Chapter 2

So I gave him exactly what he wanted, and liked every single video.

I was on my way to settle the accounts with the Family's tame clinic when I ran into him and one of the house physicians rushing a gurney down the corridor.

The second he saw me, he turned his head and pretended he hadn't.

But I heard the emergency man clearly, barking down the line toward the surgical suite:

"OR One, get RH-negative blood ready, now! Ruptured ovarian cyst, she's bleeding out, she needs a transfusion and the knife immediately!"

"What? None in stock?"

The physician killed the call and laid it out fast for Lorenzo, low and clipped, the way men speak when the clock is a loaded thing.

The man who'd just looked through me like glass stopped dead, spun on his heel, and came at me.

"Adriana Falcone, if you'll give blood for Gia, I won't hold it against you that you've been shadowing me!"

I stood there speechless.

"I wasn't shadowing you—"

"Enough, don't argue! Saving her comes first!"

He seized my arm and hauled me toward the physician, his signet ring catching the harsh light.

"She's RH-negative, take whatever you need!"

I pulled against him with everything I had and couldn't break loose, so I gave him a cold laugh instead. "I thought you didn't know me. How do you know I'm RH-negative?"

I looked at him steadily, waiting for his answer.

Lorenzo dragged a hand back through his hair and shouted, past patience.

"Is now really the time for this? You're the one who keeps saying we've loved each other for six years. So in an emergency, remembering you're RH-negative is perfectly normal, isn't it?"

But I'd just come from the room where they took my child from me. Blood was still leaving me in slow, thin trickles. How was I supposed to give any?

And even if my body had met every requirement, why should I bleed to clean up his mess, to keep his kept woman breathing?

"I just lost the child, I can't give blood. Go find someone else!"

Lorenzo exploded.

"Adriana Falcone, you go on and on about loving me, and now that I ask you for a little blood you won't do it, you'll even lie about a miscarriage to weasel out of it!"

"I honestly never took you for this kind of woman, the kind who'd stand and watch someone die and do nothing! No wonder I can't remember ever loving you!"

He was right. If he had ever truly loved me, he wouldn't have staged a forgetting to break the vow and trick me, wouldn't be blind to how bloodless my face still was.

And he certainly wouldn't be forcing me to bleed for his mistress!

The monitors beside them began to shriek. The physician wouldn't waste another breath in that corridor and drove the gurney through into surgery.

Lorenzo tried to drag me toward the draw room, but I set my feet and would not move.

His temper broke. He threw me over his shoulder at the waist like tribute to be carried off.

"Adriana Falcone, whether you like it or not, I'll mark this down as a debt I owe you. Worst case, I'll go through with the wedding feast on the appointed day!"

In that instant, all my struggling died down.

For the sake of the night he'd once bled to pull me out of the enemy Family's hands, I would treat this as a debt settled between us.

Watching the dark red blood run down into the bag, I felt my heart go cold, inch by inch.

The moment the draw was done, Lorenzo tore off toward the operating room with a nurse trailing him.

To his retreating back, I said quietly:

"Lorenzo, we're even now."

I walked out of the draw room, and a wave of dizziness took me. Everything went black, and I collapsed.

When I came to again, the doctor wanted to scold me, but in the end it all melted into a sigh.

"Rest properly. In your state, you can't give blood again for six months at the least."

I smiled and said I would.

As the doctor turned to go, the young nurse beside her couldn't stop herself whispering:

"Chief, why didn't you tell her we couldn't reach her emergency contact? What if the patient thinks we—"

"She won't. That girl sees everything clearly. Such a shame she got tied to the wrong man."

I picked up my phone and found the doctor had placed more than a dozen calls to Lorenzo on my behalf.

Not one had been answered.

Instead, he'd left me a message, snapping at me: