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หน้าหลัก / He Took a Bullet for Me, Then My Blood for Her / บทที่ 1 - บทที่ 10

บททั้งหมดของ He Took a Bullet for Me, Then My Blood for Her: บทที่ 1 - บทที่ 10

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Chapter 1

The Five Families Commission chose whom the Valenti heir could marry. His wife had to bring the family a powerful alliance.I had no family name, ports, or votes to offer.Even so, Nico Valenti stood before the entire Commission and declared that I was the only woman he would marry.To be with me, he broke his engagement to the Donatis and offered to surrender his inheritance. At his family trial, five capos broke three of his ribs with gunstocks, and Salvatore Valenti shot him through the left shoulder to force him to renounce me.With blood soaking through his shirt, Nico still looked up at me beyond the door and smiled.“Don't be afraid, Tessa. You're the only one I want.”In the end, the Commission compromised. Once Nico fulfilled his duty to the family, he could leave Chicago and they would no longer interfere with us. But before he surrendered the Valenti succession, he had to give the Donati family a male heir.Nico promised that once the child was born, he would sign away his i
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Chapter 2

The front doors were shut. Blood from the back of my head had soaked my collar. I pressed a clean corner of my sleeve against the wound and reached for my phone.Once, Nico had come through a clinic door just before a man with a gun could hurt me.Back then, I worked at a South Side community clinic and studied toxicology at night while applying to a clinical pharmacology program.I first met Nico on a stormy night when two armed men raided the clinic. One forced my face against the counter. Before his gun struck me, two muffled shots sounded, and a man in a black coat appeared in the doorway, bleeding from his left arm.The bullet had only grazed Nico, yet the bleeding would not stop. It had been coated in a powerful anticoagulant. With too little plasma and no safe public hospital, I mixed an antidote and cared for him for three days while his men sealed the clinic.On the third morning, his clotting levels stabilized. He watched me remove the IV from his arm.“You saved my life.”“I
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Chapter 3

Nico stayed away from the estate for three days. During those three days, Alessia sent me videos.One showed Nico assembling a toy castle with Gia in his lap while Alessia watched in his suit jacket. In another, he fed her soup. In the last, Gia slept in his arms and Alessia rested against his shoulder beneath the same blanket.At first, I played every clip. Then I turned off the sound. By the third day, I stopped opening them.As I moved to block her number, another message arrived: a photograph of my mother's bracelet dangling from her fingers.[Want your mother's bracelet back?][Come to the hospital. Alone.]I rose too quickly and my vision darkened. Still weak from blood loss, I waited for the dizziness to pass, grabbed my coat, and left.I wanted my mother's bracelet back before I left Chicago. There was nothing else I needed from Alessia.The room was unlocked. Alessia held Gia and hummed an Italian lullaby about how much Daddy loved her and the little brother coming soon.She s
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Chapter 4

I woke facedown in the Valenti clinic, my back and ribs aching with every breath.“Tessa.” Nico rose from the bedside, his shirt wrinkled and his eyes bloodshot. He reached toward my face, then stopped. “Where does it hurt? I'll get the doctor.”He was afraid to touch a bruise his own family had given me.I looked away.“The Donatis wanted you executed,” he said. “If I'd taken you out by force, the Commission would have sided with them. I accepted the punishment to save your life.”“Look at me, Nico. Do you believe I hurt Gia?”He hesitated. “Gia was bruised, Alessia named you, and the digitalis came from your clinic. I want to believe you, but how am I supposed to explain that?”I turned away as tears escaped.“Get out.”He tried to take my hand. “Once the boy is born, I can surrender the succession. I'll take you to the coast you've always wanted to see. No more Chicago winters.”His voice softened. “Everything will be as it was.”He was planning where we would live. I was wondering
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Chapter 5

I turned away. My wet shoes whispered over the marble as I slipped into an unused guest room.I had endured his nights with Alessia by calling them transactions. That kiss involved no schedule and no Commission.My hands shook as I pulled off my coat. I could not manage the buttons beneath it. I collapsed on the bed.Fever took me.Through the haze, I heard Nico singing an old Sicilian lullaby in the primary suite.Years ago, he had hummed the same melody with his palm over my stomach. “When we have a child, I'll sing to him every night. He'll know my voice before anyone else's.”He was finally singing to his child. I simply wasn't the mother.Much later, someone called my name.Nico sat beside the bed with water and fever medicine. Alessia's perfume clung to his shirt.“Why are you in here?” He touched my forehead. “How did your fever get this high?”I turned away. “Leave the medicine.”“Alessia and Gia are staying here. I've given them the primary suite. It connects to the safe room
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Chapter 6

After three days of fever, I finally woke clearheaded on the fourth morning.The guards were gone. A maid brought a black dress for Gia's family recognition ceremony, where the Five Families would watch her enter the official Valenti register.I had no reason to be there, but Alessia insisted that a family should not remain divided by a “past misunderstanding.” For the sake of appearances between the Valentis and Donatis, Salvatore ordered me to attend.I agreed. Only three days remained before he sent me away. This would be my last performance of harmony.The century-old chapel had armed guards at every entrance. In the glass reception hall behind it, champagne towers and lavish gifts glittered beneath the lights.Salvatore carried Gia among the guests.“She has the Donati eyes.”“Surviving the poison proves she has Valenti strength.”“Once her brother is born, no one will challenge this alliance again.”I watched as they defined a baby through blood, power, and succession. Gia was in
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Chapter 7

I thought I had misheard him. “What?”Nico pushed over the access report. “Three bolts were cut. Your key card entered the service corridor the night before, and the cameras failed for those eleven minutes.”His gaze was as sharp as if he were interrogating an enemy. “Who else would want Alessia and her child dead?”After losing so much blood, even my fingers were cold. Nothing was colder than his eyes.“It wasn't me. I didn't put digitalis in the milk. I didn't bruise Gia. I didn't damage the crest. Nico, I have never hurt any of them.”“Every incident points to you,” he said, anger restrained beneath each word. “The digitalis came from your clinic. The key card was yours. You confronted Alessia in front of witnesses. You keep demanding that I believe you, but you give me no reason to.”I wanted to ask why he had not checked for a copied card, recovered the footage, or traced the medicine. Instead, I met his eyes. “Do you remember the scar on your left shoulder?”His body stiffened.“
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Chapter 8

The cargo plane landed in Vancouver shortly before dawn.By then, the sedatives Salvatore had given me had worn off, and every injury in my body seemed to wake at once. My ribs hurt when I breathed. The needle marks on my arm had turned purple. Beneath my coat, I still wore the plain dress from Nico's wedding day.A woman holding a sign with my new name met me beside the freight terminal.Claire Hart.It belonged to a thirty-year-old American citizen with a clean tax record, a rented apartment in Seattle, and a place waiting in the clinical toxicology program at Rainier Medical Institute. According to the documents, she had existed for years.Tessa Mercer had disappeared in nine minutes.I crossed the border in a gray sedan and watched the mountains emerge through the morning fog. No black Valenti cars followed us. No one called my name through a locked door. For the first time in years, I was traveling toward a future Nico had not chosen for me.Back in Chicago, the wedding reception
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Chapter 9

Once Nico began investigating Alessia, the evidence surfaced quickly.The Donati supply company had purchased six vials of digitalis concentrate. Five remained in a warehouse outside Chicago. The sixth had entered the Valenti estate in Alessia's nurse's medical bag on the morning of Gia's baptism.The nurse broke after three hours of questioning.Alessia had told her the dose would only make Gia sick long enough to frighten the Commission. An antidote was hidden in the nursery. But Gia reacted more severely than expected, and Alessia panicked before she could retrieve it.The bruises were worse.A photograph automatically uploaded from the nurse's phone showed the marks on Gia's arm forty minutes before I entered the hospital room. Alessia had pinched her own daughter while the child was sedated, then ordered the nurse to leave.Security found the copied access card in the apartment of a Donati fixer. He admitted disabling the cameras and cutting the crest's bolts. The device was meant
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Chapter 10

The conference hall held nearly a thousand people.I stood behind the podium and explained how rare cardiac toxins were missed in ordinary emergency screening. The protocol on the screen had begun with Gia's symptoms, though I never mentioned her name or Chicago. What almost destroyed me had become knowledge that could save someone else.When the presentation ended, the audience applauded. Dr. Cole squeezed my shoulder before we stepped down.“You were right to use your real name,” she said. “People should know who did this work.”For the first time, hearing Tessa Mercer did not make me feel like a dead woman.The name no longer belonged to Nico's hidden fiancée or the powerless woman accused in a Valenti estate. It belonged to the researcher whose work now appeared on the conference screen. I had reclaimed it without asking anyone's permission.I saw Nico outside the lecture hall.He stood apart from the crowd in a black suit, thinner than I remembered. Exhaustion had hollowed his fac
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