Chapter 1
At 11:47 on the coldest Tuesday Chicago had seen in eleven years, a dying seventeen-year-old girl needed blood no hospital in the city could give her—and somehow, the only man who could save her was me, Luca Mancini, the man half of Chicago crossed the street to avoid. “If we don’t find AB-negative blood now, she won’t make it,” the nurse whispered, and for reasons I couldn’t explain, those words hit me harder than the bullets that had nearly killed my best friend an hour earlier.
Snow slammed against the glass doors of Lakeview University Medical Center while I stood outside surgery waiting for news about Enzo Caruso, my oldest friend and closest lieutenant. He had taken two bullets during an ambush near the Chicago River, and every instinct in me was focused on finding the men responsible.
Then Nurse Hannah Cole stopped in front of me.
“Sir, do you know your blood type?”
Her voice trembled slightly, though she tried to hide it. Most people knew my name before they spoke to me, and the smart ones usually avoided asking Luca Mancini for anything.
“AB negative,” I said.
The change in her face was immediate.
“Oh my God.”
Before I could ask what was wrong, she grabbed my sleeve. “There’s a girl in surgery. Seventeen. Internal bleeding from a crash on I-290. We’re out of compatible blood, and she’s running out of time.”
Marco Vitali, my head of security, stepped forward. “Mr. Mancini isn’t here as a donor.”
I looked at him once.
He stopped talking.
“Take me to her.”
Hannah stared at me as though she hadn’t expected the answer. Neither had I.
Minutes later, my coat was gone, my sleeve was rolled above my elbow, and I was sitting beneath fluorescent lights while a technician pushed a needle into my vein. Dark red blood flowed through the tubing, warm and steady, filling the collection bag that would be rushed directly toward a girl whose name I still didn’t know.
“Her name is Elena Vasquez,” Hannah said softly.
Something tightened inside my chest.
“Elena.”
The name felt strangely familiar in my mouth, although I was certain I had never heard it before.
Through the narrow glass panel in the operating-room door, I caught one brief glimpse of her as nurses moved around the table. Her face was pale beneath the lights, dark hair spread around her head, an oxygen tube disappearing beneath surgical drapes.
Then I saw the small crescent-shaped scar beneath her left eye.
My breath stopped.
For one terrible second, Chicago disappeared.
I was twenty-five again, standing beneath a summer storm with Sofia Bennett crying against my chest, promising me she would come back after everything settled down. She had vanished three weeks later, leaving behind nothing except a letter saying she could no longer survive in my world.
Seventeen years had passed.
“Mr. Mancini?” Hannah asked.
My eyes remained fixed on Elena.
“How old did you say she was?”
“Seventeen.”
A cold sensation moved through me that had nothing to do with the snow outside.
Doctors had told me years ago that I would never father a child. I had buried that truth along with every dream of having a family, convinced the Mancini bloodline would end with me.
But Elena’s face carried something I recognized.
Not just Sofia’s eyes.
Mine.
Before I could demand answers, Marco appeared in the doorway, his expression darker than I had ever seen it.
“Luca,” he said quietly. “We have a problem.”
“What happened?”
He glanced toward the operating room before looking back at me.
“The men who attacked Enzo know you’re here.”
May you like
My blood was still flowing through the tube toward the bag meant to save Elena’s life when Marco leaned closer.
“And they’re asking who the girl is.”
