"Massima's hands are important!" Nico's voice thundered through the boutique, silencing everyone. "She's a doctor!"
I stared in disbelief.
That was the longest sentence he'd spoken in two years.
And not a single word was about me.
He pushed through the crowd of onlookers and climbed into the ambulance without looking back, without a single glance at the woman who had given him everything.
I slumped against a nearby display rack, gasping for air. Every breath tugged at the wound on my back, sharpening the agony into something almost unbearable. Blood continued to seep through my fingers where I pressed them against the gash.
I couldn't tell which hurt more—my body or my heart.
Hadn't I given up my own place in the Family's medical network for him? Hadn't I walked away from the operating table, from the work that had given my life meaning, because he needed a wife who would be present, devoted, available?
How was she more important?
What did that make me?
My lips twitched into something that might have been a smile—or a grimace of pure, crystallized grief.
So that's all I was. A friend.
Then the pain dragged me under, and the world dissolved into merciful darkness.
The first thing I did when consciousness dragged me from the morphine haze was reach for my phone.
I want out of this blood oath.
The moment my thumb pressed send, the heavy oak door swung inward—and there he stood.
Nico Volpe moved through the sterile hospital room like a shadow given form, two black gift boxes balanced in his hands. The same designer label I'd lingered over at the plaza that morning, back when I still believed small gestures might mean something. He set them on the bedside cabinet without ceremony, then lowered himself into the leather chair beside my bed with the measured grace of a man who had learned to make every movement deliberate, every action a statement of control.
He withdrew his phone from the inner pocket of his charcoal suit. I watched his dark eyes scan the screen—my message, glowing there like an accusation.
His expression betrayed nothing. Not surprise. Not anger. Not even the flicker of acknowledgment that I had just asked to dissolve what the Families considered sacred.
The silence pressed against my chest like a physical weight. The only sounds were the distant murmur of the clinic's staff and the soft rhythm of machines monitoring my vitals.
Then my phone chimed.