Chapter 2 - The Price of ProtectionVictor moved so fast I barely saw his hand reach beneath his jacket.
One second he was beside my bed, controlled and still. The next, a black pistol was in his grip and his body stood between me and the door.
“Lock this floor down,” he ordered.
Marco’s voice answered from the hallway. “Already done.”
“Where’s Leo?”
“With me, boss.”
“I want him inside.”
The door opened just enough for Leo to slip through. He ran straight toward me, but Victor caught him before he could throw himself against my bandages.
“Careful,” Victor said.
Leo twisted in his arms. “Someone screamed!”
“You’re safe.”
“But Clara—”
“She’s safe too.”
It was a lie.
Everyone in that room knew it.
Victor carried Leo to the chair near the bed and crouched in front of him. “You listen to me. You stay in this room. You do not open the door. You do not leave Clara’s side unless I tell you.”
Leo’s eyes went wide. “Are you leaving?”
Victor paused.
The great Victor Romano, who could order men to die with the lift of one finger, hesitated because his six-year-old son looked afraid.
“I’m going right outside,” he said. “Marco will stand here. No one gets past him.”
Leo whispered, “Promise?”
Victor touched his son’s hair once. “Promise.”
Then he turned to me.
His expression told me he had not forgotten our argument. He was simply setting it aside until after he had decided who needed to bleed.
“Do not argue with the nurse,” he said.
“Was planning on chasing assassins down the hall, actually.”
His eyes flicked over me. “You can’t stand.”
“Give me a minute.”
Something almost amused crossed his face, then vanished.
He left with the doctor, and Marco stepped inside the room. The door shut.
For the next hour, the hospital became a fortress.
I heard boots in the hall. Code words through radios. The elevator dinged once and never again. Nurses came and went in pairs, nervous smiles pasted onto their faces as if I could not feel the terror moving through the walls.
Leo refused to leave my side.
He sat with his stuffed lion in his lap and watched my IV drip like he had been assigned to guard it.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
“Yes.”
His face crumpled.
“But less when you talk to me,” I lied.
That helped. He straightened a little.
“Daddy says you’re brave.”
“Your daddy says many dramatic things.”
Leo looked toward the door. “He doesn’t say nice things a lot.”
“No,” I admitted. “He doesn’t.”
“But he said them about you.”
I looked at the child beside me. The heir. The target. The lonely little boy who had built block towers under a grand piano because adults had turned his life into a locked cage.
“Leo,” I said softly, “about what happened in the sunroom—”
His shoulders tensed.
“You don’t have to be brave with me.”
He looked at me.
“Everyone keeps telling you not to cry,” I said. “But you can cry. You can be scared. You can be angry. None of that makes you weak.”
His eyes filled again. “I saw your blood.”
“I know.”
“There was so much.”
“I know.”
“I thought you were dead.”
My throat tightened. “I’m not.”
“But you almost were.”
I had no gentle answer for that.
So I told him the truth.
“Yes.”
He crawled carefully into the chair closer to my head. “Why did you do it?”
“Because you were there.”
“That’s not a reason.”
“It’s the only one that matters.”
He stared at me like he was trying to understand a language adults had forgotten to teach him.
Then he whispered, “My mom died because of me.”
The room went cold.
“No,” I said.
He nodded hard. “The car bomb. Daddy says it was meant for him, but I was sick that day, and Mommy went back inside to get my medicine. If I wasn’t sick, she wouldn’t have gone back.”
Pain pulsed through me, deep and awful, but I pushed past it.
“Leo Romano,” I said, firm enough that he froze. “Listen to me very carefully. Your mother died because someone planted a bomb. Not because you needed medicine. Not because you were sick. Not because you were born. The blame belongs to the person who chose evil.”
His chin trembled.
“Do you understand?”
He nodded, but tears spilled over anyway.
I wanted to hug him. I could barely lift one hand.
So I let him hold my fingers again.
The door opened twenty minutes later.
Victor came back alone.
No blood on him. No visible anger. That somehow made him more frightening.
“The man is dead,” he said.
Leo flinched.
Victor saw it and stopped.
“Not here,” he added, softer. “He won’t hurt anyone.”
My stomach twisted. “Did you kill him?”
Victor looked at me. “No.”
I did not know whether to believe him.
“He bit through a capsule before we could question him,” Victor said. “Poison. Professional.”
Marco cursed under his breath.
Victor ignored him. His eyes remained on me. “The note was not for intimidation. It was confirmation.”
“Of what?”
“That someone knew which floor you were on before most of my own men did.”
The room seemed to tilt.
I looked at the doctor’s machines, the pale walls, the closed blinds.
“Someone inside your house?” I whispered.
“Or inside this hospital. Or both.”
Leo clutched his stuffed lion tighter.
Victor’s gaze shifted to him. “Marco, take Leo to the private room.”
“No,” Leo said immediately.
“Leo.”
“No! Last time you told me to go with someone, Clara got shot!”
The words struck the room like a slap.
Victor’s face went still.
Leo looked terrified of what he had said, but he did not take it back.
I watched Victor absorb his son’s accusation. He could have scolded him. Could have ordered him out. Could have become the cold man everyone feared.
Instead, he knelt in front of Leo.
“You’re right,” he said.
Leo blinked.
“I told you to stay in the sunroom because I thought my house was safe,” Victor continued. “It wasn’t. That was my failure.”
Marco looked away, uncomfortable with witnessing his boss apologize.
Victor did not seem to care.
“I will not make that mistake again,” he said. “But you are still my son, and I still need you away from doors and windows until I know where the next threat is coming from.”
Leo looked at me.
“Go,” I told him gently. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You promise?”
“I’m attached to half the machines in Chicago. I couldn’t leave if I wanted to.”
That earned me another tiny laugh.
Leo hugged his stuffed lion and followed Marco out.
When the door closed, Victor exhaled once through his nose.
“You heard what he said about his mother,” I said.
His face darkened.
“Yes.”
“Has he said that before?”
“No.”
“Then you need to talk to him.”
“I know.”
The answer surprised me. I had expected denial. Command. Deflection.
Instead, Victor looked older.
“He thinks everything dies because of him,” I said.
Victor’s eyes closed briefly. “So do I.”
The honesty slipped out before he could stop it.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
Then he opened his eyes, and the boss returned.
“We need to finish our conversation.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Yes, Clara. We do.”
He pulled a chair beside my bed and sat down. Victor Romano never looked less powerful than when sitting in a hospital chair meant for anxious relatives. Yet somehow he still made the room feel like his.
“I am not asking you to love me,” he said.
“That’s comforting.”
“I am not asking you to share my bed.”
My face heated despite everything.
“I am asking you to accept my name.”
“You mean your cage.”
“I mean my protection.”
“I already told you—”
“You told me no before someone tried to inject poison into your IV.”
I looked away.
He leaned forward. “The name Romano is a target, yes. But it is also armor. As my employee, you are disposable to my enemies. As my wife, touching you becomes a declaration of war.”
“And what am I to you?”
The question came out quieter than I intended.
Victor did not answer right away.
Outside, rain tapped against the hospital window.
Finally, he said, “The woman my son trusts.”
“That is not a marriage.”
“No. But it is more honest than most.”
I hated that.
I hated that he was right enough to make me listen.
“What happens to my brother?” I asked.
“He receives treatment. Security. A chance.”
“Whether I marry you or not?”
Victor’s jaw moved.
I stared at him. “Answer carefully.”
“Yes,” he said. “Whether you marry me or not.”
The tightness in my chest eased a little.
“What happens to me if I say no?”
“You leave the hospital with guards you do not want, a new address you did not choose, and enemies you cannot identify.”
“And if I say yes?”
“You leave with guards you still do not want,” he said. “A new address you still did not choose. But the enemies will hesitate.”
“That’s your selling point? My life becomes terrible either way, but one version has a wedding ring?”
His mouth twitched. “Yes.”
I should not have laughed.
It hurt so badly that tears sprang to my eyes.
Victor reached toward me, then stopped himself.
That restraint mattered more than the gesture.
“Terms,” I said.
His brows drew together.
“If I even consider this, there are terms.”
“Name them.”
“My brother is not leverage. Ever.”
“Agreed.”
“Leo gets therapy. Real therapy. Not some mafia doctor who tells him to be strong.”
Victor’s expression tightened, but he said, “Agreed.”
“I keep my own room.”
“Agreed.”
“I keep my name somewhere. I don’t disappear inside yours.”
Victor studied me. “What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t become furniture again.”
His eyes changed.
Something quiet passed through them.
“Agreed,” he said.
“And if I decide one day that I want out?”
The room became dangerously still.
“That,” Victor said, “is more complicated.”
“Then we’re done.”
I looked away, heart pounding.
Seconds passed.
Then Victor said, “One year.”
I looked back.
“A public marriage for one year,” he said. “After that, if the threat is gone and you still want out, I will not stop you.”
“Put it in writing.”
“I will.”
“And Victor?”
“Yes?”
“If you lie to me, if you threaten Nathan, if you use Leo to control me, I don’t care who you are. I will crawl out of whatever hospital bed I’m in and make you regret it.”
Marco would have laughed if he heard me. Any other man in Victor’s world would have.
Victor did not.
He looked at me as if I had just become visible in an entirely new way.
“I believe you,” he said.
That night, a lawyer came with papers.
I signed with a hand that shook from pain medication and rage.
Not because I wanted Victor Romano.
Not because I wanted his money.
Not because his name made me feel safe.
I signed because someone had written THE MAID DIES FIRST.
And because across the hall, a six-year-old boy who thought death followed him finally slept with his stuffed lion pressed to his chest.
At 3:06 in the morning, Victor returned to my room.
He placed a simple diamond ring on the table beside my bed.
“Only when you choose to wear it,” he said.
Then he turned to leave.
“Victor,” I whispered.
He stopped.
“Who do you think sent the men?”
His back remained to me.
For a long time, he said nothing.
May you like
Then his voice came, low and cold.
“Someone who knew Leo would be in that room.”
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