Chapter 1 - Waking in the Lion’s Den
The heavy rhythmic hiss of the mechanical ventilator was the first sound that clawed its way through the fog of my subconscious. My lungs felt like they were lined with crushed glass, and every attempt to draw breath felt like a monumental battle against an invisible weight. When my eyelids finally fluttered open, the harsh fluorescent lights of the private ICU unit at St. Catherine Medical Center burned my eyes.
I tried to raise my hand, but a heavy, immovable warmth pinned my fingers to the mattress.
Sitting in a leather armchair beside the bed, his dark hair disheveled and his midnight tuxedo jacket abandoned over a chair, was Dominic Rossi. He looked exhausted, the sharp angles of his face cast in deep shadows by the predawn light filtering through the window, but his gaze snapped to mine the instant my fingers twitched.
In three strides, he was standing over me. His hand—calloused, heavy, and undeniably dangerous—reached out to wrap gently around my wrist, checking for a pulse that was already racing.
"Don't try to speak," his voice was low, gravelly, and entirely stripped of the icy distance he had worn at the hotel. "The tube comes out later if your vitals hold."
I blinked rapidly, panic seizing my chest. Seven bullets. I remembered the sound of the glass shattering, the smell of cordite, the heavy thud of my body hitting the marble floor to shield Isabella Rossi. But more than that, I remembered the heavy gold band now gleaming incongruously on my swollen, bruised ring finger.
I looked up at him with wide, terrified eyes, trying to form words around the plastic tube in my throat. Why?
"You saved my mother," Dominic answered the unspoken question, his dark eyes locking onto mine with a terrifying intensity. "In my world, a life-debt is absolute. But what happened in that ballroom wasn't just an assassination attempt on her. It was a declaration of war. And by taking those bullets, you became the epicenter of it."
He leaned in close, his breath warm against my ear, echoing the words he had spoken while I was unconscious. "Now anybody who comes for you comes through me. You are mine now, Clara. Legal, binding, and completely untouchable."
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Before I could process the sheer madness of a mafia wedding performed over a dying woman's bed, the heavy wooden door of the ICU suite clicked open. Enzo, Dominic's second-in-command, stepped inside with a tablet in his hand, his face carved from stone.
"Boss," Enzo said, hesitating when he saw my eyes were open. "Costa's men know she’s awake. And they just breached the ground-floor security checkpoint."
