Chapter 3 - The Lockdown at St. Catherine
What happened in the immediate aftermath was pieced together for me much later, whispered through closed doors and guarded medical charts.
Dominic Rossi did not wait for the city’s overburdened emergency services. When seconds meant the difference between life and death, he bypassed protocol entirely, ordering his elite security detail to bundle my bleeding body into the back of an armored bulletproof Lincoln Navigator. They raced through red lights straight to St. Catherine Medical Center, a facility where the Rossi family’s private endowments commanded absolute obedience.
Within minutes, the entire private wing of the hospital was locked down. Armed men in black suits secured every corridor, elevator shaft, and exit, turning the sterile medical ward into an impregnable fortress.
Outside trauma room four, Dominic stood motionless in his bloodstained midnight tuxedo. The crimson stains on his lapel belonged to me—a physical branding of the debt he now owed.
His second-in-command, a towering, silent man named Enzo, stepped out of the private elevator, his face grim as he approached his boss.
“Talk,” Dominic said, his voice dangerously low.
“The hitman didn’t survive the second shot, Boss,” Enzo reported quietly, handing over a blood-smeared burner phone recovered from the dead assassin. “We traced his communications through an intermediary shell company. He was directly connected to Victor Costa.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed into slits of pure ice. Victor Costa—his oldest, most ruthless rival in the Queens shipping docks and Manhattan real estate syndicates. Costa hadn’t just tried to eliminate Isabella to send a message; he had struck at the heart of the Rossi dynasty.
“Costa knows my mother was the target,” Dominic muttered, the menace in his tone dropping the temperature in the hallway. “Does he know who stopped it?”
“Worse,” Enzo replied, hesitating for a fraction of a second. “The hospital intake leaked. Word is already spreading through the underground that the catering girl survived the initial trauma. Costa knows she took seven rounds meant for your mother. If she wakes up in intensive care, Costa’s cleanup crew will try to finish the job before sunrise.”
Dominic stared through the reinforced glass window of the operating theater, watching the surgical team frantically paddle my chest with defibrillator paddles as flatlining tones buzzed in the distance.
“He’ll finish her,” Dominic stated, a chilling certainty settling over his features.
Isabella walked out of the family lounge, her face drawn, her knuckles white as she clutched her silver rosary until the metal bit into her skin. “Then protect her, Dominic.”
“I am,” he answered instantly.
“For how long?” Isabella challenged softly, her eyes searching his. “A day? A week? Until our guards look away for a single second? Costa’s reach in this city is deep. As long as she is a nameless, penniless catering girl with no standing, she is an easy target. But if she is someone else…”
Dominic went completely, terrifyingly silent.
May you like
The implication hung in the sterile air between them. Protecting me for one night, or even a month, would never be enough. As long as I remained an outsider, anyone could touch me, manipulate me, or use me to strike at the Rossi family.
The answer forming in Dominic’s mind was radical, unprecedented, and completely insane. And no one in that hospital was prepared for the storm it was about to unleash.
