The Paralyzed Don Found Out His Bride Was Swapped, But When She Took A Bullet For His Fake Wheelchair, He Stood Up And Painted The City In Blood

“Maeve. Look at me. Keep your eyes open, damn it!”

Elias’s hands, normally so steady, were trembling as he gathered her into his lap.

Maeve was drifting. The pain in her shoulder was blinding, a pulsing fire that radiated down her arm and into her ribs. She looked up through hazy, fluttering eyelashes, struggling to focus on the face above her.

Elias was kneeling. On both knees. Supporting her weight with the massive, unyielding strength of his thighs.

“You’re... you’re walking...” she whispered, her lips pale, a faint smear of blood at the corner of her mouth. “Your legs...”

“I was never broken,” Elias choked out, his voice cracking with a raw, agonizing emotion that Chicago had never heard from him. He ripped his silk dress shirt down the middle with a violent tear, balling the clean fabric into a thick pad and pressing it down hard onto the entry wound at her shoulder.

Maeve let out a sharp, agonizing cry, her fingers clutching weakly at the fabric of his trousers.

“Hold on to me,” Elias commanded fiercely, his forehead pressing against hers, his tears—the first tears he had shed in twenty years—dropping onto her pale cheek. “Don’t you dare close your eyes, Maeve Donnelly. You took a bullet for a dead man. You don't get to leave me now.”

The library doors burst open again.

Gabriel and Salvatore sprinted into the room, assault rifles raised, followed by six tactical guards.

Salvatore skidded to a halt, taking in the bloody scene: two dead assassins on the floor, the overturned wheelchair, and his nephew—fully erect, on his knees, clutching a bleeding housemaid to his chest like she was the only treasure in the world.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Salvatore breathed.

“Shut up and get Keller!” Elias roared, his voice shaking the crystal pendants of the chandelier above. “Get Aaron Keller here right now! If she bleeds out in this room, Salvatore, I will burn this entire city to ash!”

Gabriel was already on his radio, shouting medical emergency codes to the estate’s private surgical wing in the basement.

Maeve felt the cold creeping into her fingers and toes. The roaring fire, the shouting men, the smell of cordite—it was all fading into a soft, distant hum.

She looked up at Elias. His gray eyes were wild, desperate, and completely stripped of his armor. The legendary Don of Chicago was begging. Begging her to stay.

“Leo...” she whispered, her voice barely a thread of breath.

“He is safe,” Elias vowed, leaning down until his lips brushed her temple, his arms locking around her like an unbreakable fortress. “I swear to you on my mother’s grave, your brother will live. But you have to fight, Maeve. Fight for me. Stay with me.”

Maeve smiled faintly, her hand falling limp against his chest, right over his pounding heart.