Chapter 2 - The Armor Falls
When I nodded, Dominic took Samuel into his arms with a gentleness that seemed impossible for a man whose hands had ordered executions.
He didn't care about the tailored Italian silk against Sam’s damp, sweat-soaked clothes. He gathered our smallest boy against his chest, tucking Sam’s limp head into the hollow of his shoulder. The boy let out a faint sigh, his tiny fingers hooking into the satin lapel of the tuxedo.
“Out of the way!” Dominic’s roar cleared the center aisle faster than gunfire.
The guests parted like water. Socialites in diamond chokers pressed their backs against the floral arrangements. Victor took two heavy steps forward, his cane slamming against the marble floor.
“Dominic! You walk out of this sanctuary, and the Avery alliance is finished!” Victor barked, his voice carrying the icy authority that had run Boston’s underworld for forty years. “You do not humiliate this family for a woman who hid bastards in a trailer park!”
Dominic didn't even break his stride. He stopped only once, right in front of the altar, turning his head just enough to fix his father with a look of pure murder.
“If my son dies because you blocked those hospital letters,” Dominic said, his tone deathly quiet, “I won’t just leave this alliance, Father. I will burn every ship, every ledger, and every asset you own to ash. Don’t test me.”
Celeste Avery stepped forward, lifting her veil. There were no tears in her eyes, only a fierce, calculated intelligence. She looked at Samuel, then at Lucas and Noah, who were clinging tightly to my jeans.
“Go, Dominic,” Celeste said softly, stunning the room. “Take your family to the hospital. We will handle the press.”
“Celeste!” her father, Senator Avery, hissed from the third row. “You will not condone this disgrace!”
“The only disgrace here is an old man letting a child starve for pride,” Celeste replied without looking back at her father. She met my eyes and gave a single, solemn nod. “Get your boy help.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Outside, the Boston rain was coming down in gray sheets. Before I could pull out my cracked phone to summon a cab, three black Cadillac Escalades tore onto the brick courtyard, tires smoking. Dominic’s personal security chief, Marco, kicked open the passenger door, unholstering a sidearm before realizing what was happening.
“Boss?”
“Code Red to Harbor Children’s,” Dominic barked, sliding into the leather back seat with Sam cradled against his heart. “Clear traffic. Marco, call ahead to Director Vance. Tell him if the chief hematologist isn't standing on the curb with a gurney in eight minutes, I’ll pull every private grant funding their new wing.”
“On it, sir!”
Dominic reached out a large, calloused hand, grabbing my wrist—not violently, but with an anchor-like desperation—and pulled me into the vehicle. Lucas and Noah scrambled in behind us, wide-eyed, taking in the tinted windows, the communication consoles, and the scent of expensive leather and cedarwood that belonged exclusively to their father.
“Sit,” Dominic commanded gently, pulling a cashmere throw from the door compartment and wrapping it around Noah and Lucas. “You’re soaked.”
“I don’t need your comfort, Dominic,” I breathed, pressing my palm against Sam’s burning forehead. “I need your blood.”
“You’ll get everything I have,” Dominic said, staring at the identical faces of the three boys. He reached out, his thumb lightly brushing the tiny notch in Lucas’s left eyebrow. Lucas didn't flinch; he leaned into the touch with the raw, instinctual recognition of a puppy finding its pack.
“Why didn't you look for me?” I choked out, the bitter tears finally cutting through the shock. “Three years. I worked three jobs. I scrubbed floors at an all-night diner with morning sickness so bad I threw up in the alley behind the grease traps. I lived in a basement apartment where the heater went out in January, and you were in penthouse suites drinking bourbon!”
Dominic closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were wet. “I woke up in a clinic outside Zurich with third-degree burns and steel pins in my spine. I couldn't walk for six months. When I asked where you were, Victor brought me a document with your signature on it, terminating our lease, and a bank transfer slip showing forty million wired to an offshore account in the Caymans. He told me you knew the car bomb was meant for me, panicked, took the buyout, and walked into a clinic to erase the pregnancy.”
I stared at him, horrified. “I never signed anything! I went to your brownstone that night, and the locks were changed. Two men with guns took my phone, threw my clothes into garbage bags, and Victor sat me down and told me that if I ever breathed your name, he would make sure my mother’s nursing home ran out of oxygen!”
Dominic went completely still. It was the terrifying stillness of a predator calculating maximum violence. The air inside the luxury SUV plummeted.
“He threatened your mother?” Dominic asked, his voice dropping an octave.
“She died six months later anyway,” I said, looking out the tinted window as the city lights blurred through the rain. “And I was left with three babies who look so much like you it felt like a knife in my chest every time they smiled.”
Dominic reached over, pulling Samuel tighter against his chest. The boy’s breathing was shallow and rattling.
“Marco,” Dominic said through the partition.
“Yes, Boss?”
“Call the armory at the docks. Put a security lockdown on the estate. No one enters. No one leaves. Especially not my father.”
“Understood, Boss.”
May you like
The SUV screeched to a halt under the illuminated awning of Harbor Children’s Medical Center. Before the wheels had fully stopped turning, Dominic kicked the door open into the torrential downpour, shielding Samuel with his broad shoulders as the double doors of the trauma center blew open.
***
