Chapter 1
Chapter 1: The night everything changed
Nothing prepared me for the moment my dying wife was wheeled past while my hand was wrapped around another woman’s fingers. One second I felt untouchable inside Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and the next I saw Clara’s blood on the sheets, her wedding ring flashing beneath the lights, and realized she had arrived completely alone.
My name is Dominic Valente, and in Chicago, men usually moved when I entered a room.
I ran the syndicate, controlled businesses worth millions, and had spent years believing power meant never being caught helpless. That night, I learned how quickly control could disappear.
For three hours, I had been sitting beside Serena Hayes.
She was twenty-four, beautiful, dramatic, and everything my wife was not. After a late-night party, Serena had suffered a minor panic attack and dehydration, but I still made sure she had a private room, senior doctors, and anything else she wanted.
“Dom, are you staying with me tonight?” she asked, squeezing my hand.
“Of course, baby.”
I brushed a blonde curl from her forehead.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
The words had barely left my mouth when the corridor erupted.
“Incoming trauma!”
The double doors slammed open, and a team of paramedics rushed a blood-covered gurney toward surgery.
At first, I barely looked.
Then I saw emerald green.
My chest tightened.
Clara had been wearing the emerald silk dress I bought her for her birthday.
I stood so fast my chair scraped across the floor.
“Dom?” Serena called.
I was already in the hallway.
The stretcher passed me, and everything slowed.
A pale arm hung over the side.
A diamond wedding ring caught the light.
Then I saw her face.
Bruised.
Cut open by shattered glass.
Covered in blood.
“Clara.”
My voice sounded nothing like mine.
She was my wife of five years, the woman who managed my homes, stood beside me at every political dinner, and never once embarrassed me in front of my world.
She had also spent the last year receiving less and less of me.
“Sir, step back.”
A nurse shoved me away.
“That’s my wife.”
I grabbed the rail. “What happened?”
“Severe blunt-force trauma, internal bleeding, multiple lacerations,” a paramedic snapped. “Her vehicle was crushed.”
“Clara!”
My grip tightened.
Then he looked straight at me.
“If you don’t let go, she may die right here.”
My hands released instantly.
The doors closed between us.