Six hours of screaming had pushed Dominic Moretti to the edge, and everyone inside the Chicago restaurant knew better than to go near him. Then I crossed the dining room, looked the most feared mafia boss in the city straight in the eye, and told him, “You’re hurting your own baby.”

The restaurant felt like an airtight tomb. The blue tint spreading across the infant’s lips sent a ice-cold bolt of terror through my chest, but the instinct buried deep beneath four years of grief surged to the surface.

I didn't see Dominic Moretti’s towering frame. I didn't see the four bodyguards drawing their pistols in unison. I saw a neonate in respiratory distress.

"Stand back!" I barked, my voice cracking through the dining room like a whip.

"What did you do to him?!" Dominic roared, his massive hand closing around my upper arm with bruising force. "If he stops breathing—"

"He has an infant airway obstruction! Release me right now or your son dies!" I screamed directly into the face of the most feared man in Chicago.

Dominic’s eyes widened in sheer shock. No one had spoken to him like that in fifteen years. But seeing the absolute, clinical authority in my gaze, his grip slackened.

I didn't waste a microsecond. I flipped the tiny boy belly-down along my forearm, resting his chest in the palm of my hand, keeping his head tilted lower than his torso to let gravity assist.

One, two, three, four, five.

I delivered five precise, quick back slaps between his tiny shoulder blades using the heel of my palm.

A thick blob of mucus and swallowed milk dislodged from his throat, spilling onto the polished hardwood floor.

The baby gasped. A raw, piercing cry tore from his tiny lungs, and the healthy pink flush surged back into his cheeks.

The entire restaurant let out a collective, ragged breath.

I immediately rolled him back onto his spine across my chest, gently checking his radial pulse and observing the rise and fall of his ribs. His heart rate was fast, but regular. His air passage was clear.

"He swallowed a pocket of mucus along with the air from crying," I said, my chest heaving, tears finally spilling down my cheeks as I held the living, breathing child against my neck. "He... he just needed his airway cleared."

Dominic stepped closer, his heavy leather shoes clicking against the floor. He stared down at his son, then looked at my trembling hands, which were cradling the baby with practiced, instinctual perfection.

"You're a nurse," Dominic stated, his voice dropping into a low, rumbling register.

"I was," I whispered, resting my cheek against the infant's soft head. "Four years ago."

Dominic looked at his chief bodyguard, a broad-shouldered man named Marco. "Clear the restaurant. Close the doors. Nobody leaves."

My manager, who had been hiding behind the bar, practically scrambled out the back exit alongside the terrifyingly fast evacuation of the remaining staff. Within two minutes, the grand dining room of Bellavita was completely sealed.

Dominic walked to his table, pulled out a velvet-upholstered chair, and gestured toward it.

"Sit down," he ordered quietly.

I sat down, keeping the baby cradled against my chest. The little boy’s tiny fingers curled around my thumb, his crying settling into a rhythmic, exhausted snuffle.

"What is your name?" Dominic asked, leaning his heavy elbows on the white tablecloth.

"Hannah," I replied, looking up to meet his dark, unblinking eyes. "Hannah Miller."

"Hannah," Dominic repeated, testing the weight of the name. "My son’s name is Mateo. His mother died three days ago in childbirth."

The stark, brutal confession hung in the air.

"I'm sorry for your loss," I said softly, feeling a pang of genuine empathy for the hardened mob boss sitting across from me.

"She had a heart defect no one caught," Dominic said, his face a mask of stone, though a flicker of raw, unhealed pain glinted in his dark eyes. "The doctors saved Mateo, but they couldn't save her. I brought him home yesterday. I hired three private nurses. He screamed for six hours, and those incompetent fools fled my estate because they were afraid of me."

"They were right to be afraid of you," I said honestly, looking at the four armed men standing at the perimeter. "You're trying to raise a fragile newborn in an environment of sheer terror. Babies feel stress, Mr. Moretti. He was screaming because he was overwhelmed, hungry, and suffering from severe gas, and you were treating him like a broken piece of machinery."

Marco stepped forward, his hand dropping toward his holster. "Watch your mouth, girl."

Dominic raised a single finger, silencing his lieutenant instantly.

"She saved my son's life while you stood there holding a bottle of cow's milk like an idiot, Marco," Dominic said quietly.

He turned his focus back to me.

"You are no longer a waitress, Hannah," Dominic declared, his voice leaving zero room for negotiation. "You are moving into my estate tonight. You will be Mateo's personal medical custodian."

I froze, my blood running cold. "What? No. I can't do that. I have an apartment, I have a life—"

"I will pay you ten thousand dollars a week," Dominic interrupted smoothly. "I will provide twenty-four-hour security for you. You will have total authority over Mateo’s medical care, his diet, and his nursery. No one—including me—will interfere with your instructions regarding my son."

"Mr. Moretti, you don't understand," I choked out, a wave of dark, suffocating memories threatening to crush me. "My son died four years ago in a hospital bed. I left nursing because I couldn't handle the responsibility of a child's life anymore!"

Dominic leaned across the table until he was inches from my face.

"You handled it two minutes ago," he said softly, his voice cutting straight through my panic. "You didn't run. You walked past four loaded guns to save a child you didn't know. You are going to help my son, Hannah. Because if you walk out that door, neither one of us will sleep again."

I looked down at tiny Mateo, who had fallen into a deep, peaceful sleep against my chest, his warm cheek resting over my beating heart.

I took a slow breath, feeling the phantom pain of my past begin to shift into something entirely new.