Forty-Two Women Wanted the Dying Mafia Boss's Fortune

Three weeks after Marcus Shaw was arrested, I packed my backpack.

Daniel found me sitting on the bedroom floor surrounded by clothes, notebooks, two pairs of sneakers, and the black velvet ring box I had still never opened.

He stopped in the doorway.

His face changed.

"What are you doing?"

"Packing."

"I can see that. Why?"

"Because I live in Queens."

"You live here."

"I have been staying here."

"For a month."

"Exactly."

Daniel stared at the open backpack as though it contained an explosive device.

His recovery had gone better than Dr. Hart expected.

The frightening lab values were improving. His appetite had returned. He no longer needed help walking across a room. He still tired easily and attended more medical appointments than he liked, but the man who had once measured his life in weeks was now scheduling meetings six months ahead.

That should have made everything easier.

Instead, it made one question harder.

Who was I when Daniel no longer needed a woman to sit beside him while he died?

"Did I do something?" he asked.

The question was so unlike him that I looked up.

"No."

"Did Anna?"

"No."

"Vincent? Because I can remove Vincent."

I laughed.

"You cannot remove your cousin from the family because I am packing a backpack."

"Watch me."

"Daniel."

His humor disappeared.

"Then tell me why."

I zipped the side pocket.

"Because this was supposed to be temporary."

"So was my terminal diagnosis. Apparently we've had several administrative errors."

I smiled despite myself.

Then I stood.

"I love being here. That's part of the problem."

He went very still.

Neither of us had said the word love before.

Not directly.

Daniel's voice lowered.

"You love being here."

I closed my eyes.

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Hear only the safest part of the sentence."

Silence.

When I opened my eyes, he was watching me carefully.

"Say the unsafe part."

My heart pounded.

"I love you."

The feared Daniel Rhodes, who could silence rooms with a glance, looked completely unprepared.

I continued before courage failed.

"And I don't know whether that's because I met you at the worst moment of your life. I don't know whether you love me or whether I became the person you associated with survival. I don't know whether I stayed because I wanted to or because losing another person felt unbearable."

His expression tightened.

"I know what I feel."

"Maybe."

"Maya."

"You thought you were dying when we met. Everything became intense because we believed there was no time. But now there is time."

"That's supposed to be good news."

"It is."

I stepped closer.

"So let's use it."

He looked at the backpack.

Understanding arrived slowly.

"You want to leave me."

"No. I want to leave the mansion."

He frowned.

"There's a difference?"

"A huge one."

"Explain it to me as if I am emotionally incompetent."

"You are emotionally incompetent."

"Then this should be easy."

I took his hand.

"I want to go home. I want to pay my own rent. I want to figure out what work I want to do next. I want to have dinner with you because we chose a restaurant, not because your chef made it. I want you to come to Queens and complain about my stairs. I want us to know whether we work when there isn't a medical emergency, a kidnapping, a family conspiracy, or a board coup happening before lunch."

He considered that.

"Your neighborhood has terrible parking."

"I know."

"Your apartment is small."

"I know."

"Your building has no doorman."

"I am aware."

"This plan is deeply flawed."

I smiled.

"Will you try it?"

Daniel looked at me for a long time.

Then his gaze moved to the ring box on the floor.

"What about that?"

I picked it up and handed it to him.

He did not take it at first.

"I never opened it," I said.

"I know."

"How?"

"The ribbon is still tied wrong."

"You noticed the ribbon?"

"I notice things involving you. It's irritating."

I pressed the box into his palm.

"Keep it."

His face hardened.

"No."

"Daniel--"

"That ring belonged to a contract offered by a dying man who believed companionship could be purchased because he was too afraid to ask someone to care."

He looked down at the box.

"I don't want it near us."

Then he crossed the room, opened the safe built into the wall, and put the ring inside.

"What are you doing?"

"Keeping evidence of my emotional incompetence."

I laughed.

He shut the safe.

"If I ever ask you again, there will be no contract."

My heart kicked.

"Ask me what?"

He turned.

"Nice try."

I left the mansion that afternoon.

Daniel sent a car.

I refused it.

He sent Elias.

I refused him, too.

He compromised by having a security team follow the taxi from three cars away.

I pretended not to notice.

My apartment in Queens had never looked smaller.

Or better.

There were unpaid bills on the counter, a radiator that hissed like it was personally offended by winter, and a neighbor upstairs who apparently practiced bowling at midnight.

I slept better than I had in weeks.

The next morning, my phone rang at 6:58.

Daniel.

I answered.

"Are you alive?"

"Good morning to you, too."

"Your building's front lock is inadequate."

I sat up.

"Where are you?"

A knock sounded.

I walked to the door and opened it.

Daniel stood in the hallway holding two coffees and a paper bag.

Behind him, no visible security.

I narrowed my eyes.

"Where's Elias?"

"Downstairs pretending not to be here."

"Progress."

"I brought breakfast."

"You bought breakfast?"

"Don't sound so surprised."

"From where?"

"The place on the corner."

"You went inside?"

"Maya."

"Did you stand in line?"

"This relationship has become abusive."

I laughed and let him in.

That became our life.

Not normal.

Never completely normal.

But real.

Daniel came to Queens twice a week.

I went to Manhattan on weekends.

He learned to take the subway exactly once, surrounded by enough plainclothes security to populate a small restaurant.

I learned that Daniel liked terrible black-and-white detective movies and could not cook pasta without making the kitchen look like a crime scene.

He learned that I snored when exhausted.

I denied it.

He produced audio evidence.

I threatened to destroy his phone.

Anna became part of our lives slowly.

She did not change her name. Daniel never asked her to. She kept her job as an architect and moved nothing about her life except the amount of family in it.

Vincent recovered and became unbearable again, which everyone agreed was medically reassuring.

Mrs. Alvarez began serving family dinners on Sundays.

The first one had four people.

Then six.

Then nine.

Daniel complained about the noise and looked happiest when it was loudest.

The investigations expanded.

Rebecca Sloan entered protective custody temporarily and later agreed to testify. Dr. Vale's license was suspended while prosecutors reviewed the altered records and his role in both Thomas's and Daniel's care. Marcus faced charges connected to fraud, financial crimes, assault conspiracy, and Rebecca's abduction.

No result came quickly.

Real consequences rarely do.

But the truth no longer depended on one dying man's word.

It existed in files, testimony, bank records, hospital logs, and my father's metal box.

Daniel made another decision that surprised everyone.

He began dismantling the parts of the Rhodes organization that had always lived outside legitimate business.

Not in one dramatic announcement.

Piece by piece.

Contracts ended.

People were paid out and separated.

Companies were audited.

Properties were sold.

Lawyers worked constantly.

Daniel said nearly dying had made one thing clear: he did not want to leave behind an empire that required the next generation to be feared in order to survive it.

Anna told him that sounded suspiciously healthy.

He told her to mind her business.

Then he donated a warehouse to a community development project she designed.

Four months after I left the mansion, I started working with a nonprofit patient advocacy group.

My job was not medical.

I helped families organize records, prepare questions, understand appointment logistics, and find resources for second opinions.

The first time I handed a frightened daughter a notebook and told her it was okay to ask a doctor to explain something twice, I went into the bathroom afterward and cried.

That night, Daniel found me sitting on my fire escape.

"Bad day?"

"Good day."

"You're crying."

"Good days can do that."

He sat beside me despite the cold metal steps.

"Your father would be proud."

I looked at him.

"You don't know that."

He smiled faintly.

"I know."

I rested my head on his shoulder.

"Your father would be proud of you, too."

"You don't know that."

"I know."

We sat there until the city lights came on.

The press found us eventually.

Someone leaked the old marriage advertisement.

Then the headlines arrived.

BROKE WOMAN WINS MAFIA BILLIONAIRE.

TEN-MILLION-DOLLAR BRIDE.

DYING BOSS'S MYSTERY GIRL STAYS AFTER MIRACLE RECOVERY.

A rejected applicant appeared on television and said I had manipulated Daniel.

Another claimed I had known he would survive.

Photographers waited outside my building.

For forty-eight hours, I wanted to disappear.

Daniel wanted to sue everyone.

I told him no.

Then he wanted to buy the newspaper.

I told him definitely no.

"What do you want me to do?" he demanded.

We were in my kitchen while three reporters stood across the street.

"Nothing."

"I don't do nothing."

"Learn."

He paced.

"They're calling you a gold digger."

"I've been called worse."

"By whom?"

"You, probably. In the first week."

He stopped.

"I never called you that."

"You thought it loudly."

His mouth twitched.

Then he came closer.

"This doesn't bother you?"

"Of course it bothers me."

"Then let me fix it."

I touched his chest.

"You don't have to fix every painful thing."

He looked down at my hand.

"I'm still learning that."

"I know."

The story faded after a week.

Another scandal replaced us.

Life continued.

Six months after I walked into Daniel's dark bedroom wearing rain-soaked sneakers, Dr. Hart called us into her office.

Daniel sat beside me, pretending not to be nervous.

She reviewed his latest scans and labs.

Then she smiled.

"Stable. Improving. No evidence of the terminal process you were originally told you had. We continue monitoring, but I am comfortable saying your prognosis is now measured in years, not months."

Daniel did not speak.

I grabbed his hand.

Dr. Hart continued talking about follow-up care, but I barely heard her.

Years.

Not forever.

Nobody gets forever.

But years.

Outside the hospital, Daniel stopped on the sidewalk.

People moved around us.

Taxis honked.

A bus sighed at the curb.

New York did not care that a man had just been given his future back.