[COMPLETED] Seven Bullets Were Still Inside My Body When Dominic Rossi Married Me, and the File He Hid Could Destroy Us

Dominic stopped outside my hospital room because Enzo had said the one thing nobody else seemed willing to say aloud. If I lived, I would have questions. And the answers would make his beautiful, impossible gesture look much less beautiful.

I didn't hear that conversation. I learned about it six days later, when I woke to the steady mechanical rhythm of a monitor and a pain so deep I couldn't tell where my body ended.

For a moment I thought I was still on the ballroom floor. I searched for Isabella with my eyes, tried to ask whether she was safe, and discovered that speaking felt like swallowing broken glass.

A nurse leaned over me. "You're at St. Catherine. You're safe right now. Don't try to sit up."

Right now. Those two words stayed with me.

I tried to lift my hand. Something glinted on my finger. A gold band, too large for the swelling around my knuckles to explain.

"Whose ring?" I whispered.

The nurse's expression changed. "I'll get your doctor."

I looked toward the window. A man in a dark suit stood outside the glass, motionless. I recognized the midnight-dark hair, the angular face, and the posture of somebody who was accustomed to having every room rearrange itself around him.

Dominic Rossi entered only after the nurse asked whether I wanted a visitor. I said yes because the alternative was remaining alone with the ring and the questions it raised.

He came without guards, though I could see two of them farther down the hall. His face looked exhausted. I remembered him catching a champagne glass, remembered his mother on the marble, remembered asking whether she lived.

"Isabella?" I asked.

"She's alive. Because of you."

I shut my eyes. That was the only answer I had needed when I was dying. Now there were others.

I held up my hand as far as the tubes allowed. "What is this?"

Dominic watched the ring. "I asked a priest to say a blessing over us. I put it there."

"Why?"

"Someone was coming after you. I wanted them to know you were under my protection."

"So you married me?"

"I tried to." His voice was quiet. "But a priest can't make a legal marriage out of an unconscious person's silence. It isn't valid. I understand that."

I stared at him. The distinction mattered, but it did not make what he had done small. He had put a wedding ring on a woman who couldn't lift her hand to stop him.

"Take it off," I said.

His fingers tightened once at his side. Then he called the nurse, who carefully removed the ring and placed it in a small clear belongings bag. Dominic didn't argue.

That surprised me more than anything else.

"Who shot me?" I asked.

"A man linked to Victor Costa. He was trying to kill my mother."

"And he shot me seven times."

"Yes."

The doctor had already explained that not all the fragments could safely be removed at once. There had been multiple operations, transfusions, and the possibility of another procedure. Nobody could promise the old shape of my life would ever return.

"My mother," I said suddenly. "Ellen. She has a heart condition. If she sees a headline—"

"She knows you're in the hospital. Her care team is with her."

My pulse quickened. "Who told her?"

"A hospital social worker called her with information you had listed for emergencies. She was told you're stable, not the details of the attack."

"Did you go near her?"

"No."

He seemed to understand the next question before I asked it. "I haven't paid her bills or spoken to her doctors. I made sure there was a way for you to reach her when you woke."

I wanted to distrust that answer. A man like Dominic Rossi could make it impossible to separate kindness from control. But my mother had always been the one person whose decisions I respected even when they frightened me. I needed him to respect mine.

"I don't belong to you," I said.

"I know."

"You don't get to change my name, my home, or my life because somebody hurt me at your party."

His eyes lowered. "I know that too."

For the next twenty minutes he told me only what the doctors and police had confirmed. A gunman had entered with forged catering credentials. Isabella had survived with bruises and a fractured wrist. The shooter had been killed during the chaos, but police were investigating the people who supplied his access. My employer had been questioned. My shifts were canceled. My apartment address was in a medical record that too many people could have seen.

"There are security officers outside," he said. "Hospital security knows why. They answer to the hospital, not me. The police know you're awake and will ask when your doctor permits."

I looked at him carefully. "And your men?"

"Across the street. They won't enter your floor unless you invite them."

A pause passed between us. Then he said, "There is something else I should tell you."

My throat tightened. "What?"

"Before the shooting, I already had a file about you."

I thought of the way Isabella had touched my wrist, the way Dominic had caught the glass. "Was I being watched?"

"I asked for a background check two days before the gala."

"Why?"

He didn't answer quickly enough.

I began to understand that the ring wasn't the strangest thing he had done. "Did I do something wrong?"

"No. You didn't."

"Then tell me."

He drew a breath. "Your mother's name appeared in records connected to Costa. I thought somebody might be using her medical debts to find you. I meant to verify it before I frightened you."

My mother had never mentioned Victor Costa. I knew the names of every specialist who had treated her and every collection agency that had called our home. I had never heard that name until I was lying under seven bullets.

"Show me the file," I said.

"The originals are with my attorney. I'll bring you a copy."

"All of it. Not a version you choose."

"All of it."

I had no reason yet to believe him. Still, when he left, he left at my request. He didn't touch me or ask me to keep the ring. The nurse put it inside my belongings drawer, a gold circle that suddenly looked less like a promise than a question.

Later that evening, an investigator asked me to remember the gunman's face. I described the catering jacket, the way he moved against the others, and the direction of his eyes. When I mentioned a small blue mark near his wrist, the investigator leaned forward.

"Are you certain?"

"I noticed it when his sleeve lifted. A blue line, like an incomplete star."

She thanked me without explanation. At midnight, a social worker brought me a phone so I could hear my mother's voice. Ellen cried softly and pretended she wasn't crying. I told her the doctors were hopeful. I did not tell her about the ring.

As the call ended, she said something peculiar.

"If anyone asks about your father's old papers, sweetheart, don't answer until I can talk to you."

My father had been dead for sixteen years. His papers were an old insurance folder, a few photographs, and a recipe card written in his careful handwriting. At least that was what I believed.

"Mom, what papers?"