Married To My Bully

The worst night of my life started at 2:17 a.m. I know because I checked the clock. Again. It’s a habit. When you work in a trauma ICU, time is the difference between breathing and not. The monitors hum. The floor smells like antiseptic and cold coffee. The only voices are the ones whispering to machines. I like it that way. Quiet means no one’s dying on my shift. Then the doors burst open. “Unidentified male, mid-twenties to early thirties, MVC at high speed, GCS 6, BP 80 over palp,” EMTs call out, rolling a backboard through. Blood everywhere. Bone where bone shouldn’t be. Faces I’ve seen a hundred times, all focus, no panic. But I panic. Because even with his face swollen and split, I know him. Roman Kade. Ten years. Ten years since Crestview High. Since hallways that felt like gauntlets. Since words that cut deeper than any scalpel I’ve held. Ten years since I learned to make myself small, silent, safe. And now I’m supposed to keep him alive. “Monroe, you’re

I don’t scream. Nurses don’t scream. But my hand shoots out and locks around the man’s wrist before he gets within three feet of Roman’s IV line. The syringe wobbled. One drop of clear liquid beads at the needle tip. “Step back,” I say. My voice is ICU calm. The kind I use when a patient crashes. The kind that means I’m already calculating how to put you on the floor if I have to. The fake orderly’s eyes flick to mine. Then to the door. Then back to Roman, sedated and helpless. He’s young. Maybe twenty-five. Not a killer’s eyes. A desperate man. “This is protocol,” he says, but his voice cracks. “Night meds.” “Name,” I say. “And show me the order.” He yanks his arm free and bolts. The syringe clatters to the floor. I don’t chase him. I can’t leave Roman. I slam the code button with my elbow and drop to my knees, kicking the syringe under the bed so no one touches it. Security is there in forty seconds. Detective Singh in ninety. “You’re off his case,” Singh says,

I don’t sleep. I run. Down the hall, bare feet silent on cold marble. The Kade estate is a mausoleum at 2:15 a.m. My pulse is a code in my ears. He’s mine. Roman’s door is open. The room smells like antiseptic and night. He’s in bed, breathing evenly. Alive. Not sedated. Singh made sure of that after Lakeside. The new nurse is downstairs. She swore no one came up. She lied. I check his hands. Empty. Whatever the girl pressed into his palm is gone. I lift the blanket. Nothing on the sheets. Nothing on the floor. Roman’s eyes open. Not startled. He looks at me and it’s like he expected me. “You saw her,” he says. His voice is rough from sleep, but certain. My stomach drops. “How did you...” “I didn’t.” He pushes up on his elbows, wincing. “But you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Who was it?” I can’t tell him. Not yet. If I say a girl in a Crestview uniform, he’ll spiral trying to remember. Dr. Patel said stress causes the V tach. “Bad dream,” I lie. He stud

His heart was racing under my palm.For me. Not from surgery.Roman had just told me his father was alive. That he buried the man who killed my dad and faked his death to protect me.And now he was standing in ICU Room 7, bleeding through his gown, asking Singh to run prints on a burner phone that could prove it.Singh was already on her radio. “I need CSU at Westbridge now. And get me Judge Harmon. We have a hearing in twenty minutes and new evidence.”She looked at Roman. “You stay in that bed or I will cuff you to it.”“I am not staying,” he said. His voice was steady despite the blood on his arm. “If my father sent that text, he knows Isla has the ring. He knows she remembered. He will not wait for court.”He was right.Julian wanted a medical proxy. Roman’s father wanted us dead.Two Kade men, two wars. And I was the wife caught between them.“Get back in bed,” I told Roman. My nurse's voice was back. It was the only thing keeping me from shaking. “You tore your incision. You nee

The Kade estate looked exactly like I remembered from high school. Cold. Too big. Full of windows that showed everything and doors that locked from the outside. We did not use the front door. Singh’s team went in first. Three officers, guns drawn, sweeping the marble hall where Roman’s father used to host parties that ended with someone crying. The chandelier was still there. So was the blood on the floor from when Roman was seventeen and refused to break my fingers.“Clear,” Singh said through the radio. “No heat signatures upstairs. The panic room is open.” Roman stood beside me in the driveway. His hospital gown was gone. Singh had given him tactical pants and a black tee that pulled against the fresh stitches on his side. He looked like the CEO he used to be, except CEOs did not bleed through their shirts for me. “You do not have to go in,” he said. His voice was quiet. “Singh can clear it. We can wait.” “He is waiting for us,” I said. “Your father. He wants us in that hou