Chapter 1 - The Man Who Wasn't Supposed to Wake Up
"Keep reading."
The words scraped out of Anthony Rossi's throat so low and ruined that, for one wild second, I thought the storm itself had spoken through him.
His hand was still locked around my wrist. Not weakly. Not by accident. His fingers pressed into my skin with a strength that should have been impossible for a man who hadn't moved in six months. His eyes, black and unfocused at first, fought through the haze of whatever world he'd been trapped inside, and fixed on me with terrifying effort.
I opened my mouth to scream for help. His grip tightened.
"No," he breathed.
The heart monitor betrayed him, racing in frantic green peaks across the screen. The room flashed red with backup lights, thunder rolling over Chicago like something enormous dragging chains across the sky.
"Anthony," I whispered, my voice shaking. "You're awake."
His gaze cut to the door. Only then did I understand. The guards. The cameras. The men outside who never smiled and never asked a question they didn't already know the answer to.
He moved his lips, slow and painful. "Read."
My pulse hammered in my throat. I looked at the book on the floor, then the monitor, then his face. Sharp now. Not fully alive, not fully well, but aware in a way that chilled me.
He wasn't asking me to comfort him. He was giving me an order.
With trembling fingers, I picked up the book and opened it to a random page.
"The soldier returned to a house that no longer knew his name..."
Anthony released my wrist. The marks of his fingers stayed behind in pale crescents against my skin.
I read louder, fighting to steady myself, eyes darting to the door every few seconds. The storm disguised the tremor in my voice, but nothing could hide the monitor's alarm if it kept climbing.
His eyes flicked to the machine. I understood enough.
I forced myself to move like a nurse instead of a terrified woman standing beside a man who shouldn't have been able to speak. I silenced the alarm, checked his leads, adjusted the sensor on his finger, pretending to fix a false reading.
"Bad connection," I said aloud, like someone might be listening. "It's okay, Mr. Rossi. Just the storm."
His mouth twitched. Not a smile. Something colder.
I kept reading.
A minute later, the door opened. One of the men in suits stepped in — I'd heard another guard call him Dominic once, arguing over a phone call in the hall. Silver at his temples. A pistol-shaped bulge under his jacket.
"Problem?" he asked.
I didn't look at Anthony. "Power flicker disrupted the monitor. It happens. His vitals are back in range."
Dominic walked closer to the bed. Too close. Anthony lay still, eyes closed, mouth slack, arranged in perfect helplessness beneath the white sheet.
I stared at the monitor, afraid my face would betray us.
"You always read to him?" Dominic asked.
My fingers tightened around the book. "Sometimes. It helps pass the night."
"He can't hear you."
"No," I said. "But I can."
Dominic gave a small, humorless laugh. "You nurses are strange." Then he left. The door clicked shut.
I waited five full seconds before breathing.
Anthony's eyes opened again. "You need a doctor," I whispered.
"No doctors."
"You've been in a coma six months."
"Three," he rasped.
I froze. "What?"
"Aware... three months."
The book slipped in my hands. Every word I'd spoken in that room came back at once. Every confession. Every tired complaint. Every secret I'd said aloud because I believed the man in the bed was nothing but a body with a heartbeat.
He had heard me. All of it.
"You heard me?" I asked.
A faint pause. "Yes."
Heat rushed up my neck. "Oh God."
"Not God," he breathed. "Grace."
My name in his ruined voice frightened me more than anything else. I'd never told him my name directly. Of course he'd heard it from charts, doctors, guards. Still, hearing it from him felt like being caught in a locked room with a ghost who'd memorized my life.
"You should be examined," I said, reaching for the call button.
His hand caught my sleeve. "Don't."
"You could have brain swelling. A stroke. You need—"
"I need to stay dead."
Those six words emptied the room of air.
"They tried to kill me once," he whispered. "They'll finish it if they know."
"Who?"
His eyes shifted to the door. "You think your own men—"
"I know."
I stepped back from the bed, suddenly aware I'd crossed some invisible line. Until tonight I'd been a nurse. A poor, tired, overworked nurse — but still just a nurse. Now I was standing beside a crime boss who'd come back from the dead and chosen me as the first person to know.
That felt less like luck and more like a trap closing.
"I can't be part of this," I whispered.
"No choice now."
"Excuse me?"
"Dominic saw the spike. If he reports it, they watch you. If you act scared, they know. If they know, you die first."
"You're threatening me?"
"No. Warning you."
I hated that I believed him.
"What do you want?" I asked.
His gaze moved to the book. "Tomorrow. Same time. Read."
"That's your plan?"
"Tonight I listen. Tomorrow I speak."
I lowered the bedrail, adjusted his pillow, checked his pupils with my penlight. He endured it without complaint, though sweat beaded along his hairline.
"You're in pain," I said.
"Yes."
"I can increase your medication."
"No."
May you like
I tucked the blanket around him because my hands needed something to do, then sat back and kept reading while Anthony Rossi watched through half-lidded eyes — no longer a corpse, not yet a king, but something far more dangerous.
A secret.
