Chapter 1: The Wife He Doesn’t Know

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 on line,” Dr. Patel says, snapping gloves. “Let’s move.”  

My hands don’t shake. That’s the rule. You don’t shake when someone’s bleeding out. You don’t shake when it’s him.  

You push saline. You call out pressures. You thread the central line while your pulse hammers in your throat and the memory of your seventeen-year-old self screams don’t touch him.  

But I do. Because I’m Isla Monroe, RN. Twenty-eight. Trauma ICU. And here, history doesn’t matter.  

Only heartbeats do.  

We stabilized him by 4:03 a.m. Barely.  

He’s intubated, sedated, head wrapped, chest tube draining. Machines breathe for him now.  

I stand outside the glass, charting, when Maggie from the desk touches my arm.  

“Legal’s here. They need you.”  

Legal never needs a nurse at four in the morning unless something’s wrong.  

The conference room smells like stale paper. A man in a suit I don’t recognize slides a folder across the table. Inside is a certificate, gold seal and all.  

State of Nevada. County of Clark. Marriage Certificate.  

Roman Alexander Kade and Isla Grace Monroe. Date: August 12.  

Ten years ago. We were eighteen.  

“What is this?” My voice comes out flat. Too flat.  

“You’re listed as next of kin,” he says. “There’s no record of annulment or divorce. As of now, you hold medical proxy for Mr. Kade.”  

The room tilts.  

Vegas. The chapel with the fake flowers. His father had just died. Mine had been gone for six months. Roman showed up at my door at midnight, eyes red, knuckles split.  

He said, “They’ll hurt you if you’re not mine. Say yes, Isla. Please.”  

I thought it was another cruelty. Another game. I was seventeen, grieving, terrified. I said yes because he looked broken, and for one second I believed it wasn’t me he wanted to break.  

We left before sunrise. I never told anyone. He never spoke to me again at school. The next week, he told everyone I’d begged him to kiss me at the lake.  

“You’re mistaken,” I tell Legal now. “We were kids. It wasn’t—”  

“Wasn't it legal? It was. Nevada doesn’t care how old your regrets are, Ms. Monroe.” He closes the folder. “The hospital needs decisions. Do you accept the proxy or do we petition the court?”  

I think of Roman’s uncle Julian. I saw him on the news last year, smiling through a lawsuit about Kade Technologies. If Roman dies without family, Julian gets everything.  

And something cold settles in my stomach. Because Roman Kade doesn’t do anything unprotected. Someone wanted him dead.  

“I’ll sign,” I hear myself say.  

Dawn bleeds through the windows by the time I get back to the ICU. Room 7 is quiet except for the vent.  

I step inside. Without the blood, he looks younger. The scar through his eyebrow is new. The one on his chin isn’t. I put that there. In ninth grade, with my textbook, when he cornered me by the lockers.  

His hand twitches.  

I shouldn’t be here alone. I should call a neuro check, page the doc. Instead, I stand there like an idiot, watching his fingers curl against the sheet.  

His eyes open.  

Dark blue. Unfocused. Scared.  

For a second, he’s just a patient waking up in hell. Then his gaze finds me and stops.  

“Isla,” he rasps around the tube, voice wrecked.  

My name in his mouth shouldn’t still do this. It shouldn’t pull at the part of me that stayed seventeen, waiting for an apology that never came.  

“Don’t try to talk,” I say, all nurse, no girl. “You’re at Westbridge. You were in an accident.”  

He swallows, wincing. His hand lifts, trembling, reaching for me.  

I shouldn’t. I do it anyway.  

Two fingers against his. His skin is cold. My pulse isn’t.  

He exhales like he’s been holding that breath since Vegas, and something in my chest cracks open that I thought I’d buried at seventeen.  

“You came,” he whispers. “You said you wouldn’t leave.”  

His lashes are the same. Dark. Too long for a boy who used them to cut girls down. But now they’re damp. When he finds me, the fight in them dissolves. Like seventeen-year-old me was the last safe thing he saw.  

He thinks I’m his wife.  

He looks at me like I’m the only good thing he’s ever had, and my throat closes. Because for the first time since high school, Roman Kade isn’t looking at me with cruelty.  

He’s looking at me with need. With hope. With something that feels dangerously like love.  

The door opens. Detective Mara Singh steps in, badge first, eyes missing nothing. She looks from Roman’s hand holding mine to the marriage certificate Legal left on the counter.  

“Ms. Monroe,” she says, voice neutral as a blade. “Your car was seen on traffic cam following Mr. Kade’s vehicle at 1:42 a.m. Twenty minutes before the crash. Brake lines were cut.”  

Roman’s fingers tighten around mine. He doesn’t let go.  

And for the first time in ten years, Roman Kade is choosing to hold on to me.  

I just have to decide if I’m going to lie to the first man who ever looked at me like I was worth saving, or tell him the truth and watch him hate me again.  

Assuming we live that long.