Chapter 3 - The Cold War in the East Wing“Get out, Elena,” Dominic commanded, his voice remaining terrifyingly low, though the barrel of the Beretta didn't waver by a single millimeter. “Before I forget that we share a last name.”
Elena let out a short, bitter laugh, picking up a stray silver hairbrush from the floor and tossing it back onto the dresser.
“You can hide behind your guns and your brick walls all you want, Dominic,” she murmured, stepping closer to the door. “The commission knows the shipment from Marseille was intercepted. They know you’re compromised. Your little gunshot wound is the least of your problems. By the end of the week, the Rossi family will be eating off silver spoons we don't own, and you’ll be buried in the backyard.”
She cast one final, venomous glance in my direction. “Enjoy your nurse, Dominic. Make sure she has a good tailor. Black is going to be your color very soon.”
The door clicked shut behind her, leaving a chilling vacuum in her wake.
I stood motionless beside the dresser, the stainless-steel scissors still clutched tightly in my sweating palm. The word wife echoed repeatedly in my mind. A wife who casually broke into her husband’s bedroom at midnight just to check if he was dead yet.
What kind of nightmare had I walked into?
Dominic didn't immediately lower his gun. He stared at the closed door for several long seconds, his jaw clenched so tightly I thought his teeth might crack. Slowly, his shoulders sagged by an imperceptible fraction, and he slid the heavy pistol back beneath the mattress.
He looked up at me, his gray-green eyes shadowed beneath heavy brows.
“You’re shaking,” he noted flatly.
“I just hit your wife with a silver water pitcher,” I shot back, my voice trembling slightly despite my best efforts to keep it steady. “Forgive me if my adrenaline is a little high. Nobody mentioned a wife.”
“Elena is not a wife. She’s an arrangement,” Dominic said, his voice hard as granite. “A legacy merger between the Rossi syndicate and the Falcone family in Chicago. Neither of us pretends it's anything more than a cold business contract.”
“She looked like she wanted to finish the job whoever started on your shoulder,” I muttered, walking back to the bedside table to check his monitor readings. Heart rate: eighty-four. Blood pressure: one-ten over seventy. Stable, for now.
“She wants my chair,” Dominic replied indifferently, leaning his head back against the pillows. “In my world, everyone wants someone else's chair. You learn to sleep with one eye open.”
“Well, you can sleep with both eyes open tonight, because I’m changing your dressing again, and it’s going to hurt.”
Dominic let out a low, humorless chuckle that turned into a wince as I gently tilted his shoulder. “You have no fear, Nora Hayes. Is that a professional trait, or are you just suicidal?”
“It’s called having an eviction notice taped to my apartment door,” I said, cleaning the skin around the suture line with steady, clinical movements. “Fear is an expensive luxury when you have four dollars in your bank account.”
Dominic went still. His gaze lingered on my face, studying the dark circles under my eyes and the nervous tension in my shoulders—signs of a life completely falling apart outside the wrought-iron gates of his fortress.
“How much is the rent?” he asked quietly.
I paused, my hand hovering over the gauze. “That’s none of your business, Mr. Rossi.”
“Everything inside these gates is my business,” he said, his voice carrying an undeniable weight of absolute authority. “Answer the question.”
“Twelve hundred dollars,” I whispered, looking away. “Plus three months of back utilities. Total is about two thousand.”
Dominic didn't say anything for a moment. He reached out, his warm, heavy fingers suddenly wrapping around my wrist with surprising strength, stopping my hands from moving.
“Leo,” Dominic called out, his voice carrying effortlessly toward the door.
A heartbeat later, the door clicked open, and Leo materialized in the hallway, his face expressionless as always.
“Boss?”
“Get my checkbook from the bottom drawer of the desk,” Dominic ordered, never breaking eye contact with me. “Write an amount of ten thousand dollars. Make it out to Nora Hayes. Deliver it to her landlord before sunrise, and buy out her lease for the next five years.”
My jaw dropped. I tried to pull my wrist away, but his grip was like an iron shackle.
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“I didn't ask for charity!” I hissed, my cheeks burning with sudden anger. “I’m a nurse, not a kept woman! You can't just buy my problems away like you buy off your enemies!”
“It’s not charity,” Dominic said, his gray-green eyes burning with an intense, unsettling fire. “It’s a retainer. Because starting tomorrow, you aren't leaving this estate. And I need my nurse entirely focused on keeping me alive.”
