The Mafia Bossss Told Her to Sit Beside Him and Not Move, So She Slapped His Hand Away in Front of Everyone

The sound of automatic gunfire turned the opulent ballroom into a screaming slaughterhouse in less than two seconds.

Champagne flutes shattered. Crystal chandeliers swayed violently as stray rounds tore through the gilded ceiling. Women screamed, men dove under banquet tables, and the stench of cordite filled the air like a sudden thunderstorm.

The moment the first pane of glass blew inward, Vincent didn't hesitate.

He didn't draw his weapon to engage. He lunged forward, grabbed Beatrice around the waist, and used his entire body to shield her, slamming her down behind a massive marble pillar near the eastern service exit.

The impact knocked the breath from Beatrice’s lungs, but Vincent’s broad frame covered her completely. He was a human shield of muscle, bone, and Kevlar, taking the brunt of falling debris and shattered plaster.

*Crack-crack-crack!*

Rounds chipped away at the marble pillar inches above their heads, raining white dust over Beatrice’s emerald dress and Vincent’s dark hair.

Vincent reached beneath his tuxedo jacket and drew a sleek, suppressed semi-automatic pistol with blinding speed. He leaned out for half a second, fired three controlled, rhythmic shots into the smoky chaos of the terrace, and ducked back. A wet thump and a scream from the terrace confirmed his marksmanship.

“Richard!” Vincent roared above the pandemonium. “East corridor! Clear the bay!”

“Clear, boss!” Richard’s voice bellowed from the service doors twenty feet away.

Vincent looked down at Beatrice. His face was covered in a film of sweat and marble dust, his dark eyes searching hers with frantic intensity. “Are you hit?”

“No,” Beatrice gasped, her hands clutching the lapels of his tuxedo. “No, I’m fine! Vincent—behind you!”

A masked shooter in tactical gear burst through the shattered terrace doors, weapon raised directly at Vincent’s back.

Beatrice didn't think. She didn't scream.

With the sheer momentum of her two-hundred-and-thirty-pound frame, she kicked out violently with her heavy heel, catching the edge of a heavy cast-iron serving cart loaded with silver ice buckets and crystal decanters.

The cart surged forward across the polished floor, slamming directly into the shooter’s shins with bone-shattering force. The gunman shrieked, his aim flying skyward as his weapon discharged into the ceiling.

Before he could recover, Vincent spun on his knee and fired two rounds into the man’s center mass.

The gunman collapsed like a marionette with cut strings.

Vincent stared at the fallen shooter, then looked back at Beatrice, whose chest was heaving, her eyes wide, her emerald dress covered in dust, her hands trembling with pure survival instinct.

“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” Vincent said, breathless, a fierce, feral grin breaking across his face.

“Shut up and get us out of here!” she yelled.

Ten minutes later, they were in the back of an armored Mercedes SUV tearing down an alleyway off Michigan Avenue, escaping the arriving armada of Chicago police cruisers whose sirens wailed in the distance.

Inside the vehicle, the silence was suffocating.

Vincent leaned back against the leather seat, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow. His left hand was clamped tightly against his lower ribcage.

Beatrice caught the scent immediately: copper. Warm, fresh, and metallic.

She reached out, pulling his hand away from his side. His fingers were soaked in dark, thick crimson. The bullet had caught him just below the edge of his Kevlar vest, grazing deeply along the ribs, tearing through the fine wool of his tuxedo and white dress shirt.

“You’re hit,” Beatrice said, her voice dropping into that cool, clinical audit tone that hid a spike of sheer terror.

“It’s a graze,” Vincent grunted, grimacing as he tried to wave her away. “The bullet passed through the meat. It’s nothing.”

“Stop talking,” Beatrice ordered. She leaned across the console and looked at the driver. “Where is the nearest safehouse?”

“Six blocks west, ma'am,” the driver replied nervously. “Under the old post office warehouse.”

“Drive faster,” she commanded.

The safehouse was a sterile, reinforced concrete bunker furnished with basic leather furniture, a communication terminal, and a fully stocked surgical medical cabinet.

Vincent sat on the edge of a stainless-steel examination table, stripped to the waist.

His torso was a tapestry of violence: old scars crisscrossed his broad chest, a jagged bullet wound scarred his right shoulder, and fresh blood poured down his left side, painting his taut abdominal muscles in crimson streaks.

Beatrice had washed her hands, tied her hair back with a rubber band she found in a drawer, and stood between his knees holding a bottle of medical-grade antiseptic, sterile gauze, and a curved suture needle threaded with black nylon.

“Have you ever stitched human skin before?” Vincent asked, his teeth gritted as she poured the antiseptic directly into the open furrow along his ribs.

He didn't cry out, but his knuckles gripped the edge of the steel table until his veins bulged.

“I grew up on the South Side with an alcoholic father and an accident-prone brother who was terrified of emergency rooms,” Beatrice said steadily, dabbing away the excess blood with sterile pads. “I’ve stitched lacerations on kitchen tables since I was sixteen. Sit still.”

She leaned in close.

Her face was inches from his chest. She could feel the scorching heat radiating from his skin, the rhythmic, heavy rise and fall of his breathing. Her hands were rock-steady as she pinched the edges of the torn flesh together and drove the curved needle through the dermis.

Vincent hissed through his teeth, his body tensing, but he didn't move away.

Instead, he looked down at her.

He looked at the focused concentration in her dark eyes, the soft curve of her lips as she worked, the stray strands of auburn hair falling across her neck, and the unapologetic, commanding strength in her hands.

“Why didn't you run tonight?” Vincent asked, his voice low, gravelly, and vibrating in his chest. “When the glass broke. You could have run out the east fire door. Richard wouldn't have stopped you.”

Beatrice tied off the first knot with clinical precision. “And let Julian Moretti’s hitmen put a bullet in your spine? Who was going to sign my million-dollar consulting check?”

“You don't care about the money, Beatrice,” Vincent murmured, his hand slowly rising from the table.

He didn't grab her. He didn't order her.

Gently, hesitantly, his rough, scarred fingers brushed against the soft skin of her jawline.

Beatrice froze.

The suture needle remained suspended in her fingers. The air in the sterile room seemed to vanish completely, replaced by an unbearable, crackling tension.

“You spent your whole life taking care of people who didn't deserve you,” Vincent said, his dark eyes boring into hers with an intensity that stripped away every corporate defense she had ever built. “Your father used you. Your brother betrayed you. Your firm shoved you into a basement because you didn't fit their pathetic little mold of what a woman should look like.”

Beatrice’s throat tightened. A dangerous, hot sensation prickled behind her eyes. “Don’t psychoanalyze me, Vincent.”

“I’m not psychoanalyzing you,” Vincent whispered, his thumb lightly stroking across her cheekbone, wiping away a smear of white marble dust. “I’m looking at you. Really looking at you. You are the strongest, fiercest, most terrifying creature I have ever met in my life. And for the first time in thirty-nine years, I don't feel like I’m standing in this city alone.”

Beatrice’s breath hitched.

Her heart hammered violently against her ribs. She was towering over him, her full body framed between his thighs, her hands holding the instruments of his repair, and the most feared predator in Chicago was looking at her like she was the only thing standing between him and the dark.

She leaned in, her lips hovering barely an inch from his.

“If you move,” Beatrice whispered, her voice trembling slightly, “the stitch will be crooked.”

Vincent’s gaze dropped to her lips, then rose back to her eyes. A slow, breathtaking smile touched his mouth.

“Then make it crooked, Beatrice,” he whispered.