Chapter 1 - The Woman He Was Never Supposed to See Again
At three in the morning, Mercy General smelled of disinfectant, wet wool, and coffee left too long on a hot plate. Rain battered the windows above the emergency entrance. Dominic Russo stood beneath a flickering fluorescent light while a surgeon explained that Vincent had survived the first operation, although the second bullet had done more damage than they had hoped.
His men watched him instead of the surgeon. They needed an order, a name, permission to turn the failed meeting with the Morettis into something the entire city would remember. Dominic gave them none. He straightened the cuff of his charcoal coat and walked toward the intensive care unit, looking for somewhere he could hear himself think.
He passed Room 302, then 303. At 304, he stopped so abruptly that the man behind him nearly collided with his shoulder. Through the observation glass, a woman lay beneath a thin blue blanket, her face turned toward the door.
Fiona.
For a moment, the hospital disappeared. He smelled cinnamon, heard a spoon striking the edge of a mixing bowl, saw flour on the sleeve of a yellow cardigan. Then a machine breathed for her, and the sound dragged him back.
Her hair was shorter. Swelling softened the familiar shape of her face, and bruises marked the skin around an intravenous line. Beneath the blanket, her body looked painfully still. But he knew the small crease between her eyebrows, the one that appeared when she concentrated on a difficult recipe or tried not to cry.
“Stay here,” he told his guard.
The door opened with a soft pneumatic sigh. Dominic approached the bed slowly, as though sudden movement might make her vanish. He had imagined seeing her again a thousand times, always somewhere ordinary—a street corner, a restaurant, a bookstore where she would pretend not to recognize him.
Never this.
Five years earlier, she had stood in his apartment wearing the same yellow cardigan, one hand resting against her stomach. He had already decided what he would say. Lorenzo Moretti had mentioned her name during a negotiation, casually enough to make the threat unmistakable.
“You don’t fit my life,” Dominic had told her.
She had blinked once. “Since when?”
“You’re too soft, Fiona. Too slow. I need someone who understands what being with me requires.”
He remembered how carefully she had set her handbag on the table. How she had reached for his hand, not to beg, but to make him look at her. He had knocked her fingers away because touching her would have ruined the performance.
“Don’t make this harder.”
She had left without slamming the door. Two weeks later, she moved to Detroit. He stationed men near her apartment for a month, received reports that nothing had happened, and called that proof he had saved her.
Beside the hospital bed, his hand hovered over hers.
“Sir?”
A doctor stood in the doorway, silver hair flattened on one side, exhaustion darkening his eyes. His badge read HARRISON MITCHELL. Dominic withdrew his hand, suddenly aware of his own expensive coat, his polished shoes, the armed man visible through the glass.
“I’m her husband.”
The lie came automatically. He heard its ugliness before the doctor answered.
“Then you’ll understand why I need identification.”
“I’m not.” Dominic swallowed. “I knew her. A long time ago.”
Dr. Mitchell studied him, then glanced toward the monitor. “You can’t remain here without permission. She needs quiet.”
“Is she dying?”
The doctor’s expression changed, but not into reassurance. Somewhere down the corridor, a cart rattled over a damaged tile.
“She is critically ill. I can tell you that much.”
Dominic looked at Fiona’s motionless fingers. “What happened?”
“An authorized family contact can discuss her history with you.”
“I can get her anything she needs.”
“That isn’t the same as knowing what she needs.”
The words landed harder than a threat. Dominic turned back toward the bed, searching her face for the woman who had once told him that expensive gifts were what people bought when they couldn’t say anything honest.
Dr. Mitchell hesitated.
“What do you know about the accident?”
May you like
Dominic looked up.
“What accident?”
