Chapter 3 - The Offer
By Monday morning, the news of Leonardo Castellano’s departure from St. Vincent had become hospital legend.
The Chief of Surgery had personally berated the nursing staff for "losing" Detroit’s most prominent civic donor—a man whose foundation had funded the new wing three years prior—but Beatrice paid no attention. She was too busy dealing with a seventeen-car pileup on I-75 that flooded the ER with thirty patients in two hours.
At four in the afternoon, as Beatrice was finishing a charting update at the central desk, two men in gray suits entered the floor.
They weren't carrying guns. They were carrying leather briefcases.
"Beatrice Gallagher?" the taller man asked, stopping at the counter.
"Depends on who's asking," she said without looking up from her screen.
"I am Arthur Pendelton, head of legal counsel for Castellano Enterprises," the man said, setting a smooth black fountain pen on her desk. "Mr. Castellano would like to offer you a position."
Cynthia, who was sitting three chairs down, dropped her stapler.
Beatrice finally looked up. "I have a position."
"Mr. Castellano is offering you the role of Private Medical Administrator for his estate," Pendelton said smoothly. He opened his briefcase and pulled out a single sheet of heavy cream paper. "The salary is three hundred and fifty thousand dollars annually. Full benefits, five weeks paid vacation, a private security detail for your home, and an unlimited budget for medical supplies."
The nursing station went dead quiet.
Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars was more than four times what Beatrice made after twenty years in trauma nursing.
Beatrice looked at the paper. Then she looked at the attorney.
"No."
Pendelton blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
"No," Beatrice repeated. She picked up her pen and went back to her charting. "I don't work for private citizens. I work for the public. Tell your boss his incision looks fine and he can hire a home health agency like everyone else."
"Miss Gallagher," Pendelton said, his voice dropping an octave. "Mr. Castellano does not take 'no' easily. The situation in the city is escalating. There are factions within the rival families that view his injury as an opportunity. He requires someone he trusts implicitly."
"He doesn't trust me," Beatrice scoffed. "He's known me for three days."
"He trusts you because you tried to scald him," Pendelton replied without a trace of humor. "In our world, honesty is measured by how little a person wants from us. You want nothing from him. That makes you the most dangerous person in his orbit—and the only one he trusts near his back."
Beatrice stopped typing.
She thought about the way Leonardo had held the gun on his own enforcer to protect her. She thought about his blue eyes, sharp and clear despite the blood loss, looking at her like she was the only real thing in a room full of ghosts.
"If I say no?" she asked.
"Then he will continue to send men to your house to watch your street, he will continue to pay for your vehicle repairs, and he will eventually buy this hospital just so he can sit in the lobby and watch you work."
Beatrice let out a long, heavy sigh that rattled her chest.
May you like
"He's insane," she muttered.
"He is a Castellano," Pendelton corrected smoothly. "We have a car waiting outside."
