Chapter 3 - The Cold Iron of the RotundaVivian’s aristocratic veneer cracked down the center, crumbling away like cheap plaster.
Her manicured hands flew to her throat, her ninety-five-thousand-dollar gown trembling as she fell to her knees on the marble floorboards, the smoldering cigar burn spreading a blackened hole through the hem.
“Dominic... please! Listen to me!” she wept, her breath hitching into jagged, desperate sobs. “It was Silvio’s plan! My father’s foundries were facing bankruptcy after the federal shipping sanctions! Silvio told my father that if Leo was eliminated, you would have no heir, no secondary line—that you would be forced to marry into the Sterling family to secure the northern ports!”
The fifty guests in the rotunda scrambled backward toward the walls, knocking over gilded chairs and crystal side tables to put distance between themselves and the kneeling bride.
Dominic slowly turned his full, towering height toward her.
He did not shout. He did not draw his weapon.
He reached down, caught Vivian by the front of her couture bodice, and lifted her three inches off the floor with one arm, wrenching her forward until her tear-stained face was level with his.
“My brother bled to death in the rain on a coastal shoulder,” Dominic said, his voice flat as an open grave. “He spent forty minutes trapped beneath a crushed steering column, waiting for an ambulance that never came because your driver turned off the headlights and fled into the fog.”
Vivian clawed at his wrist, her diamond rings scraping harmlessly against his tailored wool sleeve.
“I didn't want him to die! I screamed at Silvio to stop! But Silvio said Leo had found the offshore ledgers—that he knew about the kickbacks from the Canadian shipping lines!”
“And then you drove to a back-alley boatyard in Maine,” Dominic murmured, his eyes narrowing into pitch-black voids. “You threw three hundred dollars at an orphan working in the dark, thinking a nylon fishing line would sew the blood out of your life.”
He released his grip.
Vivian dropped onto the marble floor like a sack of wet salt, weeping into her ruined silk, her diamonds rattling against the stone.
Dominic looked toward the grand entrance doors.
“Frank.”
His secondary enforcer, a scarred six-foot-three veteran of the Charlestown docks, stepped through the vestibule flanked by four armed operators in matte-black tactical wool.
“Command, Don Dominic.”
“Lock the iron perimeter gates,” Dominic ordered, his baritone booming through the vaulted rotunda with absolute authority. “Deploy the tactical interceptors along the driveway. If any vehicle attempts to clear the estate before I give the word, blow the tires off the rims.”
He looked down at Vivian.
“Strip her of the family’s jewelry. Take her and Silvio down to the granite cellar beneath the drydock. If either of them attempts to speak, gag them with the hem of that dress.”
Vivian shrieked as two operators hauled her backward across the polished marble, her bare knees scraping against the floorboards, her cries echoing through the cavernous foyer until the heavy oak doors of the lower corridor slammed shut forever.
Silence descended upon the rotunda.
Pure, clean, and terrifyingly cold.
Dominic turned his back on the empty staircase.
He walked across the floor, stopping two feet from where I stood beside the service buffet.
He reached out his large, calloused hand, his fingers gently taking my right wrist, lifting it until my palm was flat between us in the warm chandelier light.
“Maya Brooks,” Dominic said softly.
“Yes, Mr. Morelli?” I whispered, my heart hammering against my ribs.
“You stood in this room before fifty armed men and pointed your finger at the patriarch of this syndicate.”
“I only told the truth about what my hands had sewn, sir,” I said, meeting his dark eyes without flinching.
May you like
Dominic leaned down, his thumb gently smoothing over the faint silver calluses on the tips of my fingers with an intensity that took the breath straight out of my chest.
“Hands that sew the truth do not scrub elevators in my house, Maya,” Dominic murmured, his voice rich with an unshakeable, eternal gravity. “You gave my brother his justice back. In my world, that kind of courage is answered with an empire.”
Related Stories
