Chapter 1 - The Shadows of St. MatthewThe fluorescent lights of the St. Matthew Medical Center emergency wing buzzed with an unyielding, sterile hum. Standing six-foot-three in my long charcoal coat, my broad shoulders squared against the freezing draft coming through the ambulance bay, I felt smaller than I had in my entire life.
My right hand, still encased in the thin leather glove hiding my gold wedding band, twitched at my side. Behind me, Marcus and four of my top enforcers stood like statues, their hands resting discreetly inside their coats.
Dr. Karen Whitmore wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead, her tired eyes holding my gaze with absolute seriousness. "Mr. Marchetti, two paramedics found your ex-wife in a deserted alleyway three blocks from her apartment in Lincoln Park. She wasn't hit by a vehicle."
My blood ran colder than the Chicago blizzard howling against the glass doors. "Explain."
"The blunt force trauma to the back of her head was caused by a heavy, solid object," Dr. Whitmore stated, her voice tight. "And there were defensive contusions on her forearms. Someone attacked her from behind, Mr. Marchetti. She fought back before she fell."
A sudden, suffocating pressure seized my chest. The air in the hospital corridor felt as thin as glass.
Eight hundred armed men obeyed my commands across three states. I controlled shipping terminals, real estate trusts, and political figures who trembled at the sound of the Marchetti name. Yet here, in a sterile hallway smelling of antiseptic and blood, the woman who held my soul had been hunted down in the dark while I sat forty-three floors above the city drinking seventy-year-old scotch.
"Who brought her in?" I rasped, my baritone dropping into a lethal, quiet register that made the ER chief physician take an involuntary step backward.
"An anonymous call came into dispatch at nine-twenty," Dr. Whitmore replied, gesturing toward the double swinging doors of the trauma ICU. "Her purse was still beside her, containing her identification and house keys. Nothing was stolen. Whoever did this... they weren't trying to rob her."
They were trying to kill her. Or worse, they were trying to send a message to me.
I pushed past Dr. Whitmore, my heavy leather boots clicking loudly against the polished linoleum. Marcus moved instantly, stepping ahead to push open the heavy double doors of Trauma Room 4.
The sight inside ripped through me like a hollow-point bullet.
Elena lay on the narrow hospital bed beneath the glare of halogen lamps. Her pale, delicate face was marred by a dark, angry bruise along her left temple. Her dark hair, usually falling in soft, fragrant waves over her shoulders, was matted with dried crimson. An IV line ran into her fragile wrist, and a heart monitor hummed with a slow, steady rhythm:
Beep... beep... beep...
My legs felt heavy, like lead, as I walked toward the side of her bed. Three months ago, in that suffocating courthouse conference room, she had looked at me with tears streaming down her cheeks, begging me to tell her that our six years together meant something. And I, believing I was protecting her from the bloody syndicate war brewing with the Falco family, had looked her straight in the eye and told her she was nothing more than an convenient political arrangement.
I had destroyed her heart to save her life. And in doing so, I had cast her out into the cold where my enemies could reach her.
Slowly, I pulled off my right glove, exposing the gold band resting on my ring finger. I reached out, my calloused, scarred fingers gently brushing a stray lock of dark hair away from her cool forehead.
"Elena..." I whispered, my voice breaking into a sound I hadn't made since I was a boy.
On the digital display beside her bed, a secondary monitor tracked a second, tiny rhythm—a rapid, fluttering pulse beating at one hundred and forty beats per minute.
The fetal heartbeat. Sixteen weeks.
She had carried my child through three months of heartbreaking grief, through cold nights alone in a new apartment, through the crushing weight of believing the man she loved had never cared for her.
"Marcus," I spoke quietly without turning around, my thumb gently tracing the soft line of Elena's cheekbone.
"Yes, Don Nico?" Marcus stepped up to the edge of the curtain, his face grim.
"Lock down this hospital," I commanded, my voice dropping into an absolute, apocalyptic calm. "I want fifty men on this floor. Put snipers on the surrounding rooftops. Nobody enters this wing without my personal clearance—not a nurse, not a doctor, not a janitor."
"Understood, Don Nico."
"And Marcus?" I looked over my shoulder, my storm-gray eyes flashing with an unholy, ancient fire. "Find out who was watching her apartment tonight. Bring me every piece of security footage within ten blocks of Lincoln Park before midnight."
"It will be done."
May you like
I turned back to Elena, sinking into the plastic chair beside her bed, taking her cold, limp hand into my large, warm palms, pressing my lips against her knuckles.
"I lied to you, my love," I murmured against her skin, tears hot and unbidden finally burning my eyes. "I loved you from the first second I saw you. And I will burn this entire city to ashes before I let anyone hurt you again."
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