#Chapter 49 - A New Savior

Layla The hospital’s signature fluorescent lights hummed in my ears as I completed my final round before my dinner break. It was late—far too late for dinner for anyone but a healthcare worker—and most of the staff had gone home. The quiet hours gave me time to think. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I had a lot to think about. Aldo’s offer hung in my mind like a cloud—not dark, not light, but still partially blocking the sun, and I wasn’t sure why. It was a chance at the one thing I had wanted so desperately these past months—since Aldo Marcello had crashed back into my world. A chance to leave the chaos of the Mafia, to give Eli the peaceful life he deserved, to escape this tangled web of past and present. Sure, we’d be starting over. In another country, with new names, new lives. But we’d be safe. Anonymous. Free. So, why hadn’t I taken the offer? Was it because I knew it would crush Eli, to finally have found his father—only to leave him again?