Chapter 3 - The Cold Marble of the Baccarat SuiteDominic Moretti rose slowly to his full height.
When he stood, the ballroom of the Grand Atlantic felt as if the ocean had breached the seawall and flooded the room with sub-zero brine. The vulnerability that had touched his expression for a fleeting second dissolved completely, replaced by an abyss of primeval, calculated slaughter.
His dark eyes tracked down to the spilled wine and crushed ice on his mother’s tweed blanket.
Then his gaze shifted to the shattered crystal goblet, the brass casino tokens rolling across the floor, and the torn stocking on Laura Hayes’s bruised shin.
“Who touched my mother’s cart?” Dominic asked.
The words were spoken in a low, level baritone, barely louder than a whisper, but they struck the marble walls with the force of artillery fire.
Victoria Moretti took a frantic step backward, her velvet gown catching on the broken glass, her hands trembling violently against her collarbones.
“Dominic... darling, listen to me!” she stammered, her voice pitching into a shrill, hysterical squeak. “Nobody knew she was alive! She had no security detail—she was sitting in a broken wheelchair dressed in thrift-store rags! She looked like an unregistered beggar who snuck in through the kitchen!”
Dominic did not turn his head toward Victoria.
His cold eyes locked onto Charles Kane.
“Charles.”
“Don Dominic... please! Have mercy!” the banquet director wept, falling flat on his face on the floorboards, his hands clawing at the parquet. “I was only trying to enforce gala protocol! Miss Moretti told me the woman was an intruder—I didn't recognize her!”
“You told my mother her things belonged in an incinerator,” Dominic said, each syllable dropping like an anvil onto stone. “And you promised to hand this girl over to an unmarked van.”
Charles choked on his own breath, unable to formulate a defense.
Dominic turned his gaze onto Laura.
He took in the rented server's vest, the plain white nametag, the exhaustion in her hazel eyes, and the dark bruise forming along her shin where Victoria’s stiletto had struck her.
“You,” Dominic said softly. “What is your name?”
“Laura Hayes, sir,” she answered, her voice clear, steady, and entirely free of the groveling cowardice that filled the rest of the room.
“You work here?”
“I am temporary banquet staff, sir.”
“Did you know who was sitting in that chair, Laura?”
“No, sir.”
“Then why did you put your body between her and a broken glass?”
Laura met the unblinking, dangerous gaze of the man who ruled Atlantic City.
“Because she is an elderly woman who asked for basic courtesy,” Laura said, her chin lifting. “And where I come from, you don't let bullies kick someone who can't run, no matter whose name is embroidered on their dress.”
A terrifying stillness settled over the room.
Donna Sofia let out a soft, dry chuckle from the chair.
“She has iron in her blood, Dominic,” the matriarch murmured, tapping the black calfskin ledger on her lap. “She took a kick to the shin without taking half a step back. Reminds me of your aunt when the state troopers tried to padlock the docks in seventy-eight.”
Dominic’s jaw muscles flexed, a faint, lethal shadow crossing his features.
He turned toward Victoria Moretti.
The heiress backed away in blind panic until her shoulders slammed hard against the marble pillar behind her.
“Dominic! Our families are merging the offshore accounts next week!” she pleaded, tears of pure humiliation ruining her foundation. “My father controls thirty percent of the gaming machines in the state! You cannot humiliate our house over an hourly tray-carrier!”
Dominic stopped six inches from her shivering frame.
He reached out.
With slow, measured precision, his large hand closed around the three-carat diamond drop earring dangling from Victoria’s left lobe.
He didn't tear it violently.
He pinched the platinum clasp between his thumb and forefinger, crushing the delicate setting until the diamonds popped free, clattering across the marble floor into the puddle of spilled wine.
“Your father doesn't control thirty percent of the gaming machines, Victoria,” Dominic whispered, his voice quiet enough that the tide hitting the boardwalk outside sounded like thunder. “Your father operates those machines under an exclusive license that my mother signed forty years ago.”
He pointed at the floor.
“Get on your knees,” Dominic commanded.
May you like
Victoria gasped, her breath catching. “What?”
“Get on your knees,” Dominic repeated, his tone devoid of human mercy. “And apologize to Laura Hayes before I have Marco strip every gaming terminal from your father’s casinos before dawn.”
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