MERCY FOR THE SCARRED DON

The bleach had seeped through Maya's thin rubber gloves three hours ago. Her skin felt stripped raw, itchy and dry, but at 3:17 in the morning at St. Jude's, nobody cared about dried-out hands. She dragged two heavy plastic bags of medical waste toward the back alley doors, her worn sneakers squeaking against the wet linoleum floor. St. Jude's wasn't one of those high-end private facilities on the North Side with pristine lobbies and security guards at every entrance. It was a dumping ground. If someone got stabbed in a turf war or passed out in an alley from a bad batch, they landed here. Maya pushed through the heavy crash doors. The night air hit her like a wet slap, cold and smelling of lake water and rotting garbage. Rain was falling in a thin, needle-like drizzle that flickered yellow under the sole working streetlight. She tossed the bags into the bin, leaned against the damp brick wall, and just closed her eyes for ten seconds. Ten seconds of quiet before she had to go back inside to clear bed six. A dull metallic crunch echoed down the alleyway. Maya's eyes snapped open. Fifty feet away, a dark Ford Explorer sat idling in the mouth of the alley, its headlights dead. The back passenger door swung open. Something heavy—someone heavy—was shoved out onto the wet asphalt. The door slammed shut, the engine roared, and the truck backed out onto the main street, its tires screaming against the wet pavement before vanishing into the fog. Maya didn't move. Rule number one of night shifts in this neighborhood: you didn't look, you didn't ask, and you sure as hell didn't go checking on packages dropped off in dark alleys. She reached behind her, her thumb feeling for the brass handle of the hospital door. Then she heard the cough. It was a wet, ragged sound, followed by the slide of heavy fabric against brick. In the dim yellow light, she saw a man sitting propped against a stack of wooden pallets. He was wearing a charcoal dress suit that looked more expensive than six months of her rent, but the left side of his shirt was soaked in something dark and thick that wasn't rain. Her hand stayed on the door handle. *Walk away, Maya. Unsee it.* "Don't," a voice rasped from the dark. It wasn't a cry for help. It was a command, low and gravelly, like stones grinding together. Maya froze. "I'm calling an orderly," she said, keeping her voice level despite her pulse spiking. "You're bleeding out." "Call an orderly, and two cars show up," the man said. He tried to shift his position, his jaw tightening so hard she heard his teeth click. "First car is the cops. Second car belongs to the men who put this hole in me. You want a shootout in your lobby?" Maya took a slow breath, letting her hand drop from the handle. He wasn't wrong. A gunshot victim at St. Jude's triggered an automatic police dispatch. And in this part of town, police response times were long enough for whoever shot him to come back and finish the job. She stepped out from the doorway, taking three cautious paces toward him. "Show me." The man looked up. Even propped against trash pallets with blood pooling around his waist, he was imposing. Sharp jaw, dark wet hair stuck to his forehead, and eyes that were a pale, washed-out gray. He looked at her not like a patient looking at a nurse, but like a predator evaluating whether she was a threat. He pulled his right hand away from his ribs. The fabric of his shirt was torn, red and raw underneath. "In and out?" she asked, dropping to her knees on the wet gravel, ignoring the cold dampness soaking straight through her scrub pants. "Clean," he growled. "Missed the gut. Just soft tissue." "You're lucky." "I'm fast," he corrected. Maya reached into her scrub pocket, pulling out her trauma shears and a roll of sterile gauze she'd pinched from the supply room earlier. She didn't ask his name. You didn't ask names in alleys. But as she cut through the expensive silk of his shirt, her fingers brushed against the skin near his collarbone. A heavy black tattoo was inked into his right shoulder—a crest with a two-headed falcon wrapped around a dagger. Maya's hands hesitated for half a second. She knew that mark. Everyone who lived south of the river knew it. It was the Moretti syndicate stamp. Which meant the man bleeding on her sneakers wasn't just a low-level corner guy. He was Gabriel Moretti. "You know what that is," Gabriel said softly, watching her face closely. "I know it means I should have stayed inside," Maya muttered, unwrapping the gauze and pressing it hard directly onto the wound. Gabriel's body went completely rigid. A low, sharp hiss escaped his teeth, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the wooden pallet behind him, but he didn't scream. He didn't pull away. He just held her gaze, those pale bluish gray eyes locking onto hers with an intensity that made her chest feel tight. "What's your name, nurse?" he asked, his breath coming in ragged hitches. "Maya," she said, pulling a second roll of gauze tight around his torso to anchor the dressing. "And if you don't keep pressure on that for the next hour, I'm going to be the last person you'll ever see."