Chapter 1 - The Seven Bullets
Seven bullets were still inside my body when Dominic Rossi married me, and I didn’t even know it was happening.
While surgeons questioned whether my heart could survive another operation, New York’s most feared crime boss slipped a gold ring onto my swollen finger and told my unconscious body, “Anybody who comes for you comes through me.”
Three hours earlier, I was just an exhausted twenty-six-year-old waitress working someone else’s shift at the Aster Crown Hotel.
My mother, Ellen, was in a Cleveland treatment center with a heart condition that had already swallowed my savings, and I desperately needed the four hundred dollars this catering job promised.
I remember thinking that four hundred dollars sounded enormous when you had fourteen dollars left in your checking account.
The ballroom glittered beneath crystal chandeliers while politicians, bankers, businessmen, and nightclub owners drank champagne like money could protect them from everything. I knew nothing about those people—or why everyone seemed strangely careful around the broad-shouldered man in the midnight tuxedo who caught a champagne glass before it slid from my tray.
“You’re new,” he said.
“Is that a crime?”
His eyebrow lifted, and I immediately regretted my mouth.
Before I could apologize properly, the elegant silver-haired woman beside him laughed.
“Dominic, stop frightening the staff.”
That was how I met Dominic Rossi and his mother, Isabella.
I had no idea who he was.
Not really.
I had heard the name Rossi whispered around the kitchen, of course. Everyone had. Dominic Rossi was the man people talked about with lowered voices. He owned restaurants, clubs, warehouses, construction companies, and enough real estate to make half of Manhattan look like his kingdom.
There were stories about him too.
Some said he had inherited the Rossi organization from his father. Others said he had rebuilt it after his father’s death. Some claimed he had ordered men killed. Others insisted that was a lie invented by people who feared him.
I knew only that nobody stared at Dominic Rossi for very long.
So naturally, I stared at him.
Isabella noticed.
She also noticed my shaking hands.
“You look exhausted,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
“That is what exhausted people always say.”
“I need the money.”
She gave me a knowing smile.
“Then drink some water before you fall over. Nobody should have to faint for rich people.”
She touched my wrist gently.
Ten seconds.
That was all.
Ten seconds of kindness from a woman I had never met.
Thirty minutes later, those ten seconds nearly killed me.
I was passing through the service corridor when I noticed a man wearing a catering jacket moving against the flow of waiters.
Something about him was wrong.
He wasn’t looking for a table.
He wasn’t carrying food.
His eyes were fixed on Isabella.
His hand disappeared beneath his coat.
I froze.
Then I saw the gun.
“GET DOWN!”
My tray shattered against the marble.
I threw myself into Isabella.
The first gunshot exploded through the ballroom.
People screamed.
Someone knocked over a table.
Crystal shattered.
The chandelier seemed to tremble overhead.
Isabella fell sideways as I crashed into her, using my own body to cover hers.
The second shot struck.
Pain ripped through my chest.
The third shot was worse.
By the fourth, I couldn’t hear the screams anymore.
The world became a ringing tunnel.
My body kept jerking.
I remember Dominic shouting something.
I remember Isabella crying.
I remember someone firing back.
The fifth shot hit my side.
The sixth struck lower.
Then the seventh.
My legs stopped feeling like they belonged to me.
Somehow, I stayed over Isabella.
She was alive.
That mattered.
Dominic appeared above me.
His face had changed.
The calm, elegant man from moments earlier was gone.
His eyes looked almost black.
“The lady…” I whispered.
“What?”
“Your mother.”
“She’s alive.”
I searched behind him.
Isabella was kneeling nearby, alive and terrified.
“Good,” I whispered.
Then darkness swallowed me.
The next thing I learned later was that Dominic Rossi refused to wait for an ambulance.
He ordered his men to move me into one of his armored vehicles.
The emergency department at St. Catherine Medical Center was less than nine minutes away.
He got me there in seven.
Seven bullets.
Seven minutes of blood loss.
And one surgeon who later told Isabella that I should have died before they reached the hospital.
The trauma team operated immediately.
Bullets tore through my torso.
One had lodged dangerously close to my heart.
Another had fractured a rib.
A third had caused internal bleeding.
The remaining bullets were left in place because removing them all at once would have been too dangerous.
Outside the operating room, Dominic stood covered in my blood.
Isabella refused to sit.
Enzo Moretti, Dominic’s closest lieutenant, approached with a phone pressed to his ear.
“We found the shooter.”
Dominic didn’t look at him.
“Who?”
“Victor Costa.”
That name changed the air.
Isabella closed her eyes.
“Are you sure?”
“The shooter had Costa’s men behind him.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
Victor Costa had been trying to take territory from the Rossi organization for years.
He was ruthless.
Patient.
And obsessed with winning.
But Dominic still wasn’t listening to the details.
His eyes remained fixed on the red light above the operating room.
“How many people knew my mother would be there tonight?”
Enzo swallowed.
“Only the inner circle.”
Dominic slowly turned.
“And who knew you would be there?”
“Almost nobody.”
Dominic’s gaze narrowed.
“And the waitress?”
Enzo hesitated.
“That’s the problem.”
“What problem?”
“Someone knew she would be in the path of the shooting.”
Dominic stared at him.
“She was a random waitress.”
“No.”
Enzo lowered his voice.
“We checked.”
He handed Dominic a file.
Dominic opened it.
Inside was my photograph.
My full name.
My age.
My address.
My mother’s name.
Her medical records.
My work history.
My banking information.
Dominic stared at the first page.
Then the second.
Then the third.
Isabella moved closer.
“You knew about her?”
He didn’t answer.
“Dominic.”
“I knew of her.”
“Why?”
His thumb moved across the edge of the folder.
“Because her father once worked for mine.”
Isabella looked stunned.
“My father?”
Dominic closed the file.
“That is not all.”
“What else?”
He looked toward the operating room.
“I promised her father something eighteen years ago.”
“What?”
Dominic didn’t answer.
Instead, he said, “Find Father Matteo.”
Enzo blinked.
“Now?”
“Now.”
“Boss, why?”
Dominic finally looked at him.
“I’m marrying her.”
Silence.
Isabella stared at her son.
“Dominic…she is unconscious.”
“I know.”
“She doesn't even know who you are.”
“I know.”
“She may not survive.”
His expression hardened.
“That is why I’m doing it now.”
Enzo stepped closer and lowered his voice.
“Boss, if she survives and discovers why you already had a file on her, she’ll never forgive you.”
Dominic stopped outside my ICU room.
He stared through the glass.
Machines surrounded me.
A ventilator breathed for me.
My chest barely moved beneath the white sheets.
He looked at the gold ring in his hand.
Then at my face.
“She can hate me later.”
Isabella’s voice softened.
“And if she doesn’t?”
Dominic’s eyes remained on me.
“Then I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure she never has to be afraid again.”
Father Matteo arrived twenty minutes later.
There was no church.
No guests.
No music.
No celebration.
Only the quiet hum of medical equipment.
The priest stood beside my hospital bed.
Dominic slipped the ring onto my swollen finger.
His hand remained there for several seconds.
“Anybody who comes for you comes through me.”
Father Matteo completed the brief ceremony.
Isabella cried silently.
Enzo stood at the door.
And Dominic Rossi, the most feared man in New York, sat beside a woman he barely knew and held her hand while surgeons fought to keep her alive.
What none of us knew was that Victor Costa had already made his next move.
A man walked into the hospital dressed as a maintenance worker.
He carried a black toolbox.
Inside the toolbox was a silencer.
And a list of three names.
The third name was mine.
He made it to the sixth floor before Enzo’s security team spotted him.
The hospital erupted into chaos.
The fake maintenance worker ran.
Two Rossi soldiers chased him through the stairwell.
He jumped through a fire door.
And before he could escape, he whispered one sentence.
“She was never supposed to survive.”
Enzo heard him.
So did Dominic.
And for the first time that night, Dominic looked genuinely afraid.
Not for his own life.
For mine.
He walked into my room and closed the door behind him.
Then he looked at the wedding ring on my finger.
“Wake up,” he whispered.
His voice cracked.
“Because you’re going to have a lot of questions.”
I didn’t hear him.
Not yet.
May you like
But somewhere deep inside my broken body, my heart kept beating.
And Dominic Rossi had just become my husband.
