Chapter 2

The "before" Damon talked about, when I look back on it now, was nothing but a beautifully wrapped lie.

That year, I had just finished my neurosurgery fellowship at Johns Hopkins. On my first day back at a public hospital in New York, the ER's red alert for violence went off.

Two gunmen stormed into the trauma bay. They pressed their guns to the attending physicians' temples and accused them of letting their boss die.

The whole trauma bay went dead silent. A few nurses crouched on the floor, shaking.

No one dared touch the blood-soaked gangster whose heart had stopped.

I pushed past an intern who was in my way and snapped on a pair of sterile gloves as I walked over. "Put the guns down. If you don't want him to die, stop wasting my time."

Afterward, Damon Moretti asked for me by name.

Back then, he had just taken over his family's black-market medical operation.

He sat up in the hospital bed and looked at my badge. "You've got guts."

"I'm a surgeon." I looked him in the eye. "Besides, I was one hundred percent sure."

Damon's eyes lit up. He stared at me like I was a prize catch, and then he suddenly smiled.

The next day, I found out what that smile meant. He donated an entire brand-new trauma center to the hospital. His only condition was that I run it.

The crown prince of the underworld courted me the way he did everything else, aggressively and with total control.

When he found out fancy restaurants and luxury gifts didn't work on me, he changed tactics immediately.

He bought the best Leica surgical microscope in the country and had it delivered to my OR. Every time I came off a thirty-six-hour shift, his armored SUV was parked outside, with hot coffee and a clean change of clothes waiting inside.

He even sat patiently with my mother, who had Alzheimer's, while she enjoyed the sun in the garden. He hired the best private medical team to watch over her around the clock.

He told me openly that he was going to marry me.

In the end, it happened on one of the rare afternoons when my mother was lucid.

She sat by the window and looked at the dark circles under my eyes from all those sleepless nights, then at the thick stack of overdue medical bills on the nightstand.

"Vivian." She sighed. Her voice was weak, but her mind was unusually clear. "Look at yourself."

She took my hand, her bony fingers squeezing a little. "That Moretti boy... he's a bastard with blood on his hands, but at least he can take care of these bills. He can get you the best of everything."

My mother looked at me, her eyes full of guilt. "I just don't want to watch life drag you down to death all by yourself."

I didn't say anything.

She was right.

I was so tired.

I needed his money to fill that bottomless hole, and he needed my clean reputation to whitewash his bloody record.

It was a transaction. Each of us got what we needed.

On our first wedding anniversary, Damon was a little drunk. He pinned me down on the bed in the penthouse suite, yanked off his tie, and asked me, strangely angry, "All the stuff I used to do on the streets... you know about it?"

"I know." I looked at him calmly. At that moment, he seemed like a little boy who couldn't get any candy.

He bit down hard on my collarbone, leaving a ring of teeth marks. "Then why aren't you mad? Why aren't you jealous? Do you fucking love me or not?"

I can't remember how I brushed him off that night.

All I know is that a few weeks later, when I handed him a positive pregnancy test, the godfather who could kill a man without blinking had red eyes. He held me so tightly, and even his voice was shaking. "Thank you, Vivian... thank you."

Damon really did live up to that gratitude.

At least for the first few months.

Until I was six months pregnant. I took the spare key to his apartment, brought two bodyguards, and kicked the door in. I caught Damon in bed with Bianca, the blond assistant he'd just hired, and got every second of it on my phone.

Caught in bed, Damon didn't panic in the slightest.

He even leaned back against the headboard, lit a cigarette, and rubbed his brow, annoyed. "You're pregnant. I have to take care of my needs somehow."