Chapter 2 - THE DEAD MAN’S RING
The silver band rested on Alessandro Romano’s blood-stained palm, catching the harsh fluorescent light of the trauma suite. My lungs forgot how to pull in air. I stared at the intricate braided pattern etched into the metal—a custom design I had sketched myself on the back of a napkin in a cheap diner four years ago. It was impossible. I had watched them lower David’s casket into the frozen earth. I had paid the funeral home with money I didn’t have, drowning in debt to ensure the man I loved had a proper burial.
“Where did you get that?” My voice was barely a whisper, trembling with a volatile mixture of terror and rising fury.
Alessandro’s dark eyes, still clouded with the heavy haze of anesthesia and blood loss, locked onto mine with terrifying clarity. He didn't look like a man who had flatlined two minutes ago. He looked like a predator assessing a newly opened cage. “He dropped it,” Alessandro rasped, his voice like grinding stones. “Right before he shot me.”
Chaos erupted in the room. The armed men who had been paralyzed by their boss’s sudden resurrection snapped into a frenzy of motion. A giant of a man with a scarred jaw—who I later learned was Mateo, Alessandro’s underboss—barked orders in rapid Italian. Two guards rushed the door, weapons drawn, while doctors were violently shoved aside.
“Get the kid,” Mateo ordered, pointing at Logan.
“Don’t touch him!” I screamed, lunging forward and snatching my son into my arms. Logan buried his face in my neck, whimpering, his small hands clutching the collar of my faded janitorial scrub shirt. Captain Bear dropped to the floor, forgotten.
Alessandro raised a single, trembling hand. The room froze instantly. The absolute authority radiating from this wounded man was suffocating. “The woman and the boy,” he breathed, wincing as a fresh wave of crimson blossomed across his bandages. “They come with us. Now.”
“Boss, the building is surrounded by police, and the Morettis know you’re here,” Mateo argued, his gun already leveled at the doorway.
“If the Morettis know I am here, they know she is here,” Alessandro said, his gaze never leaving my face. “David Winters set me up. He works for them. He pulled the trigger tonight. If we leave his wife, they will slaughter her to tie up loose ends.”
I couldn’t process the words. David? A shooter? Working for the mafia? My David had been a mild-mannered accountant who complained about paper cuts and loved watching baking shows on Sunday mornings.
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But there was no time to argue. The wail of police sirens outside the hospital abruptly silenced, replaced by the heavy, rhythmic thud of combat boots echoing in the hallway. Mateo grabbed my arm with a grip like an iron vise. “Through the service elevator. Move.”
I held Logan tight against my chest and ran. The sterile halls of Johns Hopkins blurred into a nightmare of flashing emergency lights and shouted curses. We didn't head for the main exit. Instead, Mateo shoved us down a dark maintenance stairwell I cleaned every Tuesday. We descended into the subterranean loading docks, where a sleek, bulletproof black SUV sat idling in the shadows, its engine a low, menacing growl. They shoved me into the backseat. A moment later, Alessandro was hauled in beside me, pale and sweating, his lifeblood staining the leather upholstery. The doors slammed shut, sealing me inside a world I didn't understand, trapped with the ghost of a husband I never truly knew.
