"How is her condition?" Leonardo asked, his tone quiet yet edged with a weight that made the air in the room pause.
Terrance Brown, chief physician of Safe-West Private Hospital and the cousin who had grown up at his side, studied him for a moment before answering. It had been seven long, disorienting days, but even now Terrance was struck by how surreal this sight remained: Leonardo Ferguson impenetrable, precise, a man carved from discipline anchored to the bedside of a woman he didn't know.
Or perhaps he did. Terrance was no longer sure of anything.
"It had been seven days," he thought, "since Leonardo found her bleeding, broken, and barely breathing folded into the tall grass as though the night itself had tried to swallow her whole."
Seven days since the quiet world around him was interrupted by a cry so faint it felt like a dying ember clinging to warmth.
It had begun in anger.
Leonardo had stepped out of the car that night with a storm simmering beneath his skin—a phone call that fractured his control, a cigarette gripped between his fingers, the cold night wind slicing across his jaw. He paced like a caged animal, inhaling smoke, exhaling fury, moving with a tension that threatened to snap.
But then came the sound.
A thin, fragile note in the darkness. A voice barely strong enough to carry through the grass.
A woman's cry, trembling, ragged, a plea made of breath and pain.
Leonardo had never been the kind of man who bent toward another person's suffering. His life was structured around distance careful, intentional, reinforced through years of loss and self-preservation. But that cry pierced through something old and hidden inside him, something he had buried so deeply he had almost forgotten it existed.
He dropped the cigarette. Didn't bother to grind it out. The ember died on its own as he walked toward the sound.
He found her there as if abandoned by the world itself dressed in torn clothing, bruised beneath the moon's pale glow, her skin sticky with blood, her breaths shallow. Violence clung to her like a second skin. Whoever had done this had meant for her to disappear without trace.
Something inside Leonardo shifted. Not gently, like a fault line giving way.
His anger evaporated, replaced by a sharp, almost physical ache.
Without hesitation, he gathered her into his arms. She weighed so little it startled him. Her blood seeped into the white fabric of his suit in warm, spreading stains, but he didn't look down, didn't falter.
Behind him, Dave stared wide-eyed, uncomprehending. In the years he had served Leonardo, he had never seen him touch another person except to shake hands in boardrooms or issue controlled commands. But here he was, holding a stranger with a tenderness that didn't belong to the man Dave thought he knew.
Leonardo's expression revealed nothing, but there was a tension radiating from him, a fierce protectiveness that made the air feel charged.
Dave quietly opened the car door, his questions dissolving on his tongue.
Leonardo settled the woman across the seat, supporting her head with a palm that trembled almost imperceptibly. When he spoke, the softness of the moment vanished beneath the steel of his command.
"Drive. Safe-West Private Hospital."
During the ride, he did not look away from her. He held her upright against the sway of the vehicle, steadying her as though he could keep life from slipping through the fractures in her body. His empire faded into background noise. His anger had vanished entirely. There was only her the faint, fluttering thread of her breath, the fragile rise and fall of her ribs beneath his hand.
Before they reached the hospital, Leonardo made a call.
"I'm bringing in a critically injured woman," he said. "Ten minutes."
On the other end, Terrance nearly dropped his phone. There were very few things in the world that could surprise him—but this was one of them.
Now, a week later, Terrance answered the question that had been repeated all too often.
"She's stable," he said softly. "Her body's responding well. The head injury put her into a coma, but the swelling has gone down. Her vitals look good. I expect her to wake soon."
Leonardo didn't react outwardly, but the slight easing of his shoulders was enough for Terrance to notice.
"And she's incredibly lucky," Terrance added. "If you hadn't found her… she wouldn't be here. This was intentional, Leo. Whoever did this wanted her dead."
Silence pooled between them.
Terrance waited for a response, but Leonardo's face was unreadable as distant and composed as stone carved beneath moonlight.
Still, Terrance couldn't keep the question inside any longer.
"Why are you doing this?" he asked, voice low. "You don't know who she is. You don't know what she's involved in. You don't… attach yourself to people, Leonardo. Not like this."
For a moment, Leonardo's eyes flicked toward him a single, cold warning.
Terrance exhaled. "Right. Not my business."
He left quietly, and when the door clicked shut, a softer hush settled over the room warm light spilling across marble floors, the machines humming a steady rhythm.
The suite resembled a private residence more than a hospital room soft furnishings, warm lighting, floor-to-ceiling windows that captured the glittering city below. Every inch of the twenty-seventh floor bore the understated signature of luxury.
But Leonardo barely noticed any of it.
He moved closer to her. Amanda Adams, the name he'd only learned yesterday lay still against the sheets, her face peaceful beneath the remnants of bruising. Her lashes rested like faint shadows on her cheeks; her hair, once tangled with blood, fell in soft waves over the pillow.
There was a familiarity about her that pulled at him not sharply, not like memory, but like a forgotten warmth brushing against the edges of his mind.
He reached for her hand without conscious thought. Her fingers were warm now. He held them delicately, as though any pressure might break her.
He moistened her cracked lips with a piece of cotton, and even this simple act felt intimate, grounding. Something inside him, long dormant, stirred with quiet insistence.
"Who did this to you?" he murmured, voice barely above a breath.
She didn't answer. Only the machines spoke, steady and indifferent.
Yet he continued, telling her things meant only for consciousness words she could not hear, but somehow needed.
A soft knock interrupted him. Jack stepped in, tablet in hand, posture stiff with unease.
"Boss Ferguson," he said.
Leonardo didn't turn his head. "Talk."
Jack swallowed. "Her name is Amanda Adams. Twenty-one. Her mother worked as a housekeeper for the Jones family until her death. After that, the Joneses kept Amanda in their home. Records suggest she continued her mother's duties in exchange for room and board. No relatives found."
Leonardo finally looked up, his gaze sharpening. "Jones Group?"
"Yes, sir."
Memories flickered behind his eyes—distant, blurred, threaded with the faint echo of childhood. A girl with quiet eyes. A girl who had once stood in the periphery of his life.
"Is that all?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Good."
Jack hesitated, not leaving. He was watching the way Leonardo's thumb brushed over Amanda's hand barely, subtly, yet unmistakably gentle.
It was the first time Jack had ever seen warmth in the man's touch.
When the door finally closed, Leonardo leaned closer, his voice low, almost reverent.
"Amanda," he whispered.
Her name felt like a memory and a promise at once—a fragile thread that tethered him to something deeper, something dangerously close to human.
Something he was no longer sure he could ignore.