"Seven bullets were still inside my body when Dominic Rossi married me, and I didn’t even know it was happening

The first thing I felt was not pain, but the cold weight of metal against my left ring finger.

Consciousness returned in brutal, fragmented waves. The rhythmic, mechanical hiss of a ventilator. The sharp, sterile smell of antiseptic and ozone. A steady, electronic beep that spiked in tempo every time my lungs tried to drag air past the plastic tube shoved down my throat.

I couldn’t open my eyes. My eyelids felt like they had been sewn shut with lead wire. Every square inch of my torso was on fire—a deep, thrumming agony that pulsed in time with my racing heart. Seven bullets. My mind snatched at the number from the darkness of a half-remembered fever dream. Seven pieces of lead tearing through muscle, cracking ribs, scraping against bone while Isabella Rossi wept beneath me.

*Am I dead?*

“She’s coming around. Lower the sedation, but keep the morphine drip steady. If her heart rate crosses one-forty, her pulmonary sutures could tear.”

The voice was crisp, authoritative, unfamiliar.

Then came another voice. Deeper. Low and resonant, like thunder rolling over a quiet lake before a storm breaks.

“If she hurts, Doctor, you answer to me.”

Dominic Rossi.

The memory hit me with the force of an oncoming freight train. The Aster Crown Hotel. The shattered champagne flutes. The man in the catering coat pulling a black pistol from his jacket. The way Dominic had appeared above me on the blood-soaked marble floor, his midnight-blue eyes wide with something that looked impossibly like grief.

A warm hand touched my face. Calloused fingers, surprisingly gentle, brushed a stray lock of hair away from my forehead.

“Open your eyes, Clara,” he murmured. His voice was right beside my ear. “Fight your way back. Come on, sweetheart.”

*Clara.*

He knew my name. I had never told him my name. In the ballroom, I had merely been the invisible waitress who caught an attitude about spilled drinks.

I forced my eyes open.

Light stabbed into my retinas, white and blinding. I squeezed them shut, groaning through the tube in my airway. A nurse moved quickly, hands working with practiced efficiency. “Gag reflex is responding. We can extubate. Hold still, dear, this is going to be uncomfortable.”

Uncomfortable was an understatement. The burning slide of the plastic tubing out of my throat made me heave, and the sudden spasm sent lightning bolts of agony ripping across my chest and abdomen. A scream trapped itself in my bruised vocal cords, coming out as a choked, pathetic sob.

“Hold her shoulders,” someone said.

“Don’t touch her,” Dominic’s voice snapped, hard as tempered steel.

The room instantly went dead silent.

Dominic stepped into my field of vision. The hospital’s fluorescent lights caught the sharp angles of his jaw, the dark stubble shadowing his hollow cheeks, and the tailored black suit that looked as if it hadn't been changed in days. He looked terrifying. Exhausted, ruthless, and impossibly commanding.

He leaned over the metal bed rail, his broad shoulders blocking out the doctors, the nurses, and the entire sterile world behind him.

“Breathe,” he ordered softly, his gaze locked onto mine. “Just breathe, Clara. The bullets are out. You’re alive.”

I sucked in a ragged gasp of air. It felt like inhaling ground glass, but the oxygen hit my brain, clearing the fog just enough for me to take in my surroundings. This wasn't a standard hospital room. The walls were covered in pale cherry wood paneling, the windows were reinforced with thick, tinted security glass, and two heavily armed men in dark tactical gear stood motionless outside the double doors.

My trembling hand rose toward my chest, feeling the thick, impenetrable layers of gauze binding my torso.

That was when my knuckles brushed my own chin, and the cold metal caught the light.

A thick, polished band of platinum and gold sat firmly at the base of my left ring finger. It was heavy. It was real.

I looked from the ring to Dominic, my dry, cracked lips parting. “What… is this?” My voice sounded like gravel grinding in a blender.

Dominic didn’t flinch. He reached out and wrapped his large, warm hand over mine, his thumb resting possessively over the ring.

“Protection,” he said simply.

“I… don’t…” I swallowed, trying to summon moisture to my throat. “My mother. Ellen. She’s in Cleveland. She needs her medication. I have to go to work—”

“Your mother has already been moved,” Dominic interrupted smoothly. “Three hours ago, a private medical transport landed in Teterboro. Ellen is currently resting in a private cardiac suite at NYU Langone under around-the-clock care from the head of cardiology. Her bills are paid in full. Her treatment is guaranteed.”

The breath left my lungs in a stunned rush. “Why? I don’t understand. Who are you?”

“You know who I am,” Dominic replied, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous hum. “And more importantly, Victor Costa knows who you are. The shooter in that ballroom was one of his best men. You ruined an execution that took him eight months to plan. You took seven rounds meant for my mother, Clara. In my world, that makes you a miracle. In Costa’s world, it makes you an insult that must be erased.”

Panic, cold and sharp, pierced through the haze of morphine. “An insult? I’m a waitress! I was just trying to stop him from shooting an old woman!”

“Isabella is not just an old woman. She is the matriarch of the Rossi family,” Dominic said, his jaw tightening. “And Costa doesn’t care about your resume. Within two hours of the shooting, your face, your home address, and your mother’s hospital records were circulating among every hitman from here to Philadelphia. If I had left you as a nameless witness in a public ICU, you wouldn't have survived the night.”

“So you… you bought my mother’s hospital?”

“I secured your family,” Dominic said. Then, slowly, deliberately, he raised his own left hand.

A matching band of platinum gleamed on his finger.

My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit. “No.”

“Yes.”

“You can’t do that! I was unconscious! That’s not legal, that’s not real!”

“In the state of New York, an expedited emergency marriage license with power of attorney can be executed under specific judicial dispensations—especially when the presiding judge owes me his seat,” Dominic said, completely unbothered by my rising hysteria. “Legally, Clara, you are my wife. Culturally, within the five families, you are under the Rossi blood oath. Anyone who raises a hand against you declares war on the entire eastern seaboard.”

Tears of pure frustration and shock spilled over my lashes, hot against my cold cheeks. “I didn't ask for this! I don't want to be in your war!”

“You stepped into it the moment you threw yourself in front of my mother,” Dominic whispered. He leaned closer, until his face was inches from mine. The scent of expensive cologne, cedarwood, and faint gunpowder enveloped me. “I didn't choose the battlefield, Clara. But now that you’re on it, I will not let you die.”

Behind him, the heavy wooden door creaked open. Enzo, the stone-faced man with the silver-streaked hair from the ballroom, stepped inside. His eyes flicked to me, then to Dominic.

“Boss,” Enzo said quietly. “Costa just called an emergency meeting of the Commission. He’s claiming the girl is an unauthorized civilian witness who needs to be handed over for questioning. He knows she woke up.”

Dominic didn’t look away from me. He reached out with his thumb and wiped a stray tear from my cheekbone, his touch lingering with an intensity that sent a bizarre shiver through my spine.

“Tell Costa that my wife doesn’t answer questions,” Dominic said without turning around. “And tell him that if he looks in her direction again, I’ll burn his empire to the ground with him inside it.”

Enzo hesitated, his eyes dropping briefly to the medical monitors before returning to his boss. “And the file, Dominic? The one from Boston?”

Dominic’s entire frame went rigid. A vein pulsed along his temple, his midnight eyes hardening into chips of dark ice.

“Burn it,” Dominic commanded.

Enzo didn’t move for a long second, his gaze lingering on my bewildered face with something that looked terrifyingly like pity.

“Understood,” Enzo whispered, and pulled the door shut behind him.

I looked at Dominic, my chest heaving against the bindings, the platinum ring feeling heavier than lead. “What file, Dominic? What was he talking about?”

Dominic’s expression smoothed over into an unreadable mask of absolute authority. He gently tucked the blanket around my shoulders, his eyes never leaving mine.