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"Don't go... Ruby, please... don't take him away..."

My heart felt like it had been crushed with a blunt object.

I leaned down and pressed my forehead to his burning, hard chest, tears soaking the white hospital gown.

"I hate you, Marcelo."

I closed my eyes, each word a knife, each word bleeding. "I hate you for humiliating me with that goddamn check four years ago. I hate you for sentencing me without hearing a word when I needed you most. I hate those four years of rainy nights when I held Leon and cried alone... But most of all, I hate myself."

Marcelo's fingers shook violently. His breathing stopped.

"I hate that no matter how far I ran, how well I hid, even changing my name and crossing an ocean, every time I closed my eyes, I still saw you." I looked up, tears streaming, and met his bloodshot eyes. "Four years ago. Four days ago in the workshop. When you threw yourself in front of that bullet for me. Always you."

"Marcelo, I fell in love with a bloodstained mobster. And I don't think I'll ever escape."

Long silence filled the room.

Only the steady beep of the heart monitor.

Marcelo looked like he'd been struck by lightning, frozen on the bed. Then his eyes flooded with hot tears. Two streams ran down his chiseled face and disappeared into his disheveled hair.

"Ruby..." He choked, voice like sandpaper on raw nerves.

Before I could react, this man who'd just crawled back from death's door ripped the IV needle from his hand!

The clear tube and backflow of blood splattered on the sheets in a shocking dark stain.

"Marcelo! What are you doing?" I lunged for his hand.

But Marcelo didn't care. He bit down hard on his pale lower lip, sweat breaking out on his forehead, and forced himself upright with that barely-healed arm. On that narrow hospital bed, he shifted his body with excruciating difficulty and dropped to one knee on the white mattress!

"Marcelo, you've lost your mind! Your wounds—"

"Let me finish, Ruby."

He cut me off, breathing hard, and reached toward the nightstand for the blood-stained suit jacket Rocco had brought. From a hidden inside pocket, he pulled out a square box wrapped in black velvet.

A soft click.

The box opened.

The ring lying on black velvet stopped my breath.

Pure black gold forged into a lifelike Sicilian viper, every cold scale carved with exquisite detail. In the serpent's mouth sat an eight-carat cushion-cut Zambian emerald, deep and green, surrounded by a ring of thorn-like black diamonds.

Ancient. Commanding. Oppressive. Yet achingly sacred and beautiful.

"Four years ago in Hoboken... I'd had this made. Our initials engraved inside. I was going to come clean after I dealt with DeLuca and ask you then."

Marcelo knelt on one knee on the hospital bed, his straight back trembling with pain, but his eyes blazed brighter than ever—honest, earnest, devoted.

"Then I lost you. This ring stayed locked in my safe for four years. I thought it would rot in hell with me."

He lifted my left hand, trembling fingers sliding over my empty ring finger, eyes full of raw longing and surrender.

"Ruby Caldwell, I swear to you on every bone, every drop of blood, every piece of my soul. All the filth, the sin, the hatred—I'll carry it all. Every cent of the Moretti fortune, every scrap of glory and power—I lay at your feet."

"Be my wife. Be my only rose. Let me spend what's left of my life protecting you and Leon."