I STITCHED A FEARED MAFIA BOSS BACK TOGETHER -
PART 2
I should have walked out the second I saw the folder.
Instead, I stood there with my medical bag still in my hand, staring at my own name like it had been dragged into someone else’s nightmare.
He noticed where I was looking.
Of course he did.
Even half-sick, half-burning with fever, Salvator Russo missed nothing.
“Open it,” he said.
Those two words landed harder than any threat.
Because a threat would have been easier.
A threat would have told me where I stood.
But this felt different.
Too calm.
Too deliberate.
Inside that folder was everything I had never offered him.
My nursing records.
My old medical school file.
My home address.
My debt.
Even the monthly payment I sent to my grandmother’s care home.
By the time I reached the last page, my fingers had gone cold.
This man had not become interested in me after the hospital.
He already knew who I was.
That was the first twist.
Then came the second.
When I looked up, he wasn’t watching me like a man caught doing something cruel.
He was watching me like a man waiting to see whether I finally understood something.
“You investigated me,” I said.
“No,” he answered quietly.
“I confirmed it was you.”
The room went still.
I should have asked what that meant.
I should have demanded who he thought I was.
Instead, my eyes dropped to one paper near the bottom.
It wasn’t hospital paperwork.
It was older.
Folded.
Handled too many times.
And clipped to it was a photograph I had not seen in years.
The second I recognized the face in it, my throat closed.
May you like
Because that picture should have been impossible for him to have.
And the person standing beside me in that photo was the one name I had spent three years trying not to say out loud.
