Chapter 2: The Shadow in the Hallway
598 Words
Alessandro
The pain was a dull roar in the back of my mind, but the woman in front of me was a symphony.
I had been betrayed by the Lucianos. A simple meeting turned into a bloodbath. I should have been focused on the retaliation—on whose heads I was going to mount on pikes by dawn. Instead, all I could think about was the scent of vanilla and antiseptic clinging to the nurse with the fierce brown eyes.
She was small, but she stood like a giant. She hadn't blinked at the gun. She hadn't trembled when I threatened her.
She was light. Pure, unadulterated light. And I was a man who lived in the dark.
"You're stable," she said, stepping back and discarding her gloves. She looked exhausted, dark circles bruising the skin under her eyes, yet she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. "You need to stay for observation. At least four hours."
"I don't stay anywhere I can't control the exits," I said, pushing myself off the exam table. My vision swam for a second, but I gritted my teeth.
"You'll rip the stitches," she warned, stepping into my space to steady me.
She smelled like home. A home I’d never had. I leaned down, my face inches from hers. I could see the gold flecks in her irises. I wanted to wrap my hand around her throat—not to hurt her, but to keep her still. To keep her mine.
"Then you’ll just have to sew me up again, won’t you?" I murmured.
"I'm not your personal seamstress, Don Moretti," she snapped.
I froze. My hand went to the small of her back, pulling her flush against me. The contact was electric. "You know who I am."
"I read the papers. I know the name Moretti. I know what you do." She didn't pull away. She leaned into me, a tiny defiance that made my blood boil with a different kind of heat. "But like I said. In here, you're just a man who's lucky to be breathing."
"I'm lucky because you're the one who saved me," I corrected. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a heavy roll of bills, tossing it onto the tray of bloody instruments. "For your silence. And for your hands."
She looked at the money with disgust. "I don't want your blood money, Alessandro. I did my job."
"Take it. Or I'll find a more... personal way to repay you."
I saw the flash of heat in her eyes. She wasn't just afraid; she was affected. The chemistry between us was a live wire, sparking in the cold sterile air.
"Get out," she whispered. "Before I change my mind about the police."
I leaned in, my lips brushing the shell of her ear. "I'm leaving, Elena. But don't think for a second that this is the last time you'll see me. You saved a life tonight. Now, that life belongs to you. And yours? It belongs to me."
I walked out of that hospital into the freezing night, my side burning and my heart—a cold, dead thing for a decade—thumping with a violent, obsessive rhythm.
I needed to find out everything about Elena Rossi. Her address. Her family. The name of the first boy who ever touched her so I could break his hands.
She was my new addiction. And I had never been good at quitting.
- Writer
