19 Seven bullets were still inside my body when Dominic Rossi married me, and I didn’t even know it was happening. While surgeons questioned whether my heart could survive another operation, New York’s most feared crime boss slipped a gold ring onto my swollen finger and told my unconscious body, “Anybody who comes for you comes through me.”

The hum of the ICU monitor sounded like a metronome counting down seconds I was supposed to have lost.

My chest felt like it had been crushed beneath a hydraulic press, every breath dragging through a throat lined with sandpaper and burning plastic. When I tried to move my fingers, a sharp, white-hot spasm radiated from my ribs straight down to my spine, reminding me of the metal still lodged inside my tissue. Seven bullets. That was what the head trauma surgeon, Dr. Sterling, had told Enzo in a low, grim murmur outside my glass door.

“Her body is a minefield,” he had said. “We took out the ones threatening her lungs and spinal cord, but the rest are too deep near the thoracic wall. Moving them right now would kill her faster than leaving them in.”

So there they stayed. Seven fragments of lead and copper, buried deep beneath my skin, turning my flesh into a fortress of pain.

When Dominic Rossi had slipped that heavy, unadorned band of 18-karat gold onto my swollen, bruised ring finger, I hadn’t even felt the metal touch my skin. I was trapped somewhere beneath layers of medical sedation, drowning in a nightmare where shattering glass and deafening gunfire looped on an endless reel.

Yet, when I finally blinked my eyes open against the harsh fluorescent glare of the hospital ceiling, the ring was there. Heavy. Golden. Immovable.

The door to the private ICU suite clicked open. Dominic stepped inside, bringing with him the faint, clean scent of rain, expensive cedarwood, and cold night air. He wore a dark wool overcoat thrown loosely over his shoulders, the collar turned up against the chill of the November air outside. His sharp, angular face was cast in deep shadows, his dark eyes shadowed by exhaustion, yet they locked onto mine instantly with the terrifying intensity of a predator who had just found its escaped prey.

“You’re awake,” he said. His voice was a low, resonant baritone that vibrated right through the floorboards.

I tried to speak, but my throat clicked dryly. I managed a raspy, broken wheeze. “Water…”

Dominic moved with surprising grace for a man of his size. He poured a small cup of ice water, inserted a bendable plastic straw, and held it to my lips. I drank greedily, the cold liquid shocking my parched throat back to life.

“Easy,” he instructed, his hand steady beneath my neck. “Don’t rush it.”

When I pulled back, panting slightly from the sheer exertion of swallowing, I looked straight into his impenetrable eyes. “Where… where is my mother? Is Ellen okay?”

Dominic’s expression didn’t flicker, but a subtle hardening crossed his jaw. “Your mother’s care in Cleveland has been transferred to a private facility. She has two dedicated specialists monitoring her heart around the clock. She’s stable, Elena. She doesn’t know anything about the hotel.”

Relief washed over me so sharply it felt like a physical blow, followed immediately by a spike of raw panic. I looked down at my left hand, resting limply against the crisp white hospital sheet. The gold band caught the sterile light.

“What is this?” I whispered, my voice trembling. “Why is this on my finger?”

Dominic didn’t look away. He pulled a chair close to the bedside, sat down, and rested his forearms on his knees, staring at me as if he were memorizing every line of pale skin around my bruises.

“It means you belong to the Rossi family now,” he said smoothly, as if reciting a business merger. “And under New York law, a husband cannot be compelled to testify against his wife. More importantly, anyone who comes for you has to go through me.”

“Are you insane?” I gasped, a surge of adrenaline overriding the agony in my ribs. I tried to sit up, and a blinding flash of white pain tore through my torso, forcing me back down with a sharp cry. “I don’t know you! I was a waitress! I dropped a tray of champagne glasses and shoved your mother out of the line of fire! That doesn’t mean—that doesn’t give you the right to—to kidnap me into a marriage!”

“It wasn't a request, Elena,” Dominic interrupted, his tone dropping into a dangerous, velvet quiet. “Victor Costa’s men missed their target because you moved. Costa lost face in front of the entire Commission. He thinks you’re a trained operative who deliberately sabotaged his hit. Right now, every contract killer from here to Sicily has your description. If you walked out of this hospital as Elena Vance, you wouldn't last twenty-four hours.”

“Then let me run!”

“To where?” Dominic stood up, towering over the bed, his presence filling every inch of the sterile room. “You have four hundred dollars in a savings account, a mother with a failing heart, and seven bullets lodged in your chest. You can’t even lift a glass of water on your own. You think you can outrun Victor Costa?”

I stared at him, my chest heaving, tears of sheer frustration hot behind my eyelids. He was right, and that made me hate him all the more.

“You had a file on me,” I whispered, remembering the scattered whispers I’d overheard from the nurse outside before she realized I was semi-conscious. “Before I even worked that shift at the Aster Crown. Before the shooting. You already knew who I was.”

Dominic froze. The air in the room dropped ten degrees.