No Nurse Lasted a Week with the Ruthless Mafia Boss — Until the Poor Nurse Broke the Rules
Chapter 11
Lucian Bellini contacted Adrian the following night.
No phone call.
No message.
A photograph arrived at the gate.
Mia was in it.
Walking home from the hospital three weeks earlier.
Another photograph.
Her mother leaving work.
Another.
Her younger brother entering college.
Mia’s face went pale.
Adrian took the photographs from her.
“Don’t worry.”
“Don’t tell me not to worry.”
“I’ll protect them.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand exactly.”
Mia looked at him.
“You’ve been doing this your whole life.”
“Yes.”
“Running from people who want to hurt you.”
“Yes.”
“And now they’re coming after my family.”
Adrian’s voice softened.
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t need an apology.”
“What do you need?”
“The truth.”
Adrian nodded.
“Then we find Lucian.”
They discovered an abandoned clinic outside the city.
It had been closed for years.
But security records showed someone had entered recently.
Inside, they found medical equipment.
Files.
Medication.
And a hidden room.
On the wall were photographs.
Adrian’s father.
Mia’s father.
David Carter.
Samuel Cross.
Victor Hale.
And Mia.
Adrian stared.
“Why her?”
Mia stepped closer.
At the center of the wall was a handwritten sentence:
THE NURSE OPENS THE DOOR.
Mia felt cold.
“What door?”
A voice answered behind them.
“The one your father couldn’t.”
They turned.
Lucian stood in the doorway.
He looked older than Adrian remembered.
But alive.
Very much alive.
Adrian raised his gun.
“You’re supposed to be dead.”
Lucian smiled.
“You’ve been told a lot of things.”
“Why Mia?”
“Because she was always part of this.”
Mia shook her head.
“No.”
Lucian looked at her.
“Your father carried something for twenty years.”
“What?”
“A key.”
Mia remembered her father’s belongings.
His old emergency-service locker.
A brass key she had kept because she didn’t know what it opened.
She pulled it from her necklace.
Lucian’s eyes changed.
“There.”
Adrian looked at her.
“You had that?”
“My father gave it to me.”
Lucian stepped forward.
“Then your father trusted you.”
Mia held the key tightly.
“What does it open?”
Lucian smiled.
“The vault beneath the old Bellini hospital.”
Adrian frowned.
“That hospital was demolished.”
“Not all of it.”
Lucian turned.
“You want the truth about our fathers?”
Adrian’s grip tightened.
“Yes.”
“Then bring the key.”
He disappeared through the doorway.
Mia looked at Adrian.
“What do we do?”
Adrian looked at the key.
Then at her.
“We break another rule.”
