I'd worked in the Moretti mansion for seventeen days, which apparently was long enough to forget that most people were disenchanted of Dominic.

He sat against a mountain of pillows, his black shirt open around the thick white bandage covering his right shoulder. He was pale from blood loss, bruised along the ribs from whatever violent chaos had brought him home three nights ago, and still somehow intimidating enough to silence a room full of heavily armed men with a single, dark glance.

“I feel nothing,” he said, his voice a low, gravelly baritone that vibrated right through the quiet air of the master suite.

I stared down at the large, called hand resting on the duvet beside him.

It sounded.

Just once. A tiny, involuntary twitch of the long fingers.

Without thinking—because seventeen days of picking up his discarded paperwork, dodging his scowls, and realizing he was just an exhausted, stubborn man had eroded my common sense—I reached out. I placed my palm flat against his chest, right over his heart.

I felt it hammer against my skin, quick and erratic beneath his ribs.

“Nothing?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Nothing,” he repeated, though his jaw was clenched so hard I thought his teeth might crack.

Behind me, Raphael, his underboss and oldest friend, was already fighting a losing battle with a smile, staring firmly at a multi-million-dollar oil painting on the far wall.

I leaned closer, invading the personal space of a man who regularly made rivals disappear.

Dominic's obsidian eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. “Lucy.”

That single warning word had probably frightened dangerous men across half the city. It carries the weight of blood, bullets, and absolute authority.

Unfortunately for him, I changed bedsheets for a living, and men who were actively bleeding on my Egyptian cotton didn't scare me anymore.

I lowered my voice, speaking right beside his ear.

“Then why are you shaking?”

Silence swallowed the room whole. You could have heard a pin drop on the Persian rug.

One of the bodyguards near the double doors coughed awkwardly. Raphael suddenly turned toward the rain-streaked window because his broad shoulders were visibly shaking with suppressed laughter.

Dominic stared at me with the expression of a man seriously debating whether firing me, throwing me out into the snow, or locking me in the mansion's wine cellar would be more satisfying.

“It's the injury,” he ground out.

I gasped theatrically, pressing a hand to my chest. “The injury you can't feel?”

Raphael completely lost the battle and let out a sharp, startled snort of laughter.

For half a second, Dominic's lips twitched. He almost smiled.

Then his face twisted.

It was tiny—just a micro-expression—but I saw it. It wasn't the arrogant mask of an untouchable mafia boss. It was real, blinding pain.

His hand suddenly shook harder, the tremor traveling up his forearm.

“Dominic?” I asked, all sarcasm instantly evaporating from my tone.

"I'm fine."

He reached blindly for the crystal water pitcher sitting on the bedside table, his fingers clawing at the air. He tried to grab the glass, but it rattled sharply against the wood between his shaking fingers, threatening to spill everywhere.

Nobody in the room laughing now. The air freezing turned cold.

I caught the glass before it slipped, steadying it with both hands.

“Let me help,” I murmured softly.

His dark eyes met mine. For a fraction of a second, something raw and hazardous appears there—something desperate, hidden beneath layers of iron and scar tissue—something I never expected to see in Dominic Moretti.

Then, astonishingly, he let me go. He didn't pull away. He didn't bark an order.

I lifted the glass towards his lips.

And stopped dead.

My breath caught in my throat. At the bottom of the crystal glass, swirling lazily in the pure water, was something cloudy. A fine, pale residue drifted like dust through the liquid, clinging to the sides.

My stomach violently tightened into a knot.

“Did you put something in this?” I whined.

Dominic frowned, his brow furrowing as he looked at the glass. “No.”

"Medicine?"

"No. Just water."

I looked over my shoulder, panic spiking in my veins. "Dr. Ferraro! Get over here right now!"

The elderly family physician rushed across the room, his medical bag swinging against his knee. The moment he examined the glass, peering closely at the pale swirls inside, every trace of color drained from his face.

“Mr. Moretti,” the doctor breathed, his voice trembling. “Did you drink from this?”

Dominic nodded slightly, his eyes never leaving mine. “This morning. Before the fever starts.”

"How much?"

"Half the glass."

Dr. Ferraro grabbed Dominic's untouched medication packets from the tray. Every single blister pack was completely sealed. Nothing had been tampered with there.

A cold, terrifying realization crawled through my veins, freezing the blood in my chest.

His trembling hadn't been from exhaustion. It hadn't been from the gunshot wound.

Someone had poisoned him. Right here in his own bed.

Dominic stared at the glass in my hands, and in a single heartbeat, the wounded, vulnerable man I'd been teasing completely disappeared.

What remains is the monster everyone else feared.

The temperature in the room plummeted. When he spoke, his voice wasn't loud, but it was terrifyingly, deathly calm.

"Lock the floor."

Raphael moved instantly, his friendly demeanor gone, pulling his weapon and signaling the guards at the door.

Heavy deadbolts clicked into place. The bedroom doors were sealed tight.

And as I stood beside Dominic with the poisoned glass still trembling between my hands, one horrifying thought hit me harder than the gunshot wound ever could: