Page 1 of The Doctor

1

Zeno

Eleven Months Ago

The warm, late-summer sun cast its rays through the massive picture window, illuminating the little girl playing with her toys on the floor. An ache pooled in my chest at the sight of her. “I can’t believe how big Chaya’s gotten.”

Arik turned his gaze to his daughter, the wide, beaming smile on his face cutting through me like a dull knife. That ache pulsed in my chest as he said, “She wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”

That much was true. Three years ago, Chaya David had nearly died on the same day she was born. The feisty little girl hadn’t wanted to wait to make her debut, and had I not been there, both she and her mother would have lost their lives.

“It was nothing.”

Except, it was everything. This little family was everything I’d never have. Everything I’d promised myself couldn’t be mine.

My penance for failing my father.

Instead, I’d made the men and the women in the D’Angelo Syndicate my family. It was the only way I could repay my debt to the man who waged war on the men who murdered my father, then who took care of me and my mother in the aftermath of that hell.

I owed Paulo D’Angelo my life. It was why I freely gave everything I had to him. My time. My loyalty.

He only needed to ask, and I was there.

That’s why I was here, at his estate. He’d called us to his house, and as his lieutenant, there was no place I’d rather be than at his side.

Arik laughed as Chaya rolled over and stood, then flung her arms around her mother’s neck as Sarah dropped to her knees beside the girl. As if she’d been gone for a week instead of a short trip to the bathroom.

Where happiness should have flourished, I held nothing but pain in my chest. These two people alive, only because of my knowledge and skills. This family together, only because I’d been lucky enough to be at their sides when calamity struck.

That time, I’d been able to stop the hands of death. But pain took up residence in my heart, pounding out a reminder of every life I’d failed to save. My father. My mother. The men who counted on me to fix them up when life in the Syndicate had them forever risking theirs.

A pulsing ache thrummed to life inside me. Energy thrashed through the room as the front door creaked open, and it hit me like a wave of thunder before the voices even reached my ears. It took everything in me not to turn away from the little girl and her mother, not to look over my shoulder at the newcomers who ushered in that storm.

Adalberto Vinci, another of D’Angelo’s lieutenants, let his presence be known as he stepped through the front door. His pretentious voice boomed through the space as if we were locked inside a tiny, dark cavern and he was our God, gracing us with his boisterous existence so we could bow down and worship at his feet. His wife, Daphne, and son, Stephano, were close behind, their too-loud voices adding to the din. But that raging energy that swept through the door followed silently on their heels, overtaking them as it spilled outward.

A dark cloud descending.

Turmoil and destruction written in those waves.

Unable to withstand the force stabbing at my being, I turned, only to be caught up in the intensity of Clara Vinci.

A goddess riding the crest of the storm she caused.

Like an apparition, she moved my way. Body floating, spirit thrashing. Her energy zapped through the air, hot flashes of it hitting my skin as if her gaze were lightning and I the rod, summoning the force of her toward me as if I could protect the world from annihilation by taking the brunt of it myself.

Surely, I’d succumbed to her madness. To the dark refuge hidden behind her bright smile. It wrapped around me just like her arms did, wove through me to suffocate my lungs and still the thrashing of my heart.

“Zeno!” The sound was a symphony, my name on her voice a crash in my ears. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

My hands tingled with need, with the desire to touch this dangerous deity, as if doing so could harness her powers and calm her raging intensity. But doing so, giving in to that craving, felt like giving in to greed.

I did it anyway.

I touched her.

Settled my hands upon her back, at the slight curve of her waist that tempted me with thoughts of sliding lower, to the full curve of her ass.

Fuck.