Layla
Normally, the operating room was peace. Focus. Determination.
Right now, it felt like chaos. The beeping machines. The overlapping voices barking instructions, calling out numbers. Metal instruments clattering against metal trays.
And in the center of all the madness lay Aldo Marcello. Pale, unconscious, bleeding from a deep bullet wound in his side.
My fingers shook.
I stood over him, hands gloved. Sweat beading my brow despite the cool of the room. I’d done this a hundred times if I’d done it once. Saved more lives than I could remember with these two hands, this needle, this procedure.
I’d pulled people back from the brink of death.
But right now, when it mattered more than anything else in the world, my goddamned hands shook.
“BP’s dropping!” a nurse called, her shrill
