Chapter 7 - Three Months to Rewire a Broken House
For the next three months, Penny rewired the Moretti estate one room at a time.
She replaced cloth-insulated cable.
Updated breaker panels.
Pulled abandoned wires from walls.
Removed illegal junctions installed by men who had apparently believed electrical codes were suggestions.
She also changed something no electrician normally changed.
The house itself.
People began talking upstairs after midnight.
The staff stopped lowering their voices whenever Dominic entered.
Maria the housekeeper began leaving tea outside his study because she wanted to, not because Mercer had ordered it.
Evan Pierce became part of Dominic’s new security team.
The two guards who had once stood frozen outside the bedroom were given a choice.
Retake emergency-response training and earn their positions back, or leave.
Both stayed.
Dominic never publicly humiliated them.
“They obeyed a rule I created,” he told Penny.
“Mercer exploited it.”
Penny considered that.
“You’re getting annoyingly reasonable.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
The seizures did not return.
Dominic still met with physicians.
He still underwent testing.
He did not pretend four years of trauma could be erased because one machine had been destroyed.
Some nights he woke convinced he had seen light flickering behind the curtains.
On those nights, he no longer locked the door.
Sometimes Penny found him sitting awake beside the window.
She would knock against the open frame.
“You good?”
“Yes.”
“Lie.”
He would look at her.
Then move over.
She sat beside him.
They rarely talked about anything important.
That was how important things eventually began to be said.
He told her about his mother dying when he was sixteen.
She told him how her father had called every circuit breaker in every building by a woman’s name because, according to him, “They’re temperamental, expensive and smarter than I am.”
Dominic said, “That seems insulting.”
“To women?”
“To circuit breakers.”
Penny threw a pillow at him.
By December, the estate looked different.
Less like a fortress.
More like a house.
The night of the first snow, Penny finished replacing the final bedroom circuit.
She stood on a ladder near Dominic’s window.
He entered carrying two glasses.
“What’s that?”
“Bourbon.”
“I’m working.”
“You shut the breaker off.”
“How do you know?”
“You’ve yelled at me about electrical safety for eleven weeks.”
“Good.”
She climbed down.
Dominic handed her a glass.
Outside, snow covered the dead floodlight mast.
They had never replaced it.
Penny had offered.
Dominic said no.
He liked seeing the empty bracket.
A reminder.
She looked at it now.
“You ever wonder what would’ve happened if I’d listened to those guards?”
“Yes.”
“Cheerful thought.”
“I would probably still be sick.”
“Maybe.”
“Mercer would be running everything.”
“Probably.”
Dominic looked at her.
“And you?”
“I’d have gone home.”
“That night?”
“Yeah.”
“Back to your apartment?”
Penny nodded.
“Probably eaten cold pizza over the sink, cursed rich people and forgotten you existed.”
“I doubt that.”
“You’re right. I would’ve told everyone I met about the idiot millionaire whose security system was trying to murder him.”
“Billionaire.”
Penny groaned.
“You correcting me somehow makes that worse.”
Dominic smiled.
Then became serious.
“There is one thing I never thanked you for.”
“You’ve thanked me approximately a thousand times.”
“Not for this.”
He looked toward the bedroom door.
“You came in.”
Penny’s smile faded.
“When everyone else was afraid to.”
“They had guns pointed at them too.”
“You did.”
“Yes.”
“You still came in.”
Penny set her glass down.
“I was terrified.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean terrified. My knees were shaking. I thought Mercer was going to put a bullet in my back.”
Dominic’s expression darkened.
“So why did you do it?”
Penny shrugged.
“Courage isn’t when you’re not scared.”
“I know.”
“Then stop asking questions you know the answer to.”
Dominic stepped closer.
The room became quiet.
For months, something had existed between them.
Not gratitude.
Not obligation.
Something neither had named because naming it would make it vulnerable.
Dominic touched the fading scar across her palm.
Penny looked down at his hand.
“You know,” she said, “for a terrifying crime boss, you’re extremely dramatic.”
“I am not a crime boss.”
She looked at him.
He sighed.
“Fine.”
Penny laughed.
Dominic did too.
Then his hand remained around hers.
The laughter faded.
“Penny.”
“Yeah?”
“You can still leave.”
“I know.”
“I mean anytime.”
“I know.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want you staying because you think saving my life made you responsible for it.”
Penny looked at him for a long moment.
Then she squeezed his hand.
“Dominic.”
“Yes?”
“Shut up.”
May you like
And kissed him.
For once, Dominic Moretti followed instructions.
