Every nurse before me ran out of the mansion sobbing, but I stood my ground against the most dangerous man in Chicago.

I held the heavy briefcase against my chest, standing in the center of the luxurious bedroom. The weight of the money was undeniable, but the cold knot tightening in my stomach had nothing to do with cash.

"You're discharging me?" I asked, my voice rising slightly. "You still have a drain in your abdomen, six open pin sites in your leg, and a course of IV Vancomycin that needs to run for another seven days!"

"Leo can change an IV bag," Liam said coldly, turning his face away toward the wall.

"Leo is an enforcer, not a registered nurse!" I snapped, taking a step closer to the bed. "If that drain comes out improperly, you'll tear the fascia. If the Vancomycin runs too fast, your blood pressure will drop out, and you'll go into cardiac arrest!"

"I don't care, Clara!" Liam roared, turning his head back to glare at me, his chest heaving with exertion. "Do you think I care about a torn fascia or a drop in blood pressure? I have thirty men coming to tear this house apart! If you're here when they arrive, they won't care that you're wearing pink scrubs and holding a stethoscope! They will put a bullet through your head just to make me watch!"

The room fell into an absolute, suffocating silence.

I stared at him, my heart pounding against my ribs. In his eyes, behind the rage and the cold authority, I saw it again—the terrifying, raw fear of losing someone else he cared about. He wasn't trying to protect himself. He was trying to protect me the way he couldn't protect his brother Julian.

Slowly, deliberately, I walked over to the armchair and set the briefcase down on the seat.

Then I pulled off my sweater, hung it over the back of the chair, and picked up a fresh bottle of saline.

"What the hell are you doing?" Liam growled.

"My job," I said calmly, prepping a fresh swab. "I signed up for a week-to-week contract, Mercer. Friday is over, and I'm renewing for week three."

"Did you not hear a word I just said?" he demanded, his voice dangerously low. "I am telling you to run!"

"And I'm telling you that I don't abandon my patients when things get complicated," I replied, kneeling beside his leg to inspect the fixator pins. "If your enemies want to get to you, they'll have to go through me first. And as you've already seen, I don't scare easily."

Liam stared at me, his mouth slightly open, completely speechless for the first time since I had entered his house.

He looked at me as if I were a complete madwoman—and perhaps I was. But as I cleaned around the metallic pins, I felt a heavy, warm hand land gently on the top of my head, his long fingers threading through my hair, pressing me lightly against his knee.