Chapter 3 - The Waking of the King
The private medical suite beneath the Bellandi estate didn't look like a mobster’s hideout. It was a multi-million-dollar surgical bay equipped with modern trauma gear, stainless steel monitoring towers, and bulletproof glass partitions.
For forty-eight hours, Mara Donnelly did not sleep.
She stayed at Vittorio Bellandi’s bedside, managing his blood pressure drops, monitoring his pulmonary ventilation, and personally mixing every single drop of antibiotics that went into his IV bag. She trusted no one. Not the private guards standing outside the reinforced door, not the house nurses, and certainly not the family associates who paced the hallways like hungry wolves waiting for a carcass to cool.
By her side, resting his heavy chin on the edge of the crisp white mattress, was the Cane Corso. Mara had learned his name from the head guard: Baron.
Baron refused to eat from anyone else’s hand. He accepted water only when Mara poured it into a stainless-steel bowl herself. Whenever a guard stepped into the room, Baron’s body went taut as a bowstring until Mara gently laid her hand over his neck.
At 3:14 AM on the third night, the rhythmic beep... beep... beep of the heart monitor shifted.
Mara stood up instantly from her armchair, stepping to the side of the bed with a flashlight and a stethoscope.
The man on the bed shifted.
Vittorio Bellandi was six-foot-four of raw, cut muscle, dark ink, and surgical scars. Even pale, hooked to oxygen tubes and IV lines, he radiated a suffocating, lethal authority. His hair was black as jet, slicked back from a sharp, square jawline, and his chest rose and fell in slow, deliberate heavy breaths.
His long dark eyelashes flickered.
Slowly, his eyes opened.
They were not blue or brown. They were the color of polished obsidian—cold, calculating, and terrifyingly sharp.
Within half a second, his brain processed his environment: ceiling tiles, IV line, heart monitor, heart rate 62. Then his gaze dropped to the woman standing over him.
Vittorio’s right hand—thick, calloused, scarred across the knuckles—shot out with blinding speed, wrapping around Mara’s left wrist like a steel shackle.
Mara didn't flinch. She didn't scream. She simply stood her ground, her hazel eyes meeting his without a single flicker of fear.
“Your heart rate jumped to ninety-four, Don Bellandi,” she said softly, her voice smooth and unhurried. “If you pull against that arterial line in your wrist, you will blow the vein and I will have to stick you again. And I assure you, I am not gentle with patients who ruin my hard work.”
Vittorio stared at her. His throat was dry, raspy from the intubation tube that had been pulled twelve hours prior.
“Who... are you?” he growled, his grip tightening just enough to test her resilience.
Before Mara could answer, a massive black head pushed its way between Vittorio’s shoulder and Mara’s hip. Baron let out a soft, whimpering whine of pure joy, resting his snout against Mara’s side while his heavy tail gave two heavy thumps against the side of the bed.
Vittorio’s eyes widened slightly. His obsidian gaze moved from the dog to the nurse.
He knew Baron. Baron was a killer. The dog had been trained to rip the limb off any stranger who came within five feet of Vittorio without his personal command. Yet here the beast was, leaning against this strange, curves-and-steel nurse as if she were his sanctuary.
“His name is Baron,” Mara said, softly placing her free hand over Vittorio’s fingers. “And he saved your life in the music room. He dragged you three yards away from the shattered glass so you wouldn't drown in your own blood.”
Vittorio slowly loosened his grip on her wrist, but he didn't let go entirely. His thumb brushed over the blue vein on the inside of her wrist, feeling her strong, steady pulse.
“And who saved me in the ambulance?” Vittorio rasped, his voice dark and heavy as midnight velvet.
Mara looked down at him. “I did. Dr. Crane tried to put five milligrams of Midazolam into your line. I clamped it.”
Vittorio’s jaw set into iron. The air in the room instantly chilled. “Crane.”
“He’s gone,” Mara replied calmly. “He left the compound twelve hours ago when he realized I wasn't going to let him near your medical charts. Your second-in-command, Lucian, has been trying to enter this room every two hours. I barred him.”
Vittorio let out a low, dark laugh that turned into a grimace of pain as his wounded ribs flared. “You barred Lucian Bellandi from my room?”
“I am the attending night nurse, Don Bellandi,” Mara said, leaning down to adjust his oxygen cannula. Her scent—soap, faint lavender, and clean rain—drifted over his face. “In this room, my orders outrank your mafia hierarchy. Now lie back and let me check your surgical drain.”
May you like
Vittorio stared up at her as she expertly moved around his bed, her cool fingers light against his heated skin. For the first time in his thirty-four years of life, Vittorio Bellandi felt something far more dangerous than a assassin's bullet.
He felt captivated.
