Chapter 4 - The Sovereign's Proposition
Carmine Rossi did not answer immediately. He signaled his men with a brief wave of his hand; they lowered their weapons and stepped back onto the porch, closing the door behind them to give the Don privacy.
Carmine walked to the small iron stove, warming his leather-gloved hands against the heat. "Maroni’s people hit us from the inside. My chief of security had a gambling debt that cost him his loyalty. By the time I secured the bunker, half my household was dead, and my son was missing in a blizzard. I thought I was looking for a corpse."
He turned back to Sarah, his eyes sharp as flint. "Instead, I find a girl who dragged a two-hundred-pound man two miles through a nor'easter and performed battlefield surgery with a stolen university kit. You're wasted on brocade and silver polish, Sarah."
"I did what anyone would do," she said, though she knew it was a lie. Most people would have hidden in the library until the shooting stopped.
"No," Carmine countered softly. "Most people would have begged for their lives or run away. You stayed. You fought the storm, and you fought the grim reaper, and you won."
Dominic stirred on the cot, his eyelids fluttering open. He looked at the wooden ceiling, then at his father, and finally, his gaze settled on Sarah. He tried to sit up, but a sharp wince stopped him.
"Don't move, Dominic," Carmine commanded, his voice softening only a fraction. "The lady took a bullet out of your hip. You move, you ruin her embroidery."
Dominic looked down at the neat rows of black silk sutures. A faint, raspy laugh escaped him. "I told you... she doesn't break."
Carmine walked back to the cot, looking down at his heir. "The doctor is on his way with an ambulance to move you to the private clinic in the city. The mansion is a crime scene, and the cleaners are handling Maroni’s garbage as we speak."
He turned his attention back to Sarah, stepping closer until he completely dominated her field of vision. "You cannot go back to your Queens apartment, Sarah. Maroni’s men saw you leave with Dominic. The security cameras that survived show your face. To the underworld, you are no longer a maid. You are the woman who denied them their greatest victory."
Sarah felt a cold dread settle in her stomach. "My mother's debt... my life..."
"Your old life is over," Carmine said flatly. "But a new one is beginning, if you have the stomach for it. I don't pay my debts with cash bonuses, Sarah. I pay them with power."
He reached into his coat and pulled out a heavy, gold-embossed fountain pen and a leather-bound checkbook, laying them on the small wooden table beside her medical kit.
"Effective immediately, your mother's medical debts are erased from every hospital database in the state. I have already bought the outstanding balances from the collection agencies; they no longer exist," Carmine declared. "Furthermore, I am buying you a medical practice. You will return to university—Columbia, NYU, whichever you prefer. Your tuition is paid in full. Your living expenses are covered. You will have a driver, a security detail, and a penthouse in Manhattan."
Sarah blinked, her breath catching in her throat. "What's the catch, Mr. Rossi? Men like you don't give away empires out of gratitude."
Dominic spoke from the bed, his voice stronger now, filled with a dark, commanding intensity. "The catch is that you belong to us now, Sarah. You will be the chief medical officer for the Rossi organization. When my men get hurt, they don't go to public hospitals where the police ask questions. They come to you. You will be our ghost doctor. Our sanctuary."
Sarah looked from Dominic’s piercing blue eyes to Carmine's steady, unyielding gaze. She looked down at her bloody hands. She had wanted to be a nurse to save lives. Now, she was being offered the chance to become a god of medicine in a world of shadows, backed by the infinite wealth of a criminal empire.
"A clean slate," she whispered. "And my degree?"
"And a seat at our table," Carmine added. "By morning, the entire city will know that anyone who touches Sarah Jenkins answers to the Rossi family. Do we have a deal?"
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Sarah looked at the gold pen. She thought of the twelve-hour shifts, the debt collectors who called her at 3:00 AM, the feeling of being entirely invisible to a world that only valued money. She picked up the pen.
"We have a deal," she said.
