The Don's Daughter & Her Guardian

Bella's POV Blood has a smell. Not everyone knows that. Sweet copper mixed with something else, something that crawls up your nose and sits there like a memory you cannot shake. My hands moved inside the girl's belly, and I tried not to think about how young she looked. Fifteen maybe. Sixteen if God had been kind, which clearly He had not been. "Stay with me, sweetheart," I whispered, though her eyes had rolled back twenty minutes ago. The explosions outside made dust fall from the pipes above us. Made my hands want to shake. But hands that shake cannot save lives, so mine stayed steady. The phone in my pocket buzzed again. And again. Family emergency codes that meant drop everything, come now, the world is ending. But the world was always ending in my family. And this girl, she had minutes. Maybe less. "Doctor Bella?" My assistant Maria hovered near my shoulder. "The fighting..." "I know." Another stitch. Another precious second bought. "Tell me what she said again. About the men." Maria's voice trembled. "She said men in suits. Watching for weeks. She thought she was paranoid from the drugs but..." "But?" "She saw their wrists. Rossini family tattoos. The snake eating its tail." My needle paused for half a heartbeat. Our symbol. Our mark. Why would my father's men watch my clinic? The answer tried to push into my brain but I shoved it away. Later. Everything could be later except this girl's life. "Almost done," I lied. She had so much damage. Whoever shot her had meant to kill, not wound. The bullet had danced through her insides like it was looking for things to break. My phone screamed now. Not buzzing. Actually screaming with the emergency tone that meant someone was dead or dying. Someone important. Someone family. "Doctor..." "I said I know!" The words came out sharp. Maria flinched. I wanted to apologize but my hands were inside a child and apologies could wait too. The security system joined my phone's panic. Red lights flashed. The monitor showed breach alerts at every entrance. North door. South door. Even the hidden tunnel that nobody should know about except me and... "Maria, take over compression. Keep pressure here." I guided her hands to the right spot. "Do not let go." "Where are you going?" "To see who wants to visit us so badly they brought friends." I stripped off my bloody gloves. My phone showed seventeen missed calls from Tommy Russo. My father's right hand. His voice in the last voicemail made my stomach flip. "Bella, goddamn it, answer your phone. They know about the clinic. They're coming. We're coming. Just... Christ, just be alive when we get there." The surgical suite had one advantage. Cameras everywhere. I pulled up the feeds on my tablet and my heart forgot how to beat properly. Men with guns. Lots of men with lots of guns. They moved through my clinic like water, checking rooms, securing corners. Professional. Trained. Familiar. These were not Volkov soldiers. These were ours. "Maria, she's stable enough. Move her to recovery. Use the back exit through the old morgue." "What about you?" I was already pulling patient files, shoving hard drives into a bag. Three years of work. Three years of patching up the people my family's wars left broken. "I'll be right behind you." Lies came so easy when people needed them. The men were two floors down now. Moving fast but careful. I recognized their formation. Standard Rossini protection detail. But protection from what? Or who? I grabbed the last of the evidence. Medical records that showed which injuries came from Rossini bullets. Which girls got hurt in Rossini brothels. Which children got caught in Rossini crossfire. All the wounds I had tried to heal while my father created more. The stairwell door exploded open below. Boots on concrete. Getting closer. I ran for the emergency exit. The one that led to the alley. The one I had installed myself because you always need a way out when your last name is Rossini. Ten feet from freedom. Five feet. My hand touched the door handle. The main entrance blew apart like God had punched it. Smoke and debris and men pouring through. I spun toward the chaos and saw Tommy Russo's face through the haze. Relief flooded me for exactly one second. Then I saw the guns. All of them pointed at me. Tommy's expression was wrong. All wrong. This was not the face of a man coming to save me. This was the face of a man who had come to collect something, and that something was me. "Isabella Rossini," he said, and hearing my full name in his mouth made everything real and terrible and impossible to deny. "By order of your father, you need to come with us. Now."