A Poor Vet Took In a Dying Stray Dog — Hours Later, She Discovered the Wounded Man She Saved Was the Mafia Boss Who Owned Him

Chapter 2

“Don’t move,” Briar said, and her voice was steadier than she felt. “You’ve got a bullet in your side and I don’t have anesthetic. I don’t have a surgeon’s license. I don’t have anything except a scalpel and a lot of bad ideas. And if you move, you’ll bleed out before I finish.”

“Then don’t finish slow,” the stranger said.

His eyes were gray, the color of winter storms, and they did not blink. Even bleeding out on a stranger’s table, he looked like a man giving orders, not taking them.

“I can handle the pain,” he added.

She nearly laughed. “You don’t know that yet.”

She found the old rabbit sedative in the fridge, held it up, and put it down. Humans weren’t rabbits. The dose that would knock him under might stop his heart entirely. So she did the only thing left to do: she washed her hands, threaded the needle, and told herself he was a mastiff with a torn flank.

The first incision, he bit clean through his own lip. The second, he screamed.