Damian Volkov had fired every nurse who dared enter his room, and the entire mansion had learned to fear the dying mafia boss behind the forbidden door.

“Hold the compress here, Marcus. Don't let it slip.”

My voice didn't sound like my own. It was steady, clinical, and sharp—the voice of a woman who had spent five years working as an emergency triage nurse before a bitter divorce and economic desperation drove her to take a job scrubbing floors at Grayhaven House.

Marcus pressed a thick wad of sterile gauze against Damian’s shoulder, wincing as the mafia boss groaned in pain on the Persian rug.

“I thought he was invincible,” Marcus muttered, his face pale as he watched the dark stain spreading across Damian’s shirt. “In five years of working for him, I’ve never seen him drop.”

“He’s not invincible, Marcus. He’s human,” I said, working quickly to clean the shallow graze on Damian’s shoulder while keeping a close eye on his pale, clammy skin. “And right now, his body is fighting two wars at once: an assassin’s bullet graze and a massive dose of synthetic cardiac poison that hasn't fully cleared his bloodstream.”

Damian stirred, his dark lashes fluttering open. He looked up at the ceiling, then turned his head slowly to find me kneeling beside him, wiping blood from his collarbone with a damp towel.

“You... you know medicine,” Damian rasped, his voice barely above a whisper.

“I was an ER nurse at Johns Hopkins before my husband left and my savings vanished,” I replied without looking up, pressing a fresh gauze pad over his wound. “I didn't lose my license, Mr. Volkov. I just lost my options.”

Damian let out a faint, dry cough that sounded like broken glass. “An ER nurse... cleaning floors in my mansion. Fate has a twisted sense of humor.”

“You can say that again,” I muttered, tossing the bloody towel into a metal wastebasket. I turned to Marcus. “Go down to Dr. Sterling’s private supply cache in the basement. Look for atropine, activated charcoal, and magnesium sulfate. If we don't flush the remaining toxins out of his system tonight, his heart will stop whether Dante’s men come back or not.”

Marcus hesitated, looking between Damian and me. “Boss?”

Damian gave a slow, barely perceptible nod. “Do what she says, Marcus. She’s in charge of the east wing now.”

As Marcus hurried out of the room, closing and locking the heavy door behind him, the tension in the bedroom settled into a heavy, suffocating quiet.

Lila had been tucked safely into the velvet armchair in the corner, happily coloring in a sketchpad Marcus had scavenged from one of the guest rooms, her pink hearing device blinking softly in the dim lamplight.

I turned my attention back to Damian, checking his pulse at his wrist. It was still dangerously irregular, fluttering under my fingers like a trapped moth.

“Why didn't you run?” Damian asked suddenly, his dark eyes fixed on my face.

I paused, looking down at his wrist. “Run where? Your men locked the perimeter gates. Even if we made it out into the storm, Dante’s hit squads are combing the highway looking for survivors of your inner circle. Grayhaven is the safest place within fifty miles—which is a terrifying thought.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Damian murmured, his voice softening. “When the shooting started... I told you to hide in the wardrobe. You could have stayed there until it was over. You didn't have to come out and stitch my shoulder. You didn't have to take charge.”

I let out a soft sigh, sitting back on my heels and wiping a stray lock of hair from my forehead.

“Because you saved my daughter’s life, Mr. Volkov,” I said quietly. “When those men broke through that door, you didn't have to protect the maid and her deaf child. You could have used us as human shields, or thrown us out to distract them. But you didn't. You stood in front of that wardrobe like a wall.”

Damian stared at me for a long time, the silence stretching between us filled with unspoken history, broken trusts, and the strange, fragile alliance forged in blood and rain.

“In my world, Elena, people only protect what they own, or what they can use,” Damian said, his voice laced with old bitterness. “I’ve spent forty years building Grayhaven on fear and ledgers. I thought loyalty was something you bought with diamond rings and blood pacts.”

He reached out slowly, his large, calloused hand brushing against the back of my fingers where they rested on the rug. His skin was burning hot with fever.

“And then a four-year-old girl walks into my room with a toy rabbit and a pink hearing device,” Damian continued, his voice cracking slightly, “and she makes me realize that I’ve spent my entire life surrounded by wolves while the only real thing in this house was sleeping in the servants' quarters.”

I didn't pull my hand away. The warmth of his skin sent a strange, unexpected shiver up my arm.

“You’re getting sentimental, Mr. Volkov,” I whispered, though my voice lacked any real bite. “Must be the poison talking.”