Married to the Monster They Said Was Dead Chapter 04

Married to the Monster They Said Was Dead Chapter 04

I didn’t sleep that night. Because a man the whole world believed was dead had just spoken his first words in four years—and they weren’t thank you.

They were a warning.

By dawn I was at his bedside, fingers pressed to his wrist, counting a pulse that had no business being this steady. His eyes were open now. Fully. And they were nothing like the vacant gaze he performed for his stepmother.

They were black, sharp, and alive with a cold intelligence that made the room feel smaller.

“Say it again,” I said. “What you said last night.”

“That you’ll regret it.” His voice was raw, barely a whisper, but every word landed like a stone dropped into still water. “Not because of what I’ll do. Because of what you’ve walked into.” He turned his head toward me, slow and deliberate. “You think you saved a patient. You didn’t. You woke up the most hunted man in this country and chained yourself to him in the eyes of the law.”

“I know exactly who you are, Lorenzo Vitale.”

“Do you.” It wasn’t a question. “Then you know my stepmother didn’t keep me alive out of mercy. She kept me breathing because a dead heir triggers an inheritance war she can’t win. A vegetable heir lets her run my empire through a forged power of attorney.” His jaw tightened.

“She’ll kill me the day the law no longer needs me alive. And now she’ll kill you too. Because you’re the only witness who knows I can think.”

The blood drained from my face. He watched it happen with grim satisfaction.

“How long have you been awake enough to understand all this?” I asked.

“Four years.” The words dropped like a body off a bridge. “I heard everything. Every phone call. Every order. I listened to my stepmother stand over this bed and discuss liquidating my father’s shipping routes—the legal ones and the others. I heard her describe my own funeral to a man she was bribing. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream.” His fingers curled against the sheet. “I’ve spent four years memorizing the voice of every person who’s going to die for this.”

I should have been afraid. I was a surgeon, not a soldier. I’d grown up in the orbit of dangerous men, but I’d never been one.

Instead I pulled up a chair and sat down.

“How much do you remember?”

“Everything.” He studied me—really looked, for the first time. “She changed my succession documents eight months in. Forged my signature. Moved one point two billion offshore. Sold three legitimate businesses and routed the cartel’s

product through new channels she controls. All while I lay
here learning the exact shape of her greed.”

His hand trembled as he released the sheet. I reached out
and steadied it without thinking. His skin was ice-cold.

“Why did you really do it?” he asked. “You could’ve taken the
settlement and ignored what those scans told you. Most
people would have.”

“Because I’m a doctor. And what they did to you is a crime.”

“That’s not the only reason.”

I held his gaze. “No. It’s not.”

A charged silence stretched between us. Then he broke
it. “My stepmother checks the monitors remotely. Every
morning at six. The whole feed goes to an app on her phone.”

“I know. I’ve been spoofing the signal since the first night.”

For the first time, genuine surprise crossed that carved face.
“You hacked medical equipment.”

“I modified the firmware. Different skill, same result.” I
allowed myself the smallest smile. “I told you. I know who
you are. The question is whether you know who I am.”

“Adriana Greco. The useless daughter. The disappointment
they married off to a corpse.” His mouth curved—not warm,
but knowing. “Except the night nurse who smuggled you
my file said you put a bullet-ridden capo back together on a

kitchen table two years ago and never breathed a word.” His eyes glittered. “You’re not the disappointment, Doctor. You’re the family’s best-kept secret. And they were too stupid to know what they were throwing away.”

My heart stuttered. No one was supposed to know about the kitchen table.

“My inheritance locks on my thirty-first birthday,” he went on. “Six weeks. If I’m declared competent before then, I take back everything—the company, the family, all of it. If I miss the deadline, control defaults to Ottavia permanently. That’s why the sedatives doubled six months ago. She’s running out the clock.”

I nodded slowly. “Then we have six weeks to get you walking, talking, and standing in front of a competency board.”

“Six weeks to undo four years of chemical burial.” He almost laughed—a broken, bitter thing. “My doctors would call that impossible.”

“Good thing I’m not one of your doctors.”

He held my gaze for a long, weighted beat. Then he lifted his trembling hand and extended it toward me.

“Partners?”

I took it. His grip was weak—shockingly so for a man his size. But his will wasn’t.

“Partners.”

He let his hand drop back, exhaustion dragging his eyelids down. But just before sleep took him, he spoke one last time, so quietly I almost missed it.

“Adriana. There’s something you need to know before you commit to this.” His eyes fluttered open, fixing on mine with a sudden, terrible clarity. “Ottavia isn’t working alone. The man she’s planning to install as heir if I die—the one she’s been feeding my empire to in pieces—”

His voice gave out. His eyes rolled back.

“Lorenzo?” I gripped his shoulders. “Lorenzo, who? Who is it?”

But he was gone—unconscious, his vitals spiking on the monitor I’d spent a week learning to fake.

And somewhere in the compound below me, a door opened, and footsteps began climbing the stairs toward our locked room.