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

I didn't sleep much after seeing the words ELLIS FILE AFTER. The police had put protective measures in place, and the man who delivered the threatening flowers had been identified through hotel and courier records. But knowing that the people behind the attack had considered my death an administrative detail made every ordinary sound seem too loud.

I began waking when trucks passed outside my building. I disliked closed doors. I could not bear the sound of a dropped glass. My therapist said that fear after trauma could move through the body long after the immediate danger had passed. She helped me find practical ways to interrupt the panic, though some nights nothing worked except turning on the lamp and calling my mother.

When Nadine asked whether I wanted to testify, I said I needed to understand the risks. We met with the prosecutor and a witness advocate. They explained what my testimony could establish, what it couldn't, and how defense attorneys might challenge my memory. I did not need to become a symbol of courage. I needed to say what I had seen and survive the saying.

Dominic offered to attend every meeting. I declined. I wanted him to be a witness to his own actions, not the person standing beside me while I explained mine.

The investigation reached another turning point when Celia's communications showed that she had been promised a payment for allowing a contractor through a restricted entrance. The messages referred to a "priority guest" and instructed her to suppress the badge alert. Her lawyer argued that she had believed the arrangement involved a discreet meeting, not a shooting. The messages alone did not prove what she understood. But they established that the compromised door was not merely an unfortunate mistake.

Victor Costa, meanwhile, remained out of custody. Agents were tracing the people who had financed the operation. Some witnesses were cooperating; others were silent. The legal process moved more slowly than my fear, and I hated that I could not speed it up.

One morning Isabella invited me to see the conservatory at her townhouse. Nadine approved the trip after discussing the arrangements with security. I went because Isabella had become a friend, not because she belonged to Dominic.

Sunlight poured through the glass roof. She showed me roses that Renato had planted decades earlier and admitted she had thought about tearing them out after discovering what he had hidden. Then she told me she would keep them because the flowers had done nothing wrong.

"I used to think loyalty meant refusing to see the worst in somebody," she said. "Now I think it means being truthful enough not to become like them."

I sat on a bench while she watered the plants. My left shoulder ached. Outside the conservatory, a bird kept returning to the same low branch.

"Did you love Renato?" I asked.

"Yes. Some days I still miss the man who read poetry to me. That doesn't erase what he did."

I thought of Dominic catching my glass at the gala. I thought of the same man arranging a ceremony over my unconscious body. A person could be tender and wrong in the same week. I had been treating those facts as though one had to cancel the other.

Later, Dominic arrived at Isabella's invitation, but she made sure I knew he was coming and asked whether I wanted to leave first. I stayed.

We walked slowly along the covered path outside the conservatory. He kept a respectful distance, matching my pace without taking my arm.

"I heard you're going to testify," he said.

"I am."

"I'm afraid for you."

"So am I."

"I won't ask you not to."

"Good."

He stopped near a stone fountain. "When I asked the priest to bless us, I told myself it was a form of protection. But I had another reason. I was afraid you'd die, and I wanted to make a promise that could never be taken away from me. I made the moment about my fear."

I looked at him. It was not romantic, but it was honest.

"You didn't know me," I said.

"No. I knew your file. I knew you were exhausted. I knew you helped my mother. I confused that with knowing you."

"And now?"

"Now I know you can refuse my help. I know your mother makes terrible jokes when she's nervous. I know you hate being thanked for getting shot. And I know I still have a lot to learn."

I smiled faintly. "She does make terrible jokes."

He smiled too. It passed quickly, but it was the first moment between us that wasn't shadowed by an attempt to claim or repay something.

That evening, Enzo gave the investigators additional security logs. He had discovered that the courier who delivered the flowers had been directed to the hospital by a member of Costa's legal staff. The same employee had communicated with Celia before the gala. It connected the intimidation effort to the access arrangements, tightening the chain of evidence.

The prosecutors obtained a warrant for Costa's arrest on charges relating to conspiracy, fraud, and witness intimidation. The legal details would be contested, and no one could promise a verdict. Still, the question of whether anyone would act had been answered. Someone was acting now.

Before the hearing, I had a medical appointment. A scan showed that the remaining fragments were stable and another immediate operation wasn't necessary. I cried in the exam room, surprising both myself and the doctor. I'd spent so long imagining one more surgery that the absence of it felt like permission to picture next year.

I called Ellen. She told me she had been approved for a transfer to a cardiology program closer to me. She wanted to come as soon as her clinicians agreed she could safely travel.

"I want to see you walking around in one of your beautiful dresses again," she said.

"Maybe comfortable shoes this time."

"Comfortable shoes," she agreed. "And the loudest laugh you can manage."

For the first time, I began planning something beyond the next appointment.

The night before I was scheduled to give a preliminary statement, Nadine called with an update. Victor Costa had been arrested while attempting to board a chartered plane. Among the possessions seized under warrant was a photograph of me taken outside the hospital days after the shooting.

Someone had been watching even after the threat with the flowers.

The photograph was recent, but there was something else on its reverse: a handwritten number corresponding to a page in my father's ledger. The investigators believed it could help identify the person who had ordered the follow-up surveillance.

When Nadine told me the page number, I recognized it from the scans.