Elena didn't spare Massimo and his wife another thought. She needed to pack up her things and get ready for Massimo's probation period. It was her path to freedom, and she wasn't going to let it slip through her fingers.

But, as she boxed up the little trinkets and equipment she had gathered during her short stay working at the Ferraro's hospital, Elena's thoughts drifted to her own marriage. More specifically, her own husband. A mysterious man she had married ten days ago.

She really didn't know anything about him. All she knew was what Mr. Fabio had told her: he was hopeless with women, distrustful of others, and not very social. It wasn't a lot to go on.

Surely Mr. Fabio had said something else about his grandson, maybe in passing? Before he ever brought up the idea of an arranged marriage?

Elena focused and recalled when she had first met Mr. Fabio. She had been giving him medical treatment and asked if there was anyone to call. Mr. Fabio had informed her that his only relative would be too busy to arrive.

"What does he do?" Elena had asked, hoping the question would distract Mr. Fabio from his pain while she worked.

Mr. Fabio had stayed quiet for a long moment. "He's a mechanic."

The old memory didn't give her many more details, but it was something. So Elena knew the following about her husband: he was a cold, workaholic recluse who had a job as a mechanic.

It didn't paint a flattering picture.

Still Elena hoped she'd get to meet him some day. If Mr. Fabio vouched for him, he couldn't be all bad.

But Elena had to focus on the here and now. She might not work at St. Camillus anymore, but her days would only be getting busier. Being the family doctor for the Ferraros would require her full attention.

She decided to head to the grocery store and meal prep for the week. Then she'd stay up studying, brushing up on her medicinal knowledge. She was determined to pass Massimo's probation period with flying colors.

Contrary to what his grandfather thought, Massimo wasn't unobservant. He wasn't unfeeling either. For example, he felt quite strongly that his entire life situation had taken a turn for the ridiculous lately.

Massimo knew that he was a total outlier in the mafia world. Only 27 yet the mafia don of the most important criminal family, he walked a perilous path.

Add in that he was unmarried and had no legitimate heir, and it became easy to see why Massimo worked as hard to establish himself as he did. Grandfather could call him a workaholic, but Massimo knew the truth: his position required his total focus—otherwise, he'd lose the other families' respect.

Once that was gone, it'd be impossible to stay in control. And Massimo would not lose the position his grandfather had entrusted to him. Not over something so trivial and preventable.

He didn't have time for scheming women—he had enough problems dealing with scheming dons and capos. The big city never slept and neither would Massimo if there was any work to be done. He needed to be ruthless and efficient.

Luca, his second-in-command, approached his desk, interrupting Massimo's musings. Luca's expression was purposefully neutral, which meant he had news that was going to piss off his boss.

"Your grandfather is on the phone, Don Massimo."

With a sigh, Massimo took the phone Luca offered him. "Hello?"

"Have you still not met your wife?" His grandfather, Fabio Ferraro, immediately asked. The old man could really be stubborn and impatient.

"I told you, I'm busy."

Massimo looked back at the reports Luca had handed him an hour ago. The work done by the Morello family looked fine on paper, but his gut said something was fishy. He needed to look into it more closely...

"You'll have to meet her eventually," Fabio scolded, like Massimo was still a young child. "You should do it sooner rather than later. In fact, you should've done it the day your marriage was registered."

"You know I was busy managing the families," Massimo hissed. He really didn't have time for his grandfather's lectures today, not after he lost so many hours interviewing potential doctors. "And then I was shot—you want me to meet this floozy while I'm bleeding out?"

"I didn't raise you to talk to your elders like that," Fabio scolded. "Mind your manners, boy."

A rant was no doubt at the tip of his grandfather's tongue, so Massimo figured his best bet was to play mediator.

"I know, and I do appreciate you arranging the whole ordeal. I also know you think I need an heir, but I don't understand how I'm supposed to accept a stranger."

"A stranger who saved my life," Fabio said. "You have to meet her at least once because of that. But I promise you, Massimo, she's the right girl for you."

Massimo scoffed.

"I mean it," Fabio continued. "She's a wonderful girl with a sweet personality—far too good for a terrible grandson like yourself."

Great, Fabio was either going to talk his grandson's ear off complaining about Massimo's shortcomings or his fantastic mystery wife. There was no winning.

Massimo hung up the phone and handed it back to Luca. This whole wife business felt terribly suspicious. It left a bad taste in his mouth.

Fabio had raised Massimo to be cold and distrustful—the sort of person who could survive in the harsh mafia world. And now that Massimo was finally ready for it, Fabio kept pestering him about grandkids. Has his grandfather gone crazy?

Massimo should be focused on mafia affairs. His grandfather was retired and needed to stop bothering Massimo and distracting him. Massimo would meet his new wife when he had time.

And he didn't have time to spare today. His work was too important to delay.

"Sir," Luca said impassively. "Your grandfather sent over your wife's address. Should I prepare the car?"

Massimo wanted to scream but he settled for balling his hands into fists. Fabio really wouldn't let this go, would he? Not until he got what he wanted.

"Fine. Let's get this over with."

His wife's apartment was on the humble side of town. Massimo carried the gifts Luca had prepared and tried to work his expression into something more friendly than a scowl. But as he got closer to the apartment door, that became impossible.

The tenant inside was having sex. Loud, passionate groans and pants echoed along the hallway.

Massimo almost walked out immediately. But, for the sake of his grandfather, he merely ground his teeth and knocked on the door.

A kind, sweet girl? The sounds beyond the door confirmed that wasn't the case.

The door opened. But instead of seeing the woman who had tricked his grandfather, Massimo was greeted by a man. One that had nothing on but his boxers.

"I'm here to see the woman that lives here," Massimo said coldly.

"Wait in line outside, buddy. We're kinda in the middle of something."

With that, the door slammed shut. And whoever was beyond it resumed their earlier activities. If anything, the sounds were louder now.

What little was left of Massimo's patience died. He dropped the gifts at the door and marched right back to his car.

Luca did not immediately drive to his next appointment, which only further aggravated Massimo. Instead Luca glanced hesitantly into the backseat to look at Massimo.

"How did meeting your wife go?"

"She's a slut, just like every other woman in New York. Now let's get back to work."

As a fancy black car peeled away, Elena entered her apartment, carrying her grocery bags. She knocked twice before entering. She didn't want to startle her roommate.

"I'm back!" she declared as she made her way to the kitchen.

Her roommate Aria was already sitting at the countertop. She was staring at items Elena had never seen before—must be gifts from her latest boyfriend.

"Elena, can you believe this: some guy left me a watch, cigars, and men's loafers. Who in their right mind would ever give a woman these?"

Elena couldn't help but smile. Her boss had made a similar mistake and gotten wildly inappropriate gifts for his wife. "Men are just clueless when it comes to women."

"What are they good for?" Aria joked right back. "Beyond their generosity, I mean." She winked.

It wasn't hard to see why Aria inspired generosity in the opposite sex. She was drop-dead gorgeous with her vivid red curly hair and memorizing jade green eyes. She was the sort of woman you never forgot, so you wanted her to never forget you either.

Elena had met Aria back in college. Even then, Aria always had some man on her arm. Elena thought after graduating that Aria would settle down, but that wasn't her roommate's style.

"If anyone gets too close, the mystery is gone," Aria had once confided in her. "I'd rather break things off and be remembered as a perfect goddess than stay with a guy and let him grow to hate me."

Elena found it hard to believe anyone could be disappointed by Aria. Not only was she beautiful but also kind. Aria offered to let Elena share her dorm room the second she heard Elena had lost her part-time job back in college.

And that wasn't all. Aria could be a downright guardian angel at times. Between paying Elena's share of the rent for the past few months, proofreading Elena's resume, covering grocery expenses more often than not, and always offering a sympathetic ear, Aria had helped Elena out more than she could ever repay her for.

So while Elena might not approve of her roommate's complicated love life, she could tolerate that much for a person as magical as Aria.

Aria waved the expensive luxury watch in front of Elena's face.

"Do you want any of this junk?" Aria asked. "I sure as hell don't need men's loafers."

"Neither do I." Elena started to put away the groceries. "I got some of our favorites to make for dinner tonight."

"Elena, you're the absolute best!" Aria smiled. "Anything I can do in return for my bestie?"

"Turn in early instead of blasting music or a TV show. I want to study up on some medical practices for bed."

"Easy peasy! You'll have a very relaxing, quiet night, I promise!"

Elena was woken up by the pierce ringing of her cell phone. Her clock read 3 am. She stumbled in the dark to answer the call.

"10 Cypress Avenue, Ridgewood," Massimo's ever cold voice rang out from the phone. "Be there in twenty minutes."

He hung up, not letting Elena say even one word.

Cypress Avenue... Ridgewood... Wasn't that address miles away from her apartment?

Adrenaline shot through Elena. She quickly threw on her clothes, grabbed her medical bag, and ran outside to hail a taxi. She offered to pay the cabbie double if he could get her there in twenty minutes.

As the cab drove to her destination, Elena's brain started to properly wake up and process her situation.

Ridgewood was a standard drop address, a place where criminals met up to trade money for all kinds of things but mostly drugs. Not something a don, let alone the King of the Dons, would normally have to get involved with though. So if Massimo needed her now, something had to have gone very wrong with one of those deals.

The cab driver pulled up to the warehouse exactly nineteen minutes later. Elena paid him and rushed into the building. She didn't have time to be subtle.

The heavy doors opened to reveal plenty of men already standing in two groups—one behind Don Massimo and the other behind a man Elena's sleepy mind couldn't place. Maybe Capo Pesci or Gallo? If she had seen him before tonight, it can't have been more than a passing glance.

No one paid Elena any mind as she slipped next to Luca. The air was already too tense to breathe. Whatever was happening was deathly serious.

"You realize selling drugs to minors is against my rules?" Don Massimo said harshly. "You know what the punishment for that is, don't you?"

The room dropped silent. No one dared make a noise. Even the night atmosphere had gone mute.

Until a gunshot exploded through the quiet and cracked near Elena's ear. She heard rather than saw one of Massimo's men fall to the ground.

Chaos erupted. Bullets and blood went flying before Elena could even register that more men had drawn their weapons.

Instinctively, she ducked her head and squatted low to the ground. She needed to find a place to hide.

No sooner had that thought crossed her mind than Elena felt rough hands grabbing her. She was forced back up to a standing position.

She tried to struggle, to catch a glimpse of her attacker, but she stopped the second she felt the muzzle of a gun to her temple. It was still warm, like it had been recently fired.

Her blood ran cold. She was frozen to the spot.

"This your girl, Don Ferraro?" Her captor screamed. He looked around the room wildly for the mafia boss. "She must be important to be here so late, so why don't you call this shit off and—"

A bullet hit the man's skull before he could finish his demands. His blood splashed onto Elena's cheek. It was warmer than the gun, warmer than she expected human blood to be.

New arms grabbed her from behind. This time though, they felt steady instead of suffocating. Elena turned to see Massimo holding her tightly.

He shifted her against his chest with one arm and cocked his gun with the other before shooting another opponent down. His ruthless efficiency and cold demeanor perfectly fit the job he had to perform tonight.

Elena let herself get lost in the sounds of fighting and death. She dimly registered that she had to be experiencing shock from witnessing such a horrific event, but that couldn't bring her numb body and mind to act. She focused on how Massimo's long black hair almost glowed in the light of each gunshot's spark.

Before she knew it, the war was over.

The entire fight couldn't have lasted more than three minutes. Three minutes to kill a small mafia family.

Elena couldn't feel too bad about that. They had been selling drugs to children after all. Besides, her body was too full of nerves to think about complicated mafia politics.

Instead Elena's glazed eyes took in the scene. She made herself look at the destruction and register it. This was why she needed to get out of the mafia world.

She couldn't stay in such a dangerous, callous life.

When Elena saw the state of Massimo's men, she finally understood why she was called here. These men would suffer serious injuries tonight, maybe even lose limbs or their lives if they weren't treated immediately.

Elena would have a lot of patients tonight. But first, she should check on her boss.

He was, after all, right next to her.

Suddenly remembering their close proximity, Elena stepped back abruptly. She cleared her throat awkwardly.

Massimo only squinted at her.

"Sit down please," she said, suddenly grateful that she remembered to grab her medical go-bag. It would be hard to gather all the supplies she would need otherwise.

"Why?"

"Your leg?" Elena answered in confusion. How could have forgotten about his most recent injury? "I need to check if the wound reopened."

Massimo followed her instructions and sat on the floor. Elena leaned over him and rolled up his pant leg to get a better look.

She sighed in relief. The stitches had held.

Massimo suddenly invaded her space. He hooked his hand around her necklace, more specifically the ring pendant.

He grasped it tightly as he asked, "You're married?"

Elena jerked back from Massimo, a hand defensively on her necklace. The ring, of course, was from her husband. Well, it had been given to her by Mr. Fabio on behalf of her husband a day or so after he dropped off the marriage certificate.

Mr. Fabio had shown her a tight smile and asked for her patience as he handed her the little ring box. "He's a good boy, when you can drag him away from his work." He promised her husband would be over soon.

Despite still having never seen the man, Elena didn't want to treat the ring poorly. It was beautiful and delicate, and Mr. Fabio had looked so pleased to present it to her. It seemed rude to just leave it in a box on her dresser and never open it.

After all, Elena had decided, all on her own, to marry and escape her former life. It felt right to wear the symbol of that choice.

Unfortunately, Elena really wasn't supposed to keep anything on her hands while caring for patients at the hospital. Not only would it get dirty, but the metal of her ring could cause her plastic gloves to break if she had to perform a surgery. So Elena had borrowed one of her roommate's necklace chains and strung her ring on that.

Wearing it as a necklace seemed like the perfect solution.

Until this moment.

"Yes," Elena gritted out. "I have a wonderful husband—what does that have to do with me treating your leg? With me doing my job at all, in fact?"

For a moment, Elena feared the rumors of Massimo being uninterested in women were wrong. A man in his position could easily hire women to receive "favors" for the kind of generous salary he offered. Should she have been more careful before accepting his job offer?

And fighting him off would cause a new slew of troubles. The dead mafia men all around her clearly advertised how bad of an idea it was to make an enemy of the Ferraro.

But, if push came to shove, Elena would burn this golden bridge if she had to.

Massimo let his hand drop, freeing Elena from his clutches. "Relax. I have no interest in women of your ilk."

Elena bit back the insults forming on her tongue. She didn't have time for her boss's chauvinistic antics. There were plenty of people who needed her help.

And, luckily for her, Massimo wasn't one of them.

Schooling her expression, Elena rose and took charge of the scene. She instantly started sorting people based on their injuries—who could wait and who couldn't. She opened up her bag of medical supplies and got to work.

As she started treating a more severe patient, she shouted orders to those mostly unharmed to help out with simple tasks. Disinfecting wounds, applying burn creams, and wrapping bandages could be done by those without any training with simple guidance. Elena found her rhythm quickly as she settled into her duties.

Digging out bullet casings and making stitches on conscious men without anesthetics was nerve-wrecking but also calming. Elena knew what to do here, and she wouldn't doubt herself. Even when Luca brought her extra supplies, she didn't halt her work.

"Thank you," Elena said, continuing her stitch work and not looking up. "Could you check on that man over there? Let me know if his friend managed to staunch the bleeding or not."

Massimo watched his new personal physician with interest. The fact she could ignore the dead mafia traitors on the ground and stay focused was unexpected. Even if she was a woman.

In fact, Elena had adapted to her role better than Massimo would've expected a male doctor to. Even emergency responders tended to freeze up when thrust into a crime scene. But the woman he hired performed admirably.

Still, Massimo was wary of her. He had been wary the moment she had pitched herself as the perfect candidate.

"My father is a capo to Don Morello, but I share nothing with my family aside from my name."

That's what she had told him, and looking at the calm woman in front of him, he knew there was some truth to the statement. Only a girl who had grown up in the mafia world could stand a chance at adjusting to this kind of situation so quickly. Massimo wondered briefly just how involved in the criminal underbelly Capo Vitale's daughter had been.

Or how involved she still might be.

That wedding ring had set off a police station's worth of sirens in the don's head. It was a tasteful rose gold band with round-cut diamonds wrapped around it like leaves on a branch. It looked like a more modern take on Massimo's dead mother's wedding ring.

The piece of jewelry no doubt would look delicate and beautiful when worn on a proper woman's finger—and it was no doubt insanely expensive.

If Elena really was struggling financially, if it was true she needed a salary advance to not let her student loans default, then there was no way she would have kept such a pricey piece of jewelry. Not when a quarter of the diamonds would pay her loans off outright. Elena struck him as too practical to pick a lump of metal over her future.

Though was that also an act? How much could Massimo really say he knew about Elena Vitale?

When Massimo sent his second-in-command to dig into his new doctor, Luca confirmed the inherently tight ties between the Vitale and Morello families. There were even rumors that Don Morello was going to marry Elena one day.

"At the very least," Luca had told him, "she must've been promised to him at some point. When I asked around discretely, the don brought up that she belonged to him."

Massimo frowned at the memory. Women really were a distraction, if not a complete liability. He'd be a fool to ever trust someone besides his second-in-command or grandfather.

He didn't want to be too hasty though. He'd wait for Elena to slip up, just like the Pesci family did tonight. Then he'd have the proof he needed to act.

But there was one problem he could act on right now.

Massimo stepped over the bodies. He checked his hands for blood and found none, so he took out his cell phone and called his grandfather Fabio.

"Grandfather, I need my wife's phone number—"

"Oh thank god," Fabio cut him off immediately. Though Massimo couldn't see him, he was sure the old man was grinning like a loon. "I'll send you the number right now!"

Fabio started talking about things like manners and the many ways a husband should impress his new wife—and a lot of other advice Massimo wasn't in the mood to hear. So he hung up.

For once, that spurred his grandfather to actually do what he promised. While Massimo had also wanted to pick his predecessor's brain about the likelihood of female moles, he resolved to get the information elsewhere. He could also make Luca look into it if he needed to.

It was better this way. Massimo didn't need his grandfather's advice to know he couldn't trust strangers, whether they were his wife or his doctor. And while he needed one of those right now, he sure didn't need the other.

The don punched in his wife's number. Fabio might've handled the marriage process, but Massimo could handle the divorce all on his own.

As Massimo waited for his wife to answer, Elena's phone rang from the opposite side of the room.