I was waiting for Moretti to wake up in his mansion when I touched the forbidden scar and the head of security suddenly turned pale

“You have to leave in five minutes, before he wakes up.”

I heard these words in the bedroom of the most dangerous man in Chicago, although I did not stop washing my hands. Warm water came from the tap, the smell of chlorine stung my nose, while behind me the fifth nurse was putting gauze, syringes, and ampoules into a medical bag.

“The last nurse lasted nine hours,” the head of security told me. “The previous one, six. They touched his shoulder and he threw the lamp out the window.”

The woman did not even look at me.

“Leave her; maybe this one will get lucky.”

I was thirty-six years old and had worked in an emergency department for years. Five feet and six inches tall, athletic, dark-haired, a woman who no longer wanted to hide her strength from strangers. My hands had survived emergencies in which others trembled.

“What is the temperature?” I asked the head of security.

He looked at me in surprise.

“Whom are you asking about?”

“Gabriel Moretti.”

“Thirty-nine point nine.”

“For how long?”

“Since noon.”

“And you did not take him to the hospital?”

Luka Ferraro, a forty-one-year-old former boxer, gave a joyless chuckle.

“He refused to go to the hospital.”

“Then he will die here, with a beautiful view of Chicago from the window.”

The city glittered below the forty-eighth floor. Raindrops struck the glass walls and left ink-colored streaks.

Three weeks earlier, Gabriel had been shot in front of a private restaurant. The official report said that the bullet passed near the left shoulder and did not damage the bone. But then his legs weakened, and finally he could not move them at all. Fever, confusion, and an anger that everyone in the room could feel were added.

The elevator doors closed and the sound of the departing nurse’s bag wheels disappeared. Just then a hoarse roar came from the bed.

Gabriel Moretti woke up.

I could barely recognize the man I had seen in the photographs before me. He was twenty-nine years old, broad-shouldered, with scarred fingers and black hair wet with sweat. But his face was gray, his pupils were dilated, and his breathing had become shallow.

His hand came forward with lightning speed and seized me by the wrist. His fingers squeezed me so tightly that my bones hurt.

Luka reached under his jacket.

“Don’t move,” I told him.

Gabriel squeezed me harder.

“Who sent you?”

“The agency.”

“Which agency?”

“Midwest Private Aid.”

“You’re lying to me.”

“You’re delirious.”

For a moment, anger gave way to confusion in his eyes.

“Your pulse is approaching one hundred forty, your oxygen is very low, and the fever is already boiling your thinking,” I told him. “You can break my wrist, or give me ten minutes to understand why you are dying.”

He let go of my hand.

Luka froze.

“He usually lets no one near him.”

“Everyone lets someone near them eventually,” I replied.

The oxygen reading was eighty-six. I adjusted the mask, but Gabriel suddenly grimaced.

“My back…”

“Does your shoulder hurt?”

“My back.”

Luka looked away.

“He has been repeating that since he came from the clinic.”

“Which clinic?”

“A private surgical center. They removed a bullet fragment.”

Nothing like that was written in the agency’s file. The record mentioned only a through-and-through wound. Doctor Adrian Weil was listed as the person who performed the procedure, while his cousin Vincent Moretti had arranged the operation.

“We need to turn him onto his side,” I said.

Luka immediately stiffened.

“No.”

“Why?”

“No one touches his back.”

I looked at Gabriel. Even beneath the fever, I saw fear in his eyes.

This was no longer simply the irritation of a sick person.

I carefully slid my hand beneath his shoulder and asked Luka for help. When we lifted the sheet, the wound area appeared.

There was one scar.

Then I saw another—a small, fresh line of stitches, several centimeters lower, exactly where a bullet could never have passed.

My stomach clenched.

“Luka…”

The color drained from the head of security’s face.

“What is it?”

“He had surgery twice.”

Gabriel opened his eyes and pronounced, almost in a whisper, a name that no one should have heard in this apartment.

“Vincent.”

At that moment, footsteps sounded from the corridor, and the door handle slowly went down…

The handle went all the way down and a tall, elegant man entered the room. He was wearing a dark coat, holding a leather folder in his hand, and had such a smile on his face as if every decision here had already been made.

“Cousin, how are you feeling?” Vincent asked.

Gabriel bared his teeth.

“Why did you come?”

“I am concerned about your condition.”

I stayed beside the bed and covered the wound with my body.

“He underwent an additional operation,” I said. “Why is this not written in the medical report?”

Vincent looked at me calmly.

“You are new here. Do not ask unnecessary questions.”

“He is dying.”

“Everyone dies of something, madam…”

“Kavtaradze.”

“Mrs. Kavtaradze, your only duty here is care.”

Luka looked toward the door. He clearly knew that the rules had changed the moment he entered the room.

Gabriel raised his hand, but no strength remained in it. I took his wrist and checked his pulse.

“If we do not find out right now what they did to him, he will not make it until morning,” I said.

Vincent’s smile disappeared.

“They will blame you for his death.”

“Then I would rather remain with the truth than run away with a lie.”

That night Luka locked the door against security. I gave Gabriel medicine and photographed the swelling around the stitches. Something hard could be felt under the skin.

“What is in there?” I asked.

Gabriel opened his eyes.

“I don’t know.”

“Vincent knows.”

Just then the telephone rang. An unknown number appeared on the screen. When the call came a second time, I answered.

“If you want Gabriel to remain alive, bring what you found in his back to the courthouse by six in the morning. Come alone…”

The voice on the telephone immediately cut off. For several seconds, only the intermittent hiss of the oxygen machine could be heard in the room.

“Who was it?” Luka asked.

“Someone who knows that there is a foreign object in his back.”

Gabriel opened his eyes.

“Don’t go.”

“I have to go to save you.”

“It’s a trap.”

“Maybe. But if I do nothing, you will die right here.”

Luka moved the low table closer to the bed. I changed gloves, cleaned the skin around the stitches, and saw a small, dark bump. The skin around it was reddened as if the body were rejecting something.

“We have to take it out,” I said.

“Here?” Luka raised his head.

“There will not be time to transfer him to a hospital. The fever and lack of oxygen are already damaging his organs.”

Gabriel tightened his jaw.

“Do it.”

“It may hurt very much.”

“It already hurts.”

In twenty minutes I removed the foreign object. It was a small metal capsule, the size of a fingernail, with tiny marks engraved on it. As soon as I placed the capsule in the drawer, Gabriel’s breathing became relatively regular.

Luka looked at the device.

“What the hell is this?”

Footsteps sounded behind the door. Vincent entered again, this time with two armed men.

“Give me the object,” he said.

Gabriel smiled weakly.

“So it really existed.”

Vincent stopped.

I picked up the capsule.

“This is not a surgical implant. It contains a microelement that disrupts the heart rhythm and nervous system. That is exactly why he had fever, confusion, and paralysis of the legs.”

“Nonsense,” Vincent said.

“Then why are you afraid of it?”

Gabriel’s face changed.

“You did not have me killed from the outside,” he whispered. “You put this inside my body.”

Vincent drew a gun.

But Luka acted faster. The sound of the shot struck the room, the clock hanging on the wall fell to the floor, and the capsule vanished from my hand.

When I opened my eyes, Vincent was no longer standing in the room. Only his phone lay on the floor. A new message lit up on the screen.

“If the capsule has been removed, the next target is Nino Kavtaradze. The main file has already been sent in her name…”