CHAPTER 1: THE CABIN THAT SHOULDN’T EXIST
CHAPTER 1: THE CABIN THAT SHOULDN’T EXIST
The storm did not stop.
It buried the world in white and silence, as if the Catskills themselves were trying to erase what had happened inside Carmine Rossi’s mansion.
Sarah Jenkins sat on the cabin floor with her back against the wall, knees drawn to her chest, a blood-soaked towel clutched in her hands. The lantern flame flickered, throwing warped shadows across the rotting wooden beams.
Dominic Rossi lay unconscious again.
Alive—but barely.
She pressed two fingers to his neck for the fifth time in ten minutes. A pulse. Weak. Uneven. Still there.
Her hands were shaking now that the danger had paused long enough for fear to catch up.
She had dragged the heir of a criminal empire through a blizzard. She had packed a gunshot wound with shaking hands and whiskey. She had heard the truth about a betrayal that could collapse an empire.
And now she was alone with him.
Sarah exhaled slowly, forcing her breath to steady the way her nursing instructors had taught her once upon a lifetime ago.
Air in. Count to four. Air out.
She peeled off her ruined uniform and replaced it with an oversized sweater she found in a trunk—probably left behind by a groundskeeper who had died years ago. Her apron, stiff with blood, went into the fire.
The smell of burning cotton mixed with iron.
Outside, the wind howled like an animal that had lost its prey.
Inside, Dominic groaned.
Sarah was at his side instantly.
His fever had climbed. His skin burned beneath her fingers, but his lips were turning faintly blue.
Shock.
She swore under her breath.
“You don’t get to die,” she whispered fiercely, adjusting the blankets. “Not after tonight. Not after dragging me into this.”
As if he could hear her, Dominic’s eyes fluttered open.
For a moment, confusion clouded them. Then awareness snapped into place—sharp, dangerous, even in weakness.
“You stayed,” he murmured.
Sarah stiffened. “You’re not exactly easy to abandon in a snowstorm.”
A corner of his mouth twitched. Pain flickered across his face, but he endured it without a sound.
“You should have run,” he said. “When you had the chance.”
Sarah met his gaze, something hard and unmovable settling in her chest.
“I don’t run from bleeding patients.”
Silence stretched between them, thick with things neither of them dared say.
Finally, Dominic spoke again, voice low. “If Lorenzo knows I’m alive… he won’t stop.”
Sarah nodded. “Then we don’t let him know.”
His brow furrowed. “You don’t understand how this world works.”
She stood, wiping her hands on her jeans. Her exhaustion had hardened into resolve.
“I understand enough,” she said quietly. “You were betrayed. There are armed men looking for you. And if they find us, we’re both dead.”
She leaned closer, eyes steady.
“So we disappear. At least until you can walk.”
For the first time since she’d found him bleeding on the marble floor, Dominic Rossi looked uncertain.
“You’re proposing to hide the son of Carmine Rossi,” he said. “With no money. No weapons. No protection.”
Sarah almost laughed.
“I clean houses for people who think they’re untouchable,” she replied. “You’d be surprised what goes unnoticed.”
Outside, something snapped in the woods.
Both of them froze.
Footsteps.
Crunching snow.
Slow. Deliberate.
Too controlled to be a deer.
Sarah reached for the lantern.
Dominic’s hand shot out, gripping her wrist with what little strength he had left.
“No light,” he breathed.
The footsteps came closer.
A shadow passed across the frost-coated window.
May you like
Someone was searching.
And Sarah Jenkins realized, with terrifying clarity, that carrying Dominic through the storm had only been the beginning.
