Chapter 1
At exactly 2:14 a.m. on November 14, rain fell over Manhattan in sheets, striking the reinforced glass of Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Inside Trauma Room 3, Dr. Helena Hastings washed her hands after a grueling 6-hour bypass surgery.
At 32, Helena was the youngest chief of cardiothoracic surgery in the hospital’s history. She lived by control. Her world was defined by the precise rhythm of beating hearts and the sharp edge of a scalpel. That control was about to be taken from her.
The first sign that something was wrong was not the sound of sirens but the unnatural silence that settled over the emergency department. The usual mixture of ringing phones, shouting residents, and beeping machines disappeared. Then came the heavy, rhythmic thud of combat boots.
The double doors of the emergency room were shattered from their hinges. A dozen men in tailored Armani suits and tactical body armor entered the white corridors. They moved with practiced precision, disarming the hospital’s security guards within seconds and seizing the communications desk.
Nicholas Russo walked through the corridor they formed.
Even people who did not follow the criminal underworld knew the Russo name. Nicholas was the ruthless and undisputed head of the Russo crime family, a syndicate that controlled shipping ports from New York to New Jersey. He had remained a ghost to the FBI, a man rumored to be as highly educated as he was lethal.
That night, however, the perfectly groomed crime boss appeared to be coming apart. His custom Tom Ford suit was soaked in blood. In his arms, he carried a frail, silver-haired woman whose skin had turned the color of ash.
It was his mother, Caterina Russo.
Helena stepped out of the scrub room, drying her hands with a sterile towel, as Nicholas’s men locked down the surgical ward. A massive enforcer with a scarred jaw seized her by the arm and shoved her toward the trauma bay.
“Get your hands off me,” Helena shouted, planting her feet.
Nicholas’s dark eyes moved toward her. He did not raise his voice. He did not need to.
“Are you Hastings, the heart specialist?”
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“I am Dr. Hastings,” Helena said, forcing her voice to remain steady despite the adrenaline surging through her. “And you need to get your men out of my hospital before—”
Nicholas crossed the room in a blur. He wrapped one hand around the back of Helena’s neck and forced her forward until she was looking down at the stretcher.
