Chapter 4 - The Bloodshed on the Queens Docks
Three weeks passed inside that gilded cage while my body slowly knit itself back together.
The physical therapist pushed me through agonizing sessions until I could walk across the master suite unassisted.
Isabella visited every afternoon, bringing broth, classic novels, and endless stories about Dominic’s stubborn youth.
She spoke of him as a protector who had shouldered the family's violent burdens since his father was murdered.
Yet whenever I asked how his father had died, Isabella’s eyes would cloud with unspeakable sorrow and silence.
Dominic himself rarely appeared during the daylight hours, returning only in the early morning smelling of smoke and rain.
One evening, while walking through the expansive second-floor gallery to rebuild my lung capacity, I heard raised voices.
The heavy carved doors of Dominic’s personal library were slightly ajar, casting a warm sliver of light onto the parquet.
Enzo was pacing behind a massive mahogany desk, his hands gesturing furiously in the air.
Costa is claiming the docks in Brooklyn because he knows our attention is divided protecting the girl, Enzo snapped.
The other families are whispering that the head of the Rossi family lost his edge over an Ohio nobody.
Dominic’s response was a low growl that caused the air in the hallway to drop several degrees.
Let them whisper until Costa sticks his neck out far enough for me to sever it completely.
Enzo stopped pacing, leaning over the desk with an expression of profound anxiety.
That is not the only problem, Dominic, and you know it as well as I do.
Costa found the old shipping manifests from twenty years ago when your father was poisoned.
He knows Ellen Evans was the head triage nurse on duty the night your father flatlined in that clinic.
My heart seized in my chest, a bolt of pure ice paralyzing every muscle in my body.
My mother Ellen was a quiet woman who had spent forty years tending to sick children and elderly patients.
How could her name be tied to the execution of a New York mafia don two decades ago?
Enzo’s voice dropped lower, but through the crack in the door, every syllable rang out like a gunshot.
If Clara finds out you only hunted her down because you thought her mother helped assassinate your father, she will run.
She will realize that her marriage is not a shield of honor, but a leash to draw out the truth.
Dominic slammed his palm against the mahogany surface with a force that rattled the crystal decanters.
She took seven bullets to save my mother’s life, Enzo, and that erased every sin her family might have committed.
The debt is wiped clean, and anyone who brings that file up again will answer to my barrel.
I stepped backward into the shadows, my hand covering my mouth to stifle the terrified gasp rising from my throat.
May you like
My entire rescue, the expensive hospital rooms, the golden ring on my finger—it had all started as an investigation of vengeance.
I turned and fled back toward my bedroom, every healing bullet wound pulsing with agonizing, blinding fire.
