POV: Isabella
The smell hit me first. A sharp, medicinal scent layered over the unmistakable, coppery tang of blood. Then I saw him.
Dante was slumped in his high-backed leather chair, his face ashen and beaded with sweat. His torso was bare, the hard planes of his chest and stomach streaked with dried blood. A thick, white bandage was taped over his left shoulder, but an ominous dark red stain was already blooming at its center. On the desk before him lay a battlefield of horrors: a black medical kit splayed open, gleaming instruments, and a pile of blood-soaked rags.
My mind couldn't process it. The invincible Don Salvatore, the man who broke walls with his fists and entire cities with his will, looked… broken. Human.
"What happened?" The words were a whisper torn from my throat.
His eyes, dark and glazed with pain, focused on me with immense effort. "Business," he gritted out, his voice a ragged shadow of its usual command. "Go back to bed, Isabella."
He tried to straighten up, to reclaim some semblance of authority, but a spasm of pain twisted his features, and he sank back with a choked gasp. The bandage's red stain spread another inch.
Business. This was the business he ruled. Not boardrooms and contracts, but bullets and blood on docks in the dead of night. This was the reality he'd tried to explain, the danger he'd warned me about. It wasn't an abstraction. It was here, seeping through gauze on his skin.
Fear for him—a sharp, shocking lance of it—pierced through my anger, my resentment. He was bleeding out in his office, refusing help to protect his image. What? His image? His empire? This house?
"You need a doctor," I said, stepping fully into the room, closing the door behind me.
"No." The refusal was absolute, carved from stone even in his weakness. "No doctors. No hospitals. Marco cleaned it."
I glanced at the bloody rags. "It's not clean. It's bleeding through. You'll get an infection. You'll…" "Die," my mind supplied, and the thought was a void I couldn't look into.
He shook his head, a minute movement that cost him. "The bullet went through. It just needs… pressure. It'll clot."
I'd taken a first-aid course years ago, working at a community center. I knew what a through-and-through gunshot wound could do. I knew about exit wounds, about tissue damage, and about the risk of hemothorax. His shallow, rapid breathing told me he might be in trouble a pressure bandage couldn't fix.
I turned and yanked open the office door. Marco was there, leaning against the wall, his face grim. He'd heard everything.
"He needs proper medical attention," I said, my voice trembling but clear.
"He won't allow it," Marco replied, his eyes hollow. "He's the Don. Showing this kind of weakness… It's an invitation for every rival and every ambitious captain to make a move. It would put everyone at risk. You included."
The logic was brutal, insane, and utterly convincing. This was the code. This was the world. Death before vulnerability.
I looked from Marco's exhausted face back to Dante, who was now barely conscious, his head lolling against the leather. A wild, desperate resolve settled in me. I couldn't stand by and watch him die of stubbornness and pride. Not like this. Not after seeing the fear in his eyes when he'd found me in Brooklyn. Not after his confession in the dark.
"Then we do it here," I said to Marco. "You have supplies. You've done it before." I gestured to the kit.
Marco stared at me, then gave a slow, reluctant nod. "The exit wound in the back is worse. It needs to be cleaned, irrigated, and packed. The front needs sutures. It's not…" He swallowed. "It's not pretty work."
"Show me what to do."
We moved together. Marco was all grim efficiency, laying out fresh gauze, suture kits, saline, and a bottle of amber liquid that smelled strong enough to strip paint. He helped me roll Dante forward, his dead weight heavy. The exit wound on his back was an angry, torn maw, still seeping. I fought down a wave of nausea.
"Saline first. Flush everything. Then came the antiseptic. Then packing." Marco's instructions were clipped. He held Dante upright while I worked.
My hands, which had only ever held paintbrushes and charcoal, now trembled over ruined flesh. I poured the saline, watching pink-tinged fluid run down the sculpted muscles of his back. He didn't make a sound, but his entire body went rigid. I soaked gauze in the antiseptic. "This will hurt," I whispered, unsure if he could hear me.
I pressed it to the wound. A raw, animal groan ripped from his throat, a sound of pure agony that seemed to come from the very center of him. My tears fell then, mixing with the saline on his skin. I whispered apologies that were lost in his pain. I packed the wound with sterile gauze as Marco instructed, my fingers intimately acquainted with the heat and violation of his body.
We laid him back. The front entry wound was cleaner, a dark, puckered hole. Marco threaded a curved needle. "You do it. Smaller stitches. Tighter."
I'd never sewn anything but a button. But I took the needle, my vision blurring. I pinched the edges of his torn skin together. His flesh was warm and resilient. I pushed the needle through. He flinched. I pulled the suture thread, drawing the wound closed. One stitch. Then another. A macabre embroidery of survival on the canvas of his chest. With each stitch, I saw not just the new wound but the map of old ones—a pale, silvery scar on his ribs, another along his collarbone. A history of violence written on his skin. This individual wasn't a monster. This was a man who had lived and bled in a world of monsters.
By the time I tied off the last suture, my hands were steady, but my soul was shaking. We re-bandaged him, front and back. Marco forced more of the unlabeled pills and water between his lips. Finally, Dante's breathing evened out, deepening as the painkillers and exhaustion pulled him under.
Marco slumped into a chair, wiping his face. "He'll sleep. If fever comes by morning…"
"I'll watch him," I said, my voice hollow.
Marco gave me a long, searching look, then a single nod of gratitude deeper than any bow. He gathered the bloody debris and left, closing the door quietly.
Alone with him, the silence was immense. The green desk lamp painted his face in chiaroscuro, highlighting the stark lines of pain now easing into unconsciousness. I pulled a chair close to his. I should have left. I should have gone back to my armchair, to my own guarded prison.
I couldn't move.
I watched the slow rise and fall of his chest and observed the sheen of sweat on his skin. The ruthless Don was gone. In his place was just a man—a powerful, dangerous, deeply wounded man who had let no one but his most trusted soldier and his unwilling wife see him this way.
Hours passed. I checked his bandages. I placed a cool cloth on his forehead when he grew feverish, murmuring nonsense until his restless stirring stilled. The night deepened. My exhaustion pulled at me.
Sometime before dawn, my hand, resting on the arm of my chair, found his where it lay limp on the leather. Without thinking, my fingers laced with his. His hand was large, calloused, and cold. I held it, as if I could transfer some of my warmth, my will to live—to him through that touch.
I must have fallen asleep.
I woke to the feeling of his gaze.
The gray pre-dawn light filtered through the office windows. Dante was awake, his head turned on the chair back, his dark eyes clear and lucid, watching me. They held no anger, no calculation. Just a deep, bewildered stillness.
I followed his line of sight.
Our hands were still entwined on the chair between us. My fingers were tightly wrapped around his.
I tried to pull away, shame and confusion flooding me, but his grip—weak but deliberate—tightened, holding me there.
He didn't speak. He just looked from our joined hands to my face, his expression one of naked, unguarded shock. The last wall, the final mask, had crumbled in the night.
In the silence of that gray dawn, with the scent of blood and antiseptic still hanging in the air, I didn't see my jailer, or the beast, or the Don.
I saw the man.
And I knew, with a certainty that terrified me more than any locked door ever had, that I had started to care.