"At twenty, I married Seattle’s most feared mafia boss. Three hours after our wedding, he stood six feet away from our bed with trembling hands and whispered a secret no one in his criminal empire knew: 'You never have to let me touch you.'"

My eyes dropped to the handwriting scrawled across the heavy cardstock—neat, elegant, and chillingly deliberate.

Aiden thinks his bride is safe behind glass. Let’s see how long the nurse keeps her hands clean when the blood starts pouring.

I didn't flinch. Working twelve-hour night shifts in an urban emergency room exposes you to the absolute worst of human trauma—shattered bones, knife wounds, overdoses, and grief so loud it rattles the walls. Fear was a familiar reaction, but paralysis was a luxury I couldn't afford.

Aiden reached out, his fingers brushing the envelope to inspect the seal, but he stopped himself mid-motion, his hand hovering in the air before pulling back into a tight fist.

“Marcus,” Aiden’s voice was dangerously quiet. “Who was on duty at the private wing’s security desk?”

“Our men were rotated out ten minutes before the breach,” Marcus reported grimly. “It was an inside job—or a high-level digital spoof. They bypassed the biometric scanner using a cloned clearance code belonging to one of the hospital’s senior administrators.”

“Find out which administrator sold us out,” Aiden commanded, his gray eyes flashing with lethal intent. “And tear the West Coast Syndicate’s distribution hubs apart piece by piece until they give me the name of the rat who authorized this message.”

“Boss, if we strike at their distribution hubs now, it’ll trigger an open turf war across the waterfront,” Marcus warned.

“Let it burn,” Aiden snarled. “Nobody touches my family.”

Marcus nodded once, grabbed the envelope, and strode out of the penthouse as fast as he had entered.

The heavy security door clicked shut, leaving Aiden and me alone in the sunlit kitchen. The silence that followed was suffocating. Aiden stood frozen by the island, his head bowed, his hands gripping the marble edge so tightly his knuckles were bloodless.

I walked around the counter, stopping two feet away from him.

“Aiden,” I said softly.

He didn't look up. “This is what I warned you about, Tessa. The second you put on that ring, you painted a target on your back. They aren't coming after me through my associates anymore; they’re coming after me through you.”

“Then let them come,” I replied, my voice unwavering.

Aiden’s head snapped up. His eyes locked onto mine, wide with disbelief. “You don't understand what war looks like, Tessa. You heal people; you stitch them back together. You haven't seen what I do when people try to take what’s mine.”

“Then show me,” I challenged, stepping one inch closer.

Aiden recoiled slightly, not out of anger, but from an instinctive, deep-seated terror. “Tessa, don't.”

“You think your touch is a weapon, Aiden,” I said, my voice dropping into a warm, steady cadence. “You think that because your father and your world taught you that human contact only brings pain, you’re somehow broken beyond repair. But when you sat in trauma room six four months ago with a burned hand, you let me touch you. You let me help you. You survived it.”

“That was different,” he choked out, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “That was a sterile room. That was business.”

“No,” I whispered, reaching out very slowly so he could see every movement of my hand. “That was the moment you realized you wanted someone to see past the monster the city made you out to be.”

My fingertips brushed against the back of his rigid hand resting on the marble counter.

Aiden’s entire body seized. A sharp intake of breath hissed through his teeth, and for a split second, I saw the panic ripple across his face—the ancient, terrified child locked inside a ruthless crime lord’s body.