Scream. Fight.
But Enzo Ricci's blood is still on her hands—literally, dark smears on her palms from checking his pulse—and his last words are still ringing in her ears.
She gets in.
Dante closes the door and moves around to the driver's side with military efficiency. The engine starts with a quiet purr. Then they're moving, exiting the parking garage at a speed just shy of reckless.
Norah watches Sacred Heart disappear in the side mirror. The hospital where she's worked for five years. Where she thought she was safe. Where she thought she was healing from her father's sins.
"Where are we going?" Her voice sounds steadier than she feels.
Dante's hands are relaxed on the steering wheel, eyes constantly checking mirrors. "Somewhere they can't follow."
"Who are 'they'?"
"People your father owed."
He glances at her. In the glow of passing streetlights, his face looks younger. Tired.
"People who don't forgive debts."
"What did he owe?"
Dante is quiet for a long moment.
Then: "Everything."
Norah turns to look out the window. Baltimore slides past in a blur of lights and familiar streets. She should be terrified.
She is terrified.
But underneath the terror, there's something else.
Anger.
"I didn't ask for this," she says.
"No," Dante agrees quietly. "You didn't."
She turns back to him, ready to demand more answers.
He's adjusting something at his waist. The movement causes his jacket to shift.
The gun is still there.
And in the dashboard lights, she can see it clearly now—the worn leather of the holster, the matte black of the grip.
She can also see something she didn't notice before.
Dante's hand, as he reaches for the gear shift, is shaking.
Just slightly. Just enough.
He's afraid too, she realizes. Whatever this is, whoever these people are, even the man with the gun and the confident commands is afraid of them.
That terrifies her more than anything else tonight.
"Who are you?" she asks again.
But what she really means is: What have I just agreed to?
Dante doesn't answer.
His eyes are on the rearview mirror. His expression has gone very still.
"We're being followed," he says calmly.
Then he reaches for her hand with surprising gentleness.
"Hold on."
The SUV accelerates, pressing Norah back into the leather seat.
She realizes with crystalline clarity that her life as she knew it ended the moment Enzo Ricci whispered her name.
Everything after this is just survival.