Chapter 1
The mafia boss let his mistress answer his wife’s call, and the ER notification that followed destroyed the life he thought he controlled
Selena Vale was still wearing Victor Romano’s white dress shirt when his wife called for the fourth time.
Victor glanced at the glowing phone on the nightstand, saw Elena’s name, and turned his face away.
“Don’t,” he said.
Selena smiled.
“Don’t answer?”
“Exactly.”
The phone stopped.
Three seconds later, it rang again.
Selena reached across Victor before he could stop her.
“You know what?” she murmured. “Maybe she needs to learn that when you’re with me, you’re with me.”
“Selena.”
But she had already answered.
“Victor’s phone.”
There was silence.
Then a woman’s breath came through the speaker, thin and broken.
“Victor?”
Selena’s expression changed slightly.
“He’s unavailable.”
Another ragged breath.
“Please… put him on.”
Victor sat up.
Something about Elena’s voice was wrong.
Selena looked directly at him.
Then, with a small act of cruelty she would later regret for the rest of her life, she said, “He doesn’t want to talk to you.”
She ended the call.
Victor stared at her.
“What the hell was that?”
“Oh, please.” Selena tossed his phone onto the bed. “She’s your wife, not your parole officer.”
The phone immediately lit up again.
Not with Elena’s name.
With a red emergency alert from Mercy Harbor Medical Center.
EMERGENCY CONTACT NOTIFICATION.
ELENA ROMANO.
PATIENT RECEIVED THROUGH ER.
CONDITION CRITICAL.
Victor stopped breathing.
For the first time in fifteen years, the most feared man in his corner of New York looked absolutely helpless.
“What did you do?” he whispered.
Selena went pale.
Victor grabbed the phone.
There was another message beneath the first.
PATIENT FOUND UNCONSCIOUS. POSSIBLE CARDIAC EVENT.
His mind replayed Elena’s voice.
Please… put him on.
Then Selena’s answer.
He doesn’t want to talk to you.
Victor was out of the bed before Selena could say another word.
Twenty-three minutes earlier, Elena Romano had been standing barefoot in the kitchen of their Manhattan penthouse when the pain began.
At first, she thought it was indigestion.
She had skipped dinner waiting for Victor.
Again.
He had texted at 7:12 p.m.
Late meeting. Don’t wait up.
Elena had stared at those five words longer than she wanted to admit.
Seven years earlier, Victor had called her from every meeting just to hear her voice.
Now she received messages that sounded as if they had been written to an employee.
The pain sharpened.
Elena pressed a palm to the center of her chest.
“Okay,” she whispered.
She reached for the counter.
The room tilted.
That was when fear came.
Not dramatic fear.
Not screaming.
Something colder.
The understanding that her body was failing faster than her mind could process it.
She called Victor.
No answer.
Again.
No answer.
A third time.
No answer.
By the fourth call, Elena was on the floor.
She had managed to hit the emergency button on the security app connected to the building’s front desk, but she didn’t know if anyone had received it.
Victor’s phone rang again.
Someone answered.
For half a second, Elena felt relief.
Then she heard a woman’s voice.
“Victor’s phone.”
Elena closed her eyes.
Every suspicion she had forced herself to dismiss during the previous six months suddenly had a voice.
“Victor?”
“He’s unavailable.”
“Please… put him on.”
There was a pause.
Elena could almost hear the woman smiling.
“He doesn’t want to talk to you.”
The call ended.
Elena stared at the cracked screen in her hand.
The physical pain was terrible.
But it was the sentence that stayed with her as the world darkened.
He doesn’t want to talk to you.
She heard pounding on the apartment door.
Someone shouted her name.
Then there was nothing.
Across town, Victor drove through rain like a man trying to outrun judgment.
Selena called twice.
He rejected both calls.
At the hospital, he barely waited for the elevator. He took the stairs two at a time until he reached the emergency department.
“My wife,” he said to the first nurse he saw. “Elena Romano.”
The nurse typed quickly.
“Room eight. The cardiology team is with her.”
“What happened?”
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