Seven bullets were still lodged inside my shattered flesh when Dominic Rossi made me his wife.

The heavy steel frame of Dominic’s assault rifle felt like an anchor in my trembling hands.

I had never fired a weapon like this in my life. But as the catwalk shooter realigned his sights to finish Dominic off, pure survival instinct took over. I braced the stock against my uninjured right shoulder, pointed the barrel upward into the catwalk shadows, and pulled the trigger.

The rifle erupted in a continuous, deafening roar.

Recoil tore through my healing ribs, a bolt of agony so severe I screamed through clenched teeth, but I didn't let go. Bullets ripped through the metal grating above. Sparks showered down into the smoke, followed by a sickening thud as the sniper plummeted from the catwalk, crashing twenty feet onto the hood of a burning sedan.

"Clara..." Dominic groaned beneath me, his voice choked with blood.

He was drowning in his own chest. Blood bubbled at the corner of his lips, soaking his pristine white shirt in a widening pool of crimson. The bullets had punched straight through his Kevlar vest at point-blank range.

"Hang on! Please, hang on!" I sobbed, dropping the rifle and pressing both hands desperately against the gaping wound in his side. Hot blood surged between my fingers, terrifyingly fast. "Enzo! ENZO!"

Enzo appeared through the smoke like an apparition, his face bleeding from shrapnel wounds, his handgun barking three rhythmic shots to suppress the remaining attackers. Behind him, sirens wailed in the distance—not the police, but the reinforcements of the Rossi family syndicate rolling into the tunnel in a convoy of armored Suburbans.

"Boss!" Enzo slid across the asphalt, his eyes widening in terror at the sight of Dominic's graying face. "God dammit, Dominic!"

"Take... take her..." Dominic wheezed, his bloody hand reaching up to claw weakly at Enzo’s tactical vest. His eyes were unfocused, rolling back. "Get Clara... to safety..."

"Shut up!" I screamed at him, tears pouring freely down my face as I leaned over his chest, pressing down with all my weight to stem the hemorrhage. "Shut up, Dominic! You don't get to die! You swore an oath! You hear me? You swore an oath before God!"

His hazel eyes flickered, meeting mine through the haze of approaching death. A faint, bloody smile touched his lips.

"My... brave... girl..." he whispered.

Then his eyes rolled back, and his body went completely limp.

"NO!"

"Move, Clara! Move!" Enzo roared, scooping Dominic up with the help of two newly arrived soldiers.

They threw Dominic into the back of an incoming Suburban. Enzo dragged me inside right behind him, slamming the heavy armored doors shut as the driver slammed the gas, tires screaming over the wreckage as we sped toward the hospital.

The twenty-minute drive was a nightmare of blood and frantic CPR. Enzo worked frantically over Dominic's chest, pumping rhythmically while I held an oxygen mask to his blue lips, my clothes completely saturated in his blood. The irony was a cruel, twisted blade: two weeks ago, he was kneeling over my shattered body. Now, I was praying to every saint I knew for his wretched, violent soul to remain in his chest.

When the vehicle screeched to a halt at St. Catherine’s private trauma entrance, doctors and armed guards swarmed the vehicle.

"Three gunshot wounds to the thorax! Tension pneumothorax! Pulse is thready, 40 over palp!" Enzo yelled as the gurney was ripped from the back.

They rushed Dominic down the corridor under the blinding fluorescent lights. I tried to run after them, but a wave of dizziness slammed into me; my own healing stitches had torn in the fighting, fresh blood staining my blouse.

"Mrs. Rossi! You need treatment!" a nurse shouted, grabbing my arm.

"Don't touch me!" I snarled with a ferocity that startled even Enzo.

I shook the nurse off, leaning heavily against the corridor wall, limping behind the gurney until the double doors of the trauma surgery suite slammed shut in my face.

*RESTRICTED ACCESS: SURGICAL THEATER.*

I collapsed into a vinyl chair in the waiting room. My hands were covered in Dominic’s blood. It was under my fingernails, on my face, soaking through my jeans.

Isabella arrived twenty minutes later, flanked by four armed capos. When she saw me sitting there—broken, blood-soaked, clutching Dominic’s gold ring that hung from a chain around my neck—she didn't ask questions. She walked over and pulled me into her arms, both of us weeping in the sterile silence of the hospital corridor.

Hours bled together. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like angry hornets.

At 4:00 AM, the heavy surgical doors swung open. The chief surgeon, Dr. Vance—a man on the Rossi family payroll for twenty years—stepped out, pulling down his bloody surgical mask. His shoulders were slouched with exhaustion.

I jumped to my feet, my heart slamming against my ribs. "Is he alive?"

Dr. Vance looked at me, then at Isabella.

"He survived the surgery. We repaired the lacerated lung and removed two slugs from his abdominal cavity. But he lost massive amounts of blood, Mrs. Rossi. His body is in septic shock. The next twenty-four hours will determine whether his organs fail."

"Can I see him?" I begged, my voice breaking.

Dr. Vance hesitated, then nodded slowly. "Only you. Five minutes."

I walked into the intensive care unit.

The machines were the same ones that had kept me alive two weeks prior. Dominic lay motionless beneath the thin white sheet, a mechanical ventilator tube taped into his mouth, his face deathly pale. The terrifying, larger-than-life monster who commanded New York was reduced to a fragile, dying man hooked up to plastic tubes.

I walked to the bedside, my knees trembling.

I reached out and took his large, calloused hand in mine. It was cold as ice.

"You arrogant idiot," I whispered, tears splashing down onto our joined fingers. "You thought you could buy off your guilt with an annulment? You thought you could just hand me some money and disappear?"

I leaned down, pressing my forehead against his knuckles, feeling the faint, agonizingly slow pulse beneath his skin.

"I don't hate you, Dominic," I confessed into the quiet room. "I hate what your father did. I hate this violent world. But I don't hate you. You saved my mother. You took three bullets for me today. You stay alive, Dominic Rossi. You stay alive, because if you die, I will never forgive you."