Page 75 of Duty Devoted

Chicago sprawled around my eighth-floor office window, all sharp angles and calculated risks. I used to like this view, back when I was a resident, back when I thought saving lives in a state-of-the-art facility was the pinnacle of medical achievement, before I discovered there was so much more.

Then lost that knowledge—or at least, pushed it from my mind.

The pen slipped from my fingers, clattering onto the desk. I’d been spinning it again—a nervous habit that had appeared sometime in the last two months, along with the jumpiness, the insomnia, and the constant feeling that someone was watching me.

Sixty-three days. I didn’t mean to count, but my brain did it anyway. Sixty-three days since Puerto Rico. Since waking up alone in those expensive sheets, the pillow beside me still dented from where Logan’s head had been. Since Jace knocked on my door with that carefully neutral expression, explaining that Logan had already caught the early flight back to the States and that he would be escorting me back to Chicago instead.

We need to go over a few details from your extraction,he’d said, professional and kind and clearly uncomfortable with my obvious confusion.Logan had to catch an early flight. Another assignment.

Another assignment. I’d evidently been just another checkbox on his mission list.

Asset secured. Move on to the next crisis.

My desk phone buzzed, making me flinch. Everything made me flinch these days.

“Dr. Valentino?” It was Cheryl from the front desk, her voice carrying that particular tone reserved for unexpected visitors. “You have someone here to see you, waiting in the main lobby.”

My pulse stuttered. For one ridiculous second, I let myself hope?—

No. I shut that down hard, the way I’d learned to shut down all the other pointless hopes. Logan Kane wasn’t coming. He’d made that abundantly clear with two months of silence.

“I’ll be right down.”

I stood, my body moving through the familiar motions. Smooth the white coat that never quite felt right anymore. Check that my ID badge was visible. Tuck a stray piece of hair behind my ear. Playing the part of Dr. Lauren Valentino, respectable physician at Chicago Presbyterian, daughter of the chief of staff.

The elevator descended with hydraulic exactness. Everything here worked precisely as designed. No improvisation needed. No creativity required. Just follow the protocols and fill out the paperwork.

The elevator doors opened to reveal the main lobby in all its marble and glass glory. Afternoon light streamed through the atrium, highlighting the abstract art installation that probably cost more than the entire annual budget of the Corazón clinic. The space bustled with controlled chaos—visitors checking in at the information desk, medical staff striding purposefully in their color-coded scrubs, the subtle hierarchy of white coats determining who yielded to whom in the corridors.

I scanned the waiting areas, looking past the worried families and pharmaceutical reps, searching for?—

“Lauren!”

I turned, and something inside me that had been wound tight for two months finally loosened.

Sophia Yang stood near the information desk, looking wonderfully, impossibly unchanged. Same practical bob that never seemed to need styling. Same direct gaze that could analyze emotional trauma as efficiently as physical wounds. Same no-nonsense posture that had gotten us through a hundred crises in Corazón.

“Sophia.” Her name came out rougher than intended, emotion catching in my throat.

I crossed the polished floor quickly, my heels clicking a rhythm I still wasn’t used to after months of practical boots. When I reached her, I pulled her into a hug that went on toolong for casual colleagues, just right for people who’d survived something together.

She smelled like hotel soap and somehow, impossibly, like the jungle after rain. Or maybe that was just my mind playing tricks, the way it did sometimes when I passed the cafeteria and caught a whiff of rice and beans.

“God, it’s good to see you.” I pulled back, drinking in the sight of her. Real. Solid. Proof that Corazón hadn’t been some fever dream. “What are you doing in Chicago?”

“Medical conference.” She gestured vaguely toward the convention center. “Latest trauma protocols for resource-limited settings. Figured I couldn’t be this close without checking on you.”

Checking on me. Because that’s what you did with damaged goods—you checked on them.

“I’m glad you did.” I glanced around the pristine lobby, suddenly seeing it through her eyes. The excess. The waste. The careful distance between caregivers and cared-for. “Let’s get out of here. Coffee?”

“Lead the way.”

We walked in comfortable silence through the October afternoon. I led her to a diner three blocks from the hospital, the kind of place where the health department rating was questionable but the coffee was strong enough to wake the dead.

She looked around with a smile. “This is where you wanted to take me for coffee rather than the perfectly acceptable shop in your hospital’s lobby?”

“Yeah, I come here when I need…” I wasn’t sure what I was needing when I came here multiple times a week.

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