PART 2: The crime boss called me his wife to save my life—but the secret he kept began with my father 11025
PART 2: The crime boss called me his wife to save my life—but the secret he kept began with my father 11025
Isabella Rossi stepped inside carrying flowers that looked absurdly cheerful in the quiet room.
Her smile disappeared when she saw my eyes open.
“Oh,” she whispered.
Behind her stood Dominic.
He had traded his tuxedo for a dark sweater and black trousers, but exhaustion had softened nothing about him. He looked like a man who had spent several nights refusing to sleep.
Isabella hurried to my bedside.
“Don’t try to sit up.”
My throat burned.
“What happened?”
“You’re safe,” she said.
I looked from her to Dominic.
Memories returned in broken pieces.
The ballroom.
The man reaching inside his jacket.
Isabella falling beneath me.
Gunshots.
I closed my eyes.
“You were hurt,” Isabella said gently. “But the doctors say you’re recovering better than they expected.”
“How long?”
“Six days.”
Six days.
My heart started beating harder.
“My mother.”
Dominic answered before Isabella could.
“Ellen Bennett is safe.”
I stared at him.
He knew my mother’s name.
“She’s still at Lakewood Cardiac Center,” he continued. “Her doctors know you were injured, but they were told you’re stable. We arranged transportation for her if she wants to come when her cardiologist approves it.”
“We?”
“My family.”
I looked down at the ring again.
Dominic followed my gaze.
His expression changed.
Not guilt exactly.
Something close to it.
“Why am I wearing this?”
Silence settled over the room.
Isabella turned toward her son.
“I told you,” she said quietly.
Dominic walked closer.
“There were rumors after the shooting that the person who protected my mother had survived.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“The man who fired at her was connected to people who might have believed you could identify him or knew something you didn’t.”
“I saw his face for maybe two seconds.”
“They didn’t know that.”
“So you put a ring on me?”
“I told people you were under my family’s protection.”
My pulse quickened.
“You told people I was your wife.”
“Yes.”
I stared at him.
“While I was unconscious?”
“Yes.”
“Did you actually marry me?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
Some of the pressure in my chest loosened.
Dominic continued.
“There was no marriage license. No legal ceremony. Nothing binding you to me. A priest came because my mother asked him to pray for you. I put the ring on your hand afterward and allowed a story to spread.”
“Allowed?”
“Started,” Isabella corrected.
Dominic glanced at her.
She folded her arms.
“She has been unconscious for six days, Dominic. This is not the moment for creative vocabulary.”
Despite everything, a strange laugh escaped me.
It hurt enough that I stopped immediately.
Dominic almost smiled.
Almost.
Then I looked at him again.
“You pretended I was your wife because you thought it would protect me?”
“Yes.”
“That sounds insane.”
“It was effective.”
“That doesn’t make it less insane.”
“No.”
His willingness to agree irritated me more than an argument would have.
I touched the ring.
It was simple, old-fashioned, warmer than I expected.
“Take it off.”
Dominic reached toward my hand.
I pulled away automatically.
“I can do it.”
The swelling made the ring difficult to move, but eventually it slid free.
I held it out.
He did not take it.
“It belonged to my grandmother,” he said.
I looked at Isabella.
She gave him a startled glance.
Apparently that detail was new to her too.
“Then you definitely shouldn’t leave it with strangers,” I said.
“You’re not a stranger.”
Something in his voice made me look up.
Before I could ask what he meant, a nurse entered, followed by my surgeon, and the conversation dissolved into questions about pain levels, breathing exercises and another scan.
Dominic stepped away.
But the sentence stayed with me.
You’re not a stranger.
By afternoon I had learned three things.
First, I had been unbelievably lucky. The injuries had been serious, but the surgeons expected me to recover.
Second, Isabella visited every morning and had apparently been doing so since the shooting.
Third, Dominic knew far too much about my life.
He knew where I worked.
He knew my apartment lease expired in November.
He knew my mother had been admitted to Lakewood two months earlier.
And when I asked how he knew any of that, he answered with one infuriating word.
“Security.”
On the eighth day, I demanded my phone.
Enzo brought it.
He was younger than I expected, perhaps thirty-five, with a neat beard and an unexpectedly patient manner.
“You have approximately four hundred messages,” he said.
“From people who actually know me?”
“Mostly reporters.”
I stared at him.
“Wonderful.”
“The hotel story became public.”
“Did the imaginary marriage become public too?”
Enzo hesitated.
I sighed.
“That means yes.”
“It means certain people were encouraged to believe it.”
“Certain people meaning the entire internet?”
“The internet was not specifically invited.”
I laughed, then pressed a pillow against my ribs.
“You people are impossible.”
“I’ve heard that.”
When Dominic came in that evening, I was sitting upright with my phone and enough anger to keep me awake for another week.
Someone had taken a photograph of him leaving the hospital.
The headline beneath it read:
ROSSI HEIR KEEPS VIGIL FOR MYSTERY WIFE AFTER ASTER CROWN SHOOTING.
I held up the screen.
“This is protection?”
“It helped.”
“My diner manager thinks I secretly married a billionaire.”
“I’m not a billionaire.”
“That is the part you object to?”
His mouth moved faintly.
I refused to find it amusing.
“My mother is going to see this.”
“She already has.”
I froze.
“What?”
Dominic pulled a chair closer.
“She called this morning.”
“You spoke to my mother?”
“Yes.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That you were alive, improving, and furious with me.”
I stared.
“She said the last part sounded encouraging.”
That did sound like my mother.
I hated that it made me smile.
Then another thought arrived.
“Did she ask who you were?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
Dominic’s expression closed.
“She knew my name.”
Something inside me went still.
“Everybody knows your name.”
“She knew my father’s name too.”
I watched him carefully.
“Why?”
“I think that is a conversation you should have with her.”
“No. You don’t get to say that after researching my life and putting your grandmother’s ring on my finger.”
He leaned back.
For once, he seemed uncertain.
“My father was named Antonio Rossi.”
“I know.”
“He owned several legitimate businesses alongside the parts of his life people preferred to whisper about.”
“That is a very elegant sentence.”
“It’s also true.”
“What does Antonio Rossi have to do with my mother?”
Dominic looked toward the window.
Rain threaded down the glass.
“Twenty-seven years ago, your father worked for him.”
The room seemed to tilt although nothing moved.
“My father was an insurance accountant.”
“That was one of his jobs.”
“My father died when I was three.”
“I know.”
I hated those words from him.
I know.
He kept using them as though pages from my life had been placed on his desk before I ever walked into that ballroom.
“What was his name?” I asked.
Dominic looked at me.
“Daniel Bennett.”
My fingers tightened around the blanket.
Anybody could have found that.
But Dominic continued.
“He drank coffee black, carried a mechanical pencil even when everyone else used pens, and refused to drive in Manhattan because he said parking was evidence civilization had failed.”
My breath caught.
That last line belonged to my mother.
She had repeated it whenever she told me stories about him.
“How do you know that?”
“My father talked about him.”
For the first time since waking, fear had nothing to do with the shooting.
It came from the sensation of standing at the edge of a room that had always existed behind my childhood.
A room everyone else had known about except me.
Dominic folded his hands.
“Daniel was hired to review accounts for Rossi Shipping. He discovered irregularities.”
“Illegal ones?”
“Yes.”
“Your father’s?”
“No.”
He paused.
“My uncle’s.”
I knew enough about the Rossi family from newspapers to recognize the name before he said it.
“Victor?”
“Victor Costa was married to my father’s sister. He controlled several companies with him.”
“And my father discovered something?”
“He discovered money being moved through accounts without authorization. He warned my father.”
“What happened?”
“Antonio confronted Victor. The partnership ended. Several businesses were dissolved.”
“And then my father died.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“Your father died in a highway accident almost two years later.”
“My mother said it was ice.”
“That is what the police report concluded.”
I waited.
Dominic said nothing else.
“So why do you sound like you don’t believe it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He stood.
“I’ve told you what I know.”
“No, you’ve told me exactly enough to make me ask another question.”
His eyes met mine.
“That may be because I don’t have every answer.”
That was the first thing he said that I believed completely.
My mother arrived four days later.
The doctors had finally approved the trip, and Isabella arranged for a cardiac nurse to accompany her.
When Mom entered my room, she looked smaller than I remembered.
Not fragile.
Just tired.
Her gray-streaked hair was pinned behind her ears, and she carried the same blue handbag she had owned for fifteen years.
I expected her to cry.
Instead she came straight to me, touched my face and said, “You look terrible.”
I laughed.
Then she cried.
So did I.
For several minutes, Dominic and everyone else disappeared from the room.
There was only my mother’s hand around mine and the familiar smell of her lavender hand cream.
When we finally settled, I showed her the ring resting on my bedside table.
“This apparently means I’ve been married for a week.”
She looked at it strangely.
Not surprised.
Strangely.
“You’ve seen it before.”
Her eyes lifted to mine.
“Mom?”
She sat down.
“I was hoping I was wrong.”
“About what?”
She picked up the ring carefully.
Inside the band, nearly invisible unless the light caught it, were three engraved letters.
A.R.R.
“Adriana Rosa Rossi,” my mother whispered. “Dominic’s grandmother.”
“You know the ring?”
“I saw her wearing it.”
My stomach tightened.
“When?”
“Years ago.”
“How many years?”
“Before you were born.”
I looked toward the door.
Dominic was not there.
Maybe that was why my mother finally spoke.
“Your father wasn’t simply an accountant for Antonio Rossi,” she said. “Daniel became his friend.”
I waited.
“Antonio wanted out of some of the businesses his family had built. He wanted legitimate companies he could eventually leave to his children. Your father helped him separate things. Quietly.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Because after Daniel died, I wanted that world behind us.”
“Was his death connected to them?”
“No.”
Her answer was immediate.
Then she hesitated.
“I don’t believe it was.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
She looked older suddenly.
“There were questions after the accident. Your father had documents with him that disappeared. Antonio thought Victor might have taken them. The police found no evidence. Antonio spent years trying to understand what happened.”
“And you?”
“I had a three-year-old daughter.”
Her voice softened.
“I chose you.”
The words landed differently than I expected.
Not as an excuse.
As a confession.
“I packed our things and left New York. Antonio offered money. Protection. Lawyers. I refused almost everything.”
“Almost?”
Mom looked down.
“There was one thing I accepted.”
The door opened.
Dominic stopped when he saw our faces.
My mother stood.
“You knew she would eventually find out.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Find out what?” I demanded.
Neither answered.
Then my mother reached into her handbag.
She removed a small envelope.
It was old, the edges softened by time.
My name was written across the front.
Mara.
Not Mara Bennett.
Just Mara.
In handwriting I had seen only on birthday cards stored in a box beneath my bed.
My father’s handwriting.
My hands began to shake.
“My father wrote this?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Three days before he died.”
I stared at the envelope.
“Why haven’t I ever seen it?”
“Because he made me promise not to give it to you unless the Rossi family came back into your life.”
Silence filled the room.
I turned toward Dominic.
His expression told me something before he spoke.
He had known about the letter.
“How long?” I asked.
“Mara—”
“How long have you known?”
“Since before the gala.”
My mother closed her eyes.
There it was.
The secret he had been carrying before the first shot had ever been fired.
Dominic had not recognized me when I saved Isabella.
He had recognized my name hours earlier on the catering list.
And he had known that somewhere, after twenty-three years of silence, Daniel Bennett had left his daughter a message meant to be opened only if the Rossis ever found her again.
I looked down at the sealed envelope.
Then at the man who had pretended to make me his wife.
“What does my father say about you?”
Dominic’s answer came quietly.
“I don’t know.”
For the first time, I saw something unmistakable in his face.
He was afraid to find out too.
-END OF PART 2, –PRESS NEX PART IN BOTTOM OF PAGE TO READ NEXT PART
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