The Enforcer’s Claim (Ruthless Rule #1)

Chapter 1

LUCA

Several Months Ago

The fluorescent lights above the gurney burn too bright, turning everything the color of old bone.

I keep my breathing steady even though the hole in my shoulder feels like someone's grinding broken glass into the muscle.

The ER smells like disinfectant and blood and fear, though the last one might just be coming from the kid two curtains over who took a knife to the gut in a bar fight.

"Sir, I need you to tell me how this happened." The voice comes from my left, and when I turn my head, I see her for the first time.

She has dark hair pulled back in a bun, warm brown eyes that should look tired after what's probably been a twelve-hour shift, but instead they're sharp, focused, assessing the damage to my body the way I assess a target. She moves with purpose, no wasted motion.

"Construction accident," I tell her, keeping my voice level. The lie tastes familiar on my tongue. “A nail gun misfired.”

She doesn't blink. Doesn't call me on the obvious bullshit.

Instead, she reaches for my shirt, and her hands are gentle as she peels the blood-soaked fabric away from the wound.

When her fingertips brush my bare chest, heat shoots straight to my gut.

It's not the pain. Pain is an old friend, familiar and predictable.

This is hunger.

"This doesn't look like any construction accident I've ever seen.

" Her voice stays neutral, professional, but there's a flicker of something in those eyes.

Not fear. Curiosity, maybe. "You want me to believe that someone on the construction site shot you?

The entry and exit wounds suggest a bullet. Small caliber. Maybe a .22."

Smart. Beautiful. And touching me like she has the right. I want her to keep touching me. I want those hands on my skin for reasons that have nothing to do with the gunshot wound.

"You should see the nail gun they're using on the site." I hold her gaze, daring her to push. Most people look away when I stare at them like this. She doesn't.

"Right." She turns to the tray of supplies beside her, pulling on fresh gloves with practiced efficiency. "Well, your 'nail gun' went clean through. You're lucky it missed the bone and the major vessels. I'm going to clean and dress it, but you'll need antibiotics. Do you have a regular doctor?"

"No."

"Insurance?"

"No."

She glances at me, and for a moment I think she's going to argue.

Instead, she just nods and reaches for the irrigation solution.

When she starts cleaning the wound, her touch is surprisingly gentle for someone who knows I'm lying.

Her fingers are steady, competent, and I watch the way she works.

The way she bites her lower lip when she's concentrating.

The way her throat moves when she swallows.

I want to put my mouth there.

"This is going to sting," she warns, and then she's flushing the wound with antiseptic. The burn is nothing. I've had worse. I've done worse to others.

As she works, I catalog everything. A small scar on the knuckles of her right hand—faded and thin—the kind you get from punching something that didn’t give.

The faint shadows under her eyes that speak of too many shifts and not enough sleep.

The pulse beating in her throat, steady and strong. Her name badge: Francesca Mancini, RN.

Francesca. I mouth the name silently, tasting it.

"What's your name?" I ask, even though I've already read it.

"Frankie." She doesn't look up from her work, applying a clean dressing with the same careful attention. "And you are?"

I consider giving her a fake name, but then I figure why bother? "Luca Santoro."

"Well, Mr. Santoro, you're going to need to keep this clean and dry.

Change the dressing twice a day. If you notice any signs of infection—increased redness, warmth, swelling, discharge, fever—you need to come back immediately.

" She tapes down the final edge of the bandage and steps back, stripping off her gloves.

"I'll have the doctor write you a prescription for antibiotics.

Take all of them, even if you start feeling better. "

"You're not going to report this?" The question comes out sharper than I intend, but I need to know. Need to understand why she's protecting a man she knows is dangerous.

Frankie meets my eyes again, and this time I see something deeper there. Understanding, maybe. Or maybe she's just tired of fighting a losing battle in a city that bleeds every night. "The chart's going to say construction accident. That's what you told me, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Then that's what happened." She turns away. "Try to be more careful with those nail guns, Mr. Santoro."

“Why cover for me? You don’t know who I am?”

“I became a nurse to save people,” she says, “not to decide who needs saving.”

I watch her walk away, her sneakers squeaking softly on the linoleum. She just saved my life and doesn't even know it. Saved me from a police report, questions, attention I can't afford. She saved me and asked for nothing in return.

That kind of thing doesn't happen in my world. That kind of purity doesn't exist.

Except it just did, and now I can't look away from the woman who showed it to me.

The attending physician discharges me before dawn with a handful of prescriptions, instructions I won't follow, and a lecture about following up with my primary care doctor.

I nod through all of it, mind already elsewhere.

Most men in my position would go home, sleep off the blood loss, let the wound start healing.

I head to the parking garage across the street instead.

The SUV is where I left it, tucked in a corner spot away from the cameras.

I climb in, start the engine for heat, and settle in to wait.

Just to make sure she gets home safe, I tell myself.

This city's dangerous for women alone, and she just did me a favor.

The least I can do is make sure nothing happens to her on the way home.

That's the lie I tell myself.

The truth is darker. The truth is that her hands on my body woke something that's been sleeping for a long time, and now it's awake and hungry and fixed on her.

She emerges from the staff entrance just before eight in the morning, the end of her night shift. She's changed out of her scrubs into jeans and a jacket, her dark hair loose now around her shoulders. Even exhausted, she's beautiful. She walks north and catches the crosstown bus.

I follow.

The bus takes her through Midtown. She gets off at Ninth Avenue and walks deeper into Hell's Kitchen, to a narrow walk-up with a silver awning and a bodega on the ground floor.

She uses a key to enter the main door, and through the glass I watch her check a mailbox in the lobby before disappearing up the stairs.

The fourth floor. The light comes on in a window facing the street a few minutes later.

I circle the block. I note everything. The fire escape. The lack of security cameras. The businesses nearby that close early. The sight lines from the street.

Enough for now. I have what I need. Her address, her building's vulnerabilities, her general routine. The rest can wait.

I drive home to Tribeca and try to sleep.

I can't. Every time I close my eyes, I feel her hands on my bare skin. Gentle. Careful. Like I'm worth saving.

By evening, I've run a full background check through contacts who owe me favors.

Francesca Maria Mancini, twenty-eight years old, born in Brooklyn.

Parents still alive, father retired sanitation, mother a hairdresser in Bensonhurst. One sibling, older brother Vincent, deceased seven years ago in a shooting during a bodega robbery gone wrong.

She's been working at Metropolitan Medical Center for four years, a nursing degree from CUNY, student loans she's paying down.

A credit score that says she's responsible with money even when she doesn't have much of it.

No criminal record. No marriage certificate. Her social media profiles are sparse and mostly private.

She's legitimate, but she's not naive. She knew what I was in that ER, and she protected me anyway.

And I can't forget the way her touch felt.

The surveillance starts a few days later.

I tell myself it's just reconnaissance. Making sure she's safe.

Making sure the neighborhood's decent enough for a woman living alone.

She was working the night shift, that first night, but her regular shift is twelve-hour day shift.

She leaves for work in the morning, using the same route, same bus.

I follow at a distance. The pattern repeats.

And again the morning after. What starts as curiosity becomes routine becomes obsession so gradually I don't notice the shift.

But somewhere during the first week, I stop lying to myself about why I'm watching her.

She stops at a coffee shop on Ninth Avenue every morning, the one with the chipped green awning. I'm parked across the street when she walks in one morning, and through the open door I hear her order. "Oat milk latte, extra shot, please."

The barista knows her, jokes about the extra caffeine. She laughs, and the sound makes my cock twitch. I grip the steering wheel hard enough that my knuckles go white, imagining what she'd sound like laughing in my bed. Under me. Because of me.

Mine.

The thought comes unbidden, but once it's there, I can't shake it. My Francesca. My girl who saved my life and asked no questions.

The first time I break into her apartment, it's a weekday afternoon.

She's at work. I tell myself I'm checking the locks, making sure she's safe, making sure no one else can get to her as easily as I can.

But that's bullshit and I know it even as I'm picking the front door lock.

I climb the stairs to her apartment, and her door lock gives in less than thirty seconds.