Chapter 7 - Midnight Confessions
By midnight, the intruder had been captured attempting to scale the sea cliff wall. He was Silas's younger brother, placed inside the household catering staff six months earlier by Lorenzo as a sleeper agent.
The estate fell into an eerie, heavy silence. The guards patrolled with thermal sights, their boots crunching along the gravel perimeter.
I couldn't sleep. The adrenaline still coursed through my veins like fire.
I walked downstairs to the darkened library. The French doors leading out to the terrace were open, the ocean breeze billowing the sheer curtains into the room.
Dominic was sitting in an armchair by the unlit stone fireplace, an unpoured tumbler of bourbon resting on the side table. He had removed his tie, his collar unbuttoned, revealing the sharp hollow of his throat.
"You should be resting, Chloe," he murmured into the dark without looking back.
"So should you."
I walked over and sat on the low ottoman across from him. The moonlight illuminated the sharp planes of his face.
"Why do you live like this, Dominic?" I asked softly.
He took a slow breath, looking down at his glass. "My father was Vincenzo Romano. When I was eleven, a car bomb outside our home in the North End took both him and my mother. Lorenzo’s father tried to seize control the next day." Dominic's voice was flat, recounting history like an autopsy report. "I had to learn how to fire an automatic weapon before I learned how to drive. I had to become colder, faster, and more ruthless than every uncle and cousin who wanted my father's seat."
"And you never wanted out?"
"There is no 'out' in this life, Chloe. You either sit at the head of the table holding the whip, or you get served as the meal." He looked at me, his gaze intense, piercing through the dim light. "Until four nights ago, I accepted that fate. I believed that when my time came, I would die alone at a table, surrounded by men who feared me and waiters who looked the other way."
"I couldn't look away," I said, my voice barely a whisper.
"I know." He reached out, his rough, calloused fingers gently tracing the curve of my cheekbone, lingering near my jaw. The warmth of his skin sent a shiver down my spine. "You looked at me and saw a man dying, not a boss. You broke every rule in this city just to give me a chance to draw another breath."
"You would have done the same."
"No," Dominic admitted with brutal honesty. "I would have calculated the risks. I would have weighed the collateral damage. That’s what this world does to you. It strips away your humanity until all that remains is survival."
His thumb brushed my lower lip. My breath hitched. For a moment, the entire world outside the walls of this mansion—Lorenzo, the syndicate, the hitmen—ceased to exist.
"Tomorrow night at the gala," Dominic whispered, his eyes dark with an emotion that terrified me in its depth, "Lorenzo expects me to cower. He expects me to arrive looking weak, accompanied only by bodyguards."
"What are you going to do?"
May you like
Dominic's hand slid into my hair, holding me close. "I'm bringing you. I'm going to walk into the lion’s den with the bravest woman in Boston on my arm, and I’m going to show them all that the Romano empire belongs to those who cannot be bought, broken, or poisoned."
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