Chapter 2 - The Phantom King’s Retainer
The hospital room was dead quiet, save for the rhythmic hiss of the oxygen line and the steady, mechanical pulse of the heart monitor. Isla stood with her palm resting firmly against Dominic Ashford’s uninjured shoulder, her fingers feeling the dense, hard muscle beneath the hospital gown.
“Six weeks,” Dominic repeated, his dark eyes locking onto hers with a terrifying intensity that made the surrounding air feel thick and electric.
Isla’s hand dropped to her side. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic rhythm that contrasted sharply with the unhurried cadence of his speech. “Mr. Ashford, I am a nurse at St. Mercy Medical Center. I am not your personal caretaker, and I am certainly not on your payroll beyond last night.”
“You think fifty thousand dollars bought a single evening, Isla?” Dominic tilted his head, a faint, humorless smirk touching the corners of his mouth. “In my world, fifty thousand dollars is what I spend on a round of scotch for people I despise. What I gave you last night was a retainer.”
“A retainer?” Isla’s voice rose, sharp with disbelief, though she kept it low enough not to rouse the armed sentinels standing watch outside the frosted glass door. “I didn’t sign anything. I didn’t agree to a long-term arrangement!”
“You stayed,” Dominic pointed out smoothly, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress. Despite the wince that flashed across his olive-toned face—a clear betrayal of his fresh surgical sutures—he stood up with calculated grace. “You stayed while four of my best men guarded the corridor. You watched me sleep without flinching. You didn't run when you realized who I was. That wasn't nursing, Isla. That was survival instinct, and it tells me you have the nerve I need.”
“Need for what?”
Before Dominic could answer, the door swung open. Carter, the burly, stone-faced guard who had shadowed the mafia boss since he was wheeled into the emergency room, stepped inside. He held a sleek, black leather briefcase in one hand and a set of crisp discharge papers in the other.
“The car is waiting in the subterranean bay, Boss,” Carter said, his eyes flicking briefly toward Isla with cold indifference. Then, he placed the heavy briefcase on the rolling medical tray and popped the latches.
The lid sprang open to reveal neat stacks of crisp, banded hundred-dollar bills. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, glowing under the harsh fluorescent lights.
“Your brother Marco is turning thirteen next month, isn’t he?” Dominic asked softly, walking over to the tray and running a scarred finger along the top band of cash. “St. Jude’s Academy has a tuition fee that your night-shift salary won't cover for the next decade. Not to mention the mortgage on that crumbling house on Maple Street, which the bank is scheduled to foreclose on in exactly fourteen days.”
Isla froze. The blood drained from her face, leaving her feeling dizzy. “You checked into my personal life.”
“In my line of work, information is oxygen,” Dominic said without an ounce of apology. He closed the briefcase and slid it across the metal tray until it bumped gently against her scuffed sneakers. “That briefcase contains two hundred thousand dollars. Tax-free. It clears every debt you have, pays for Marco’s education through high school, and leaves enough in reserve to buy that sedan you’re driving twice over.”
“And what’s the catch?” Isla whispered, her voice trembling. Nothing in Chicago came this easy. Everyone knew the Phantom King’s favors carried a price tag written in blood.
“The catch,” Dominic said, stepping close enough for her to catch the faint scent of cedar, leather, and dried iron, “is that my enemies know I was wounded. They know someone kept me alive through the night. By tonight, the Syndicate will trace those medical logs. St. Mercy will no longer be safe for you. If you walk out of these doors and go back to your normal life, you become a target simply because you spent twelve hours in my orbit.”
The gravity of his words hit her like a physical blow. She thought of Marco, waiting for her at home with a stack of comic books and a microwave dinner. If the men who shot Dominic Ashford decided to tie up loose ends...
“You’re not giving me a choice,” Isla said, her voice dropping an octave, filled with a sudden, fierce defiance that caught the mafia boss completely off guard.
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“I am offering you a fortress,” Dominic corrected, his gaze burning into hers. “Move into the Ashford estate on the North Shore. Be my private nurse for six weeks while these wounds heal. Keep me anchored when the nightmares come. In exchange, your family is protected by an army, your debts are erased, and no one in the underworld will ever dare look at you twice.”
Isla looked down at the briefcase, then back up at the terrifying, magnetic man who had just rewritten the rules of her existence. She didn't know it yet, but this choice was the exact moment she stepped off the edge of the world she knew and fell straight into the abyss.
