He's her enemy. Her obsession. And the only man who has the power to destroy her.
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My name is Frank Monroe, and I am the most dangerous woman in Chicago. Not because I kill, but because I make it legal. I'm the lawyer the Irish mob calls when...
"Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule."
- Charles Dickens
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There was a particular silence that exists only in hospitals. It wasn't a peaceful quiet—it was a heavy, waiting silence, punctuated by the rhythmic sigh of machines breathing for those who couldn't.
I had been absorbing that silence for hours, until it felt like a physical weight on my skin. My body was a collection of aches, my eyes gritty and exhausted. But sleep was a distant country. Not while Salvatore Lombardi was balanced on the knife's edge between this world and the next.
Twenty-four hours. That was the prognosis. A single, brutal day that held a man's entire future in its hands. And I, who felt the ghost of the bullet that had felled him clinging to my own clothes, lingered on the periphery. I wasn't family. I was the complication. I couldn't bear the sanctity of their vigil, the soft murmur of their shared sorrow. So I stayed in the hallway, pacing a path of my own guilt.
My only creed was a stubborn, desperate faith: Salvatore was too stubborn to die. I held onto that like a lifeline.
I was so deep inside my own head that I didn't notice Hector approaching me.
"You're carrying the whole world on your shoulders, baby," he said, his voice warm and familiar that felt like reality intruding on a bad dream.
I let out a slow breath and leaned into the solid warmth of him, pressing my forehead against the rough texture of his jacket. It was an anchor. My anchor. "I don't know what I'm carrying anymore," I admitted, my voice hollow.
He didn't press for details. Instead, he simply kissed my forehead, his lips lingering there in a gesture that was both tender and possessive. "Then talk to me, baby. Give me the weather report from inside that head of yours."
That was all it took. That simple, understanding command shattered the last of my composure.
I turned my face up to his. When our eyes locked, something fundamental broke open inside me. The fear, the exhaustion, the sheer, suffocating dread.. it became a tidal wave. I needed an escape. I needed him.
Without a word, I took his hand and led him down the hallway, away from the waiting room.
"Frankie? Where are we going?" His confusion was a faint echo behind me.
I didn't answer. I found an unoccupied room, and pulled him inside. The door shut with a soft click, sealing us in a profound quiet.
Then I was on him. My hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt, pulling him down to me. My kiss wasn't an invitation; it was a demand. A desperate, clumsy attempt to translate this roaring chaos inside me into a language he could understand.
He gasped, a sharp intake of air, and for a single heartbeat, there was surprise. Then he was kissing me back, his mouth meeting mine with a hunger that mirrored my own. His hands found my waist, pulling me flush against him, and I could feel the coiled restraint in his muscles, the conscious effort to hold himself back.
