The Mafia Boss’s Stubborn Nurse and the Secret in the Bloodstained Sheets

By noon, the master suite had been transformed back into a sterile, high-end medical ward.

I stood beside the bed, carefully stitching the reopened incision in Dominic’s shoulder while he lay face down on the dark pillows, gritting his teeth in silent agony. The local anesthetic I had bullied Leo into finding was barely cutting through the deep, throbbing pain of his torn muscles, but Dominic didn't complain.

"You have the hands of a surgeon," Dominic muttered into the pillow, his voice muffled. "Why were you working nights in an emergency room instead of running a trauma unit?"

"Budget cuts, hospital politics, and the unfortunate habit of speaking my mind to senior physicians who thought they were gods," I replied, pulling the suture tight and snipping the thread with surgical scissors. "Same reason I'm stitching up a mafia boss in a mountain fortress instead of sleeping in my own apartment."

He turned his head slightly, his dark eyes fixing on me with intense curiosity. "You saved my life twice in twelve hours. Once by pulling the infection out of my flesh, and once by standing in front of Marcus's gun."

"I stood in front of his gun because I was paralyzed by terror, not because I'm a hero," I corrected, applying a fresh antibiotic patch and securing it with medical tape. "Now roll over slowly before you ruin my handiwork."

He groaned, gingerly rolling onto his left side. The fever had finally broken around sunrise, leaving his skin cool and damp, though the exhaustion was carved deep into the lines of his face.

"Leo found your landlord," Dominic said quietly, watching me pack my medical instruments.

I froze, my hand hovering over the zipper of my duffel bag. My stomach dropped into a cold, hard knot. "My landlord? Why were you looking up my landlord?"

"Because rent is due Monday," Dominic said smoothly. "And as you pointed out multiple times, if my nurse gets evicted, my recovery suffers. So I bought your apartment building."

I spun around, staring at him as if he had grown a second head. "You what?"

"I bought the building," he repeated, his expression entirely deadpan. "And I waived your back rent for the next six months. Consider it a hazard bonus for dealing with my stubbornness."

"I don't charity, Mr. Rossi," I snapped, my cheeks flushing with sudden heat. "I earn my money. I work for it. I don't need a mob boss playing real estate mogul with my living arrangements."

"It's not charity," he countered, pushing himself up slightly on his good elbow. "It's an investment in my medical care. You think I want a nurse who is stressed about eviction sticking needles into my chest? Absolutely not. You're staying in that apartment, and you're coming back here every day until this shoulder is fully healed."

"You can't just dictate my life!"

"Nora," he said, his voice dropping to that low, hypnotic hum that commanded total obedience from everyone in his orbit. "I just executed my second-in-command in a conservatory, took over a multi-million-dollar syndicate before breakfast, and bought a ten-unit apartment building just to keep my nurse from sleeping in her rusted sedan. Dictating things is kind of my specialty."

I opened my mouth to retort, but no words came out. He was infuriating, arrogant, impossible—and entirely, terrifyingly right.

Before I could formulate a sarcastic response, a soft knock sounded at the double doors. Leo pushed them open, holding a heavy manila envelope bearing the Rossi family seal.

"Boss," Leo said, his expression unusually grim. "We searched Marcus's private office downstairs. We found this in his wall safe."

Dominic took the envelope with his left hand, sliding out a stack of faded photographs and a typewritten document. As his eyes scanned the words, the color drained from his face entirely, leaving him looking more shaken than he had when Marcus pointed a gun at my head.

"What is it?" I asked, stepping closer.

Dominic didn't answer immediately. He handed the typewritten paper to me.

My eyes raced across the lines. It was a medical report dated eighteen years ago—from a private clinic in Zurich.

It detailed a routine maternity admission.

And the name on the discharge paperwork wasn't an unknown civilian.

It was Elena Rossi. Dominic’s mother, who had supposedly died in a tragic car accident when he was ten years old.

Except the paperwork didn't say she died in a car crash.

It said she gave birth to a healthy baby girl—and that the child was immediately handed over to an adoption agency by order of Arthur Rossi, Dominic’s father.