Chapter 1
Rico
Pain is the first thing that finds me when consciousness begins clawing its way back.
It isn’t sharp enough to be clean, and it isn’t distant enough to ignore.
It is deep, hot, and relentless, buried somewhere beneath my ribs where every breath drags against the wound and reminds my body that something has gone terribly wrong.
For several seconds, I keep my eyes closed and lie perfectly still, listening instead of moving.
I have spent my entire life learning that the first moments after violence are rarely the moments when you should trust what you see.
Sight can lie when blood is leaving your body, adrenaline is fading, and the mind is struggling to separate memory from reality.
Sound is harder to fool, and what I hear tells me more than anything my eyes could.
Voices move around me, low and controlled, belonging to men who have already regained command of a situation that only moments ago was chaos.
I recognize them one by one, even through the fog clouding my mind, and the realization settles slowly into place.
I am no longer lying on the ballroom floor beneath the chandeliers of my brother’s wedding.
They got me out. They got me somewhere secure. More importantly, I am still alive.
For now.
I try to move my right hand, but the simple effort sends a wave of pain through my side so fierce that my fingers barely twitch before falling still again.
My breathing catches, and somewhere in the haze of my mind, memory returns with brutal clarity: the wedding, the gunshots, the instinctive turn toward the threat, and then the impact that tore through my side before I could get my weapon clear.
I remember Caterina screaming my name. I remember Giuseppe moving toward her.
I remember Dario's voice cutting through the chaos as our men secured the room, and I remember the pressure of someone's hands against the wound while blood soaked through my clothes and pooled beneath me.
After that, everything fractures into disconnected pieces—the cold marble beneath my back, someone shouting that I was losing too much blood, the distant sound of men moving, and then nothing.
My fingers flex again, slower this time, and I feel the unfamiliar softness beneath me.
A mattress. Sheets. A bed. The realization should bring relief, but relief has never been something I trust. If they brought me here instead of a hospital, there was a reason, and in our world, reasons rarely have anything to do with convenience.
A hospital means police questions, cameras, records, strangers who might remember the wrong face at the wrong time, and too many opportunities for information to escape through doors that should have remained closed.
A private location means control. It means Dario decided there was something we couldn't risk exposing.
It means the men around me believe they can keep me alive without outside help.
That confidence is either reassuring or completely insane.
Another pulse of pain rolls through me, and this time I force my eyes open.
The ceiling above me is unfamiliar, painted a pale color that looks almost white beneath the harsh overhead lighting.
The room smells sterile, but not like a hospital.
There is disinfectant in the air, mixed with the metallic scent of blood that no amount of cleaning can completely erase.
My vision swims for a moment before settling, and when it does, I begin taking inventory of the room the same way I would assess any threat.
Giuseppe is standing several feet away, still wearing the clothes from the wedding, though his jacket is gone and his white shirt is streaked with blood that I know isn't his.
His face is harder than I've seen it in years, his jaw clenched as he watches the woman working over me.
Dario stands farther back, silent and immovable, his attention moving between the doctor and the men stationed around the room.
No one speaks unless there is a reason to.
Then I notice her.
I don't know her name yet, but I know immediately that she doesn't belong in this room.
She stands at my side with dark hair pulled away from her face and her sleeves pushed back, exposing forearms marked by the faint tension of someone who has been working without pause.
Blood covers her hands as she works, most of it mine, and yet there is no hesitation in her movements.
She doesn't glance nervously toward the armed men surrounding her.
She doesn't ask where she is or who we are.
She doesn't look frightened by the fact that she has been dragged into a private room filled with men most sensible people would never willingly stand near.
Her attention is entirely on me.
Something about that catches me more sharply than the pain.
“Pressure is falling again.”
Her voice is calm, but urgency moves beneath it, controlled rather than panicked. She looks toward Giuseppe without actually turning her head, continuing whatever she is doing with the wound. “If you want him alive, I need everyone to stop crowding me.”
Silence settles over the room.
I almost smile.
Not because anything about this situation is funny, but because I know these men.
I know what happens when someone gives them an order without first understanding who they are speaking to.
Most people become nervous when Dario looks at them.
They become careful when Giuseppe does. This woman seems to have forgotten that fear exists, or perhaps she simply doesn't feel it.
“Give her room,” Dario says.
The men surrounding the bed step back immediately, and the doctor continues working as though none of it matters. She doesn't thank him. She doesn't even acknowledge that he spoke. She simply adjusts her position and returns her attention to the wound.
That interests me.
I study her through the fog clouding my vision, letting my mind do what it has always done best: observe.
She is young, though not inexperienced, and everything about the way she moves tells me that she has spent years learning how to function when other people lose their ability to think.
Her hands are steady, her movements economical, and every decision seems to come from practiced knowledge rather than guesswork.
She doesn't waste time looking at the blood on her gloves or checking to see whether anyone is watching her.
She simply works, completely focused on keeping my heart beating.
There is something almost ruthless about that concentration.
Despite the fact that I am the one lying here bleeding, I find myself wondering what kind of life creates a woman who can stand in a room like this and refuse to be intimidated.
I should be thinking about the shooter. I should be thinking about the wedding.
I should be thinking about the fact that someone put a bullet into me hours after my brother married the woman who was supposed to marry me.
Instead, I am watching this stranger's hands move over my body with an assurance that should irritate me far more than it does.
That realization irritates me enough that I decide to speak.
“You always this demanding?”
My voice comes out rougher than I expect, barely more than a rasp, but it gets her attention.
Her eyes lift to mine for the first time, and the moment they meet, something changes.
There is no fear in them, no sympathy, and certainly no awe.
She looks at me the way she would look at any other patient, as though the blood staining the sheets doesn't belong to a man who could make half the city nervous simply by walking into a room.
Her eyes are sharp.
Steady.
Far too intelligent for my liking.
“If you can talk,” she says, turning her attention back to the wound, “then you can survive this. So I'd suggest you stop wasting oxygen trying to be charming.”
For the first time since the bullet hit me, I almost laugh. It hurts too much to actually manage it.
“That's disappointing.”
Her mouth tightens, and for the briefest second I wonder whether she's fighting a smile or irritation. Either possibility is more interesting than it should be.
“Hold still.”
“I am holding still.”
“You're arguing.”
“There's a difference.”
“There really isn't.”
The exchange costs me more than I want it to.
My vision begins to blur again, and I feel the darkness gathering at the edges.
I know that sensation. I've been close to death before, close enough to understand that the body doesn't always announce when it is losing the fight.
Sometimes it simply becomes tired. Sometimes the pain disappears and everything becomes strangely peaceful, and that peace is the most dangerous thing of all.
I refuse it.
Not tonight. Not here. Not when I still have no idea who fired the shot.
“Rico.”
Dario's voice reaches me through the fog, and I turn my head slightly to find him standing near the foot of the bed.
His expression hasn't changed, but I know him well enough to recognize the tension beneath it.
Dario doesn't show fear. He converts it into action.
He always has. If one of us is bleeding, he doesn't waste time imagining what could happen.
He thinks about what needs to happen next, and then he makes it happen.
“You stay with us,” he says.
I would tell him that I have no intention of dying just to make his night more difficult, but even forming the words feels exhausting.
“I'm trying.”
The doctor glances toward Dario. “He needs to stay conscious.”
“Then keep him conscious,” Dario replies.
Her eyes narrow slightly. “That's what I'm doing.”
Again, that complete lack of fear.
I let my head sink back into the pillow, but I keep my attention on her.
Something about her voice has become strangely grounding, perhaps because she doesn't treat me like I'm fragile, perhaps because she doesn't look at me like I'm a criminal, or perhaps because she is the only person in the room who seems completely unaffected by the world surrounding her.
Everyone else is watching me as though my death would change something important.
She is watching me because she refuses to let me die.
There is a difference.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
She doesn't answer immediately. Instead, she checks something beside me, adjusts the pressure against the wound, and only then looks down at me.
“Dr. Olivia Cross.”
The name settles somewhere in my mind.
Olivia Cross.
I repeat it silently, testing the sound of it in my head while her hands continue their work.
“What happened to you?” she asks.
The question surprises me enough that I look at her properly.
“What?”
“Your breathing changed when you asked my name.”
I stare at her.
She watches me for another second before turning back toward the equipment beside the bed. “Pain can make people say strange things. So can blood loss. I need to know whether you're confused.”
“I'm not confused.”
“Good.”
“Someone shot me.”
“I gathered that.”
I almost smile again.
There is something about this woman that I haven't decided whether I like yet.
Dario steps closer, and Olivia immediately straightens.
Her shoulders tense, but she doesn't retreat.
I notice that too. She may not be frightened, but she isn't stupid.
She knows she is surrounded by men she doesn't understand, men who have already taken her from wherever she was and brought her here because we needed something only she could provide.
Yet even with that knowledge, she keeps doing what she came to do.
Whatever else she is, she is not careless.
“How bad?” Dario asks.
Olivia looks at him, then at me, and for the first time I see something shift behind her eyes. Not fear. Calculation.
“Bad enough that he shouldn't still be awake.”
Giuseppe's expression darkens.
“But he is,” she continues, turning her attention back to me.
“The bullet entered his side. I don't know yet whether it passed cleanly through or whether there is internal damage.
He's lost a significant amount of blood, and his pressure is unstable. I can keep him alive for now, but he needs surgery.”
The room changes.
I feel it even before anyone speaks.
Surgery.
That word carries consequences none of us need explained.
The kind of consequences that involve hospitals, questions, records, and people who don't understand that some problems are better solved behind closed doors.
If the bullet is still inside me, the situation is worse than I thought, and if Olivia is right about the internal bleeding, then the time we have is measured in minutes rather than hours.
Dario's gaze hardens.
“Can you do it here?”
Olivia looks around the room, and for the first time since I opened my eyes, I see uncertainty touch her expression. It isn't fear. It is calculation, the rapid assessment of a doctor realizing that the tools available to her are nowhere near what she needs.
“Not properly.”
“Then what do you need?”
“A sterile surgical environment. Blood. Equipment. An anesthesiologist. Surgical instruments. Monitoring equipment. More hands than I have right now.”
Dario doesn't hesitate.
“You'll have them.”
Her eyes narrow slightly.
“You don't understand.”
“I understand exactly what you said.”
“No,” she says, her voice sharpening as she finally looks directly at him. “You don't. If you take me somewhere like this and expect me to operate without the equipment I need, you aren't asking me to save him. You're asking me to guess.”
Dario's expression becomes completely still.
Giuseppe takes a step forward.
I stop him with the smallest movement of my hand.
Olivia notices.
Her eyes flick toward me, and for a moment neither of us speaks.
Something passes between us that I can't quite name.
Maybe it's understanding. Maybe it's curiosity.
Maybe it's the first recognition that the woman standing beside my bed is not simply a doctor we dragged into our world because we needed her skills.
She is someone who will challenge us.
And for reasons I don't understand yet, I find myself wanting to know exactly how far that challenge will go.
The darkness begins creeping back into the edges of my vision, but this time I don't welcome it.
I keep my eyes on Olivia for as long as I can, watching the determination settle back into her expression as she turns toward the equipment and prepares to fight for my life with whatever she has available.
The last thing I register before the room begins to blur again is the sound of her voice, calm and unwavering as she gives another order.
And somehow, despite the blood loss, the pain, and the knowledge that someone inside our world had just tried to kill me, that voice is the one thing I trust enough to follow into the dark.