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 9
She never made it to Crowe’s boat.
Because the next morning, Silas Kane drove her to a storefront on the corner of the old market district — a freshly painted clinic with her name on the sign — and unlocked the door.
“Welcome, Dr. Sloane,” he said. “Take a look around. Tell me what you think. It’s all yours.”
Briar walked through the empty clinic in a daze. The exam rooms gleamed. The surgery suite was better equipped than the hospital where she’d interned. There was a recovery ward with a hand-painted sign that read *LUCKY’S ROOM,* and a window seat with a dog bed in it.
“I’m hiring you,” Silas said. “Officially. Head veterinarian.”
“There’s nothing to vet,” Briar managed. “It’s one dog. You don’t need me full-time for that.”
“It’s not just Lucky anymore.”
He opened the back doors, and Briar forgot how to breathe. A dozen cages. A hundred. Dogs, cats, a parrot with a bald wing, a rabbit with a splint. A whole ark of hurt, frightened, forgotten animals, every one of them looking at her like she was the answer to a question they’d been asking their whole lives.
“How — when did you —”
“I bought every pound and shelter in the district,” Silas said. “You’ll run this one. I’ll fund the rest. Dr. Sloane, you’re the best I’ve ever met. It’s time you started being paid like it.”
Briar stood in the middle of her new clinic, surrounded by the smell of animals and cleaning solution, and cried. She cried the way you cry when a door you’d given up on finally opens. She cried until Silas put a hand on her shoulder — just a hand, just warm — and she cried into his chest, against the heart she’d stitched there, until she was empty.
The first payday was the best day of her life. The first opening-day was the second.
Even Crowe showed up — with a cat. A plump, furious thing called Chickpea that he’d brought in for a checkup.
“Friends and family discount,” Crowe said, beaming, as if he hadn’t threatened her forty-eight hours ago.
“We don’t serve outsiders,” Silas said flatly, from the door.
“An animal is suffering because of its owner. That animal is suffering because of *you.*”
“Enough,” Briar said, before the two of them could burn the building down. “Both of you. Chickpea’s fine. I’ll schedule vaccinations for next week. And Caspian — next time, call ahead.”
Crowe laughed and left, and Silas stood in the door looking like a man who’d just swallowed acid.
“He’s not your friend,” Silas said.
“He’s not my enemy either. He’s a man who’s lonely, Silas, and lonely people do stupid things.”
“You’re too generous.”
“I’m a vet. It’s the job.”
That night, they took their first photo together in front of the clinic — Silas stiff, Briar laughing, Lucky’s blur of a tail in the corner. Silas sent her the photo, then a second message, then a third, then a fourth. Briar was too busy with a surgery to answer.
“Boss,” Flynn said, looking at the text chain on Silas’s phone, “you’ve sent her four messages in a row, plus a picture. You’re not supposed to do that.”
“I’m supposed to be honest.”
“You’re supposed to play it cool. You told her you edited the photo! You never tell her you edited the photo.”
“Girls love a nice edit.”
“Not when you *point it out*, boss.”
Silas stared at the screen. “I think I’ve ruined everything.”
“You’ve definitely ruined everything. Sir.”
So Silas Kane, the most feared man in the city, did what any lovesick man does when he’s ruined everything: he cooked. He made her dinner — an entire chicken — and brought it to the clinic, beaming, proud of himself.
Briar looked at the chicken.
“You killed it.”
“I cooked it. It’s a culinary surprise.”
“It’s a chicken, Silas. A whole chicken. Sitting in a pool of its own — what kind of psychopath cooks a whole — you killed a *chicken* for me —”
“I was trying to be romantic!”
“You burned a whole bird in the name of romance!”
It should have been funny. It was, briefly. And then Briar’s phone buzzed, and the smile fell off her face. Her purse was gone — stolen off the bench at the market while she’d been mid-surgery. She’d put her whole life in that purse. Her keys. Her license. The photo of her father.
At the police station, the desk officer looked at her like she was a puddle he’d had to step over. “How much cash?”
“Twenty dollars. But there were important things —”
“Sleep’s important too. Now let me get back to it.”
“That’s it? You’re not even going to file a report?”
“I’m going to go back to sleep. Now go call your family for a ride, since you can’t afford one yourself.”
Briar stood in the middle of the station, holding the nothing she had left, and felt the floor open under her.
“Family,” she repeated, like a wound.
And then the doors opened.
“Is there a problem, officer?”
Silas Kane walked in with Flynn and Theo behind him, and the desk officer went pale, because every criminal in the city knew that face, and every criminal knew what it meant when that face walked into a room with purpose.
“Mr. Kane,” the officer said, his voice going thin. “There’s no problem. She — we were just —”
“Her purse was stolen,” Silas said. “You’ll file the report. You’ll make the call. And you’ll apologize to Dr. Sloane for the way you spoke to her.”
The officer apologized. He apologized so fast and so hard it almost broke his voice. And when Briar walked out of the station, Silas put his arm around her and said, in her ear, soft as anything:
“You’re not alone anymore, Briar. You never will be. That’s your family now — you, me, a hundred dogs, and that idiot Flynn. And we take care of our own.”
Briar was still smiling about that when she unlocked the clinic door the next morning.
The woman was waiting in the reception area. She was beautiful in the way a storm is beautiful — expensive, polished, and impossible to miss. She smiled at Briar like they were old friends.
“You must be the new vet,” the woman said. “I’m looking for Silas. Tell him Mara’s here.”
“Who should I say — I mean, is he expecting you?”
“Oh, he’s expecting me.” Mara’s smile widened. “I’m his fiancée.”