The sterile scent of antiseptic did nothing to cool the blistering rage vibrating through Damian Boren’s veins as he stormed back into the critical care wing of the Upper District Hospital. He had barely washed his father’s lingering, oppressive presence from his senses before rushing back to the one person who mattered. His white lab coat flew out behind him like a broken shroud as he aggressively pushed through the automated glass partitions, his eyes instantly locking onto the empty space where Jannah’s hover-bed had been parked just hours prior.

The floor was completely bare. The monitoring lines had been severed from the wall units, and the high-density emergency equipment was completely dark.

"Where the hell is she?!" Damian roared, slamming his bruised knuckles onto the central reception desk with a violent force that caused the digital screens to rattle. The head nurse on duty flinched, her face draining of color as she felt the immediate, toxic expansion of his Mafia-born Alpha aura.

"D-Doctor Damian..." she stammered, frantically typing into her datapad with trembling fingers. "The patient... Jannah Nenth... she has already been officially moved from the facility. We couldn’t stop it."

"Moved?!" Damian’s jaw clenched so hard a dangerous click echoed from his teeth. He leaned over the counter, his eyes flashing with a predatory underworld heat. "Who authorized a transfer for a critical trauma patient without my signature? Who took her?!"

"The man who brought her in, Alpha Dorrent Grefo," the nurse whispered frantically, backing her chair away from his suffocating field. "He bypassed the administrative board completely using his credentials. He has taken her under private home care at his personal estate, and he reallocated our senior physician, Miss Belle, to manage her treatment there. There was absolutely nothing we could do to oppose his path."

Damian let out a choked breath of frustration, his fists clenching so tightly that the wounds from his previous fight with Dorrent split open, fresh crimson drops staining the white linoleum. He was entirely paralyzed by the legal walls the Grefo family had erected around his woman. He had the muscle of the Boren syndicate at his back, but as long as Jannah was trapped inside that fortress under a legal contract, any direct assault would trigger a war before he could even lay a hand on her skin.

---

The following morning back within the fortified East Wing of the Grefo estate, the golden rays of the early sun cut through the glass windows like blinding needles.

Jannah’s long, dark eyelashes trembled against her pale cheeks. A sharp, burning ache radiated across her entire right side, a suffocating weight pinning her lungs down as she opened her eyes for the very first time since the shooting. Her vision blurred, swirling through a haze of heavy clinical sedation before her dark pupils finally focused on the immediate space beside her bed.

The very first thing she saw was the exceptionally handsome, sharp-featured face of Dorrent Grefo.

He was sitting merely inches away from her pillow, his massive frame leaned forward, his eyes completely fixed on her face with an unyielding, predatory intensity that proved he hadn’t slept a single second through the night. The moment her gaze locked into his, Dorrent noticed the immediate, instinctive contraction of her features—he saw the venomous hatred flaring behind her pupils, and how her dry, pale lips parted as she desperately wanted to curse at his face despite her lack of oxygen.

"Go ahead, little physician," Dorrent murmured, his deep voice dropping into a low, mocking purr that vibrated against her ears. A smirk touched his lips as he leaned closer, his winter-frost pheromones immediately engulfing her senses. "Curse me. Scream every single insult your lower-district mind can conjure. Let me hear that tongue of yours work."

"You... you disgusting monster..." Jannah forced out, her voice nothing more than a harsh, ragged whisper that sent a flare of excruciating pain straight through her torn ribs. She panted for air, her small fingers clawing weakly at the silk sheets. "I hope you rot in hell... I hate you... I hate every single breath you take inside this room."

Dorrent let out a low chuckle that dripped with toxic satisfaction. He reached out, his thumb slowly and deliberately tracing the sharp line of her jaw with a terrifying possessiveness. "I am so incredibly happy that my only medicine and also my greatest enemy is finally awake," he whispered, his silver eyes flaring with a sudden crimson light that made her blood run cold. "You have no idea how much I have missed your pathetic voice over the last twenty-four hours, Jannah. The silence in this house was entirely boring without your hatred."

Jannah stared at him through the strands of her uncombed hair, her chest heaving in short, agonizing gasps as she tried to twist her chin out of his bruising grip. "You must be a complete... a complete psychopath," she panted, her voice cracking with raw emotion. "Who stays awake all night... being happy seeing his enemy is alive? You are entirely insane."

"Of course I am a psychopath when it comes to your body, Jannah," Dorrent growled softly, his gaze deliberately drifting down past her throat to the sheets covering her chest. He leaned down until his lips were mere millimeters from her ear, his breath hot and dominant against her skin. "Why shouldn’t I be happy? My dick is also cheering already since its singular medicine is conscious. It knows that the exact moment your lungs recover, it’s gonna have a very tight, familiar place to sink back into."

Jannah completely ignored his disgusting, primitive provocation, forcing her eyes to snap away from his face as a sudden, intense wave of physical discomfort hit her lower abdomen. She was deeply pressed. The clinical fluids they had pumped into her veins all night to stabilize her blood volume were taking their toll, and she desperately wanted to use the washroom immediately. But her pride was an unyielding wall; she absolutely could not bring herself to tell this monster to help her with something so intimate, and as her eyes frantically scanned the quiet room, she didn’t see Miss Belle or a single female servant around.

Gathering every single ounce of her remaining strength, Jannah ignored the agonizing friction in her chest. She tried to move her torso, shifting her weight to the edge of the mattress so that she could climb down from the bed and drag herself into the adjacent washroom on her own feet.

The exact millisecond her legs twitched beneath the sheets, Dorrent’s hands shot forward like iron bands. He firmly clamped his palms down on her uninjured shoulder, his strength instantly pinning her back against the pillows before she could even move a single inch.

"Do not damn well move, Jannah," Dorrent commanded, his voice dropping into a harsh, authoritative bark that brooked absolutely no defiance. "Your baseline metrics are still entirely unstable. Lie back down."

"Let go of me!" Jannah cried out, her voice a defensive line as she fruitlessly tried to claw at his wrists with her left hand. Her face flushed with absolute humiliation as the physical pressure in her lower half became unbearable. "I need to go! I wanna use the washroom right now, Dorrent! Move out of my way!"

"I am here for that," Dorrent replied instantly, his expression smoothing into a cold mask that carried a terrifyingly intimate leverage. He didn’t relax his grip; instead, he slid his arms beneath her back and thighs, effortlessly preparing to lift her entire weight into his chest. "From this moment until you get completely better, I am your exclusive personal assistant. You should not worry about your modesty. I have worked as a trauma doctor before I ever became a CEO, and I still remember perfectly well how to handle an incapacitated patient’s anatomy."

Jannah’s eyes widened in horror as she felt his heat completely engulfing her frame. "No! I won’t do it! I will manage on my own!" she screamed, her voice cracking as she violently thrashed her legs against the silk sheets. "Get your hands off me! I can walk by myself!"

Dorrent stopped, his eyes locking onto her flushed, defiant face with a mocking amusement that stripped away the last remnants of her control. He tightened his hold, his deep voice dropping into a whisper that exposed the absolute impossibility of her escape.

"You will manage how, Jannah, when you are completely bandaged across your entire chest from that bullet wound, and your right hand is also wrapped in heavy-duty clinical plaster?"