Chapter 6
The guard’s head snapped sideways. Crimson sprayed across the dead winter grass.
He collapsed immediately.
Sadie screamed and covered her ears, stumbling backward until she struck the trunk of an oak.
Dominic emerged from behind a massive pine approximately 20 ft away.
A suppressed pistol was in his hand.
His chest heaved beneath a black tactical jacket.
He did not look at the dead guard.
He looked only at Sadie.
Then he sprinted.
Dominic crashed into her and wrapped both arms around her waist, crushing her against him. He turned so his own body stood between hers and the tree line.
He raised his radio.
“Breach at sector 4!”
For the first time, his voice had lost all control.
“Lock the estate down. Kill the men in the sedan at the service gate now.”
Gunfire erupted near the fence.
Automatic weapons tore through the afternoon.
Dominic held Sadie so tightly her ribs hurt.
His heart hammered against her cheek.
“Are you hit?”
He pulled away just enough to examine her, running his hands across her arms and torso searching for blood.
“Sadie, look at me. Are you hit?”
“No. I’m okay.”
Dominic exhaled raggedly.
His forehead dropped against hers.
He was shaking.
“I told you to stay in the house.”
“I was going crazy.”
Tears came now.
“I didn’t know they could get inside.”
“Nowhere is safe.”
Dominic looked at her.
The mask was gone.
The cold mob boss had disappeared, leaving something desperate and obsessive behind.
“He turned his radio off,” Sadie said, glancing toward the body. “He was going to take me to the car.”
Dominic took her chin and turned her face away.
“They won’t get you.”
His thumb wiped a tear from her cheek.
“I don’t care if I have to bury every man in this city. You are mine to keep alive. Do you understand me?”
His eyes remained fixed on hers.
“You belong to me now.”
The gunfire stopped.
Sirens approached in the distance.
Dominic lifted Sadie into his arms and carried her away from the blood and cold, back toward the fortress he had built around her.
She buried her face against his neck, breathing in smoke and violence.
And she realized she did not want to leave.
Later, pale muddy-pink water ran into the marble basin of Dominic’s en suite bathroom.
He stood over the sink without his tactical jacket or shirt.
He scrubbed his hands with a stiff-bristled brush and harsh lye soap.
He scrubbed until the skin over his knuckles became raw and began bleeding.
Sadie watched from the doorway.
She had not left him since he carried her inside.
His back was covered in scars.
Old white lines.
Jagged marks.
Puckered circles from bullets.
He was not simply washing away dirt.
Sadie crossed the heated tile and placed her hand over his.
Dominic went rigid.
“Stop. You’re bleeding.”
She removed the brush.
He allowed her to.
Sadie turned off the faucet, took a thick white towel from the heated rack, and wrapped it around his battered hands.
Dominic finally faced her.
His eyes were hollow.
“He was on my payroll for 3 years.”
His voice scraped from his throat.
“3 years. He ate in my kitchen. I knew his mother’s name. And they bought him. They bought him right out from under me.”
“They didn’t get in. You stopped him.”
“I was almost too late.”
Anger surged through him, directed at himself.
He took her shoulders.
“If I had checked those cameras 2 minutes later, if I hadn’t run—”
His forehead pressed against hers.
“Do you understand what they would have done to you to get to me?”
“I’m here.”
Sadie did not pull away.
She knew what he was.
Less than an hour earlier, she had watched him shoot a man in the head.
Yet her fear of Dominic was gone.
She placed her healing hands against his bare chest.
His eyes closed.
He leaned into her touch.
“I can’t lock down the city,” he said against her neck. “They have too much money. They’ll keep finding rats. They’ll keep coming.”
“Then what do we do?”
The word we escaped before Sadie could stop it.
Dominic heard it.
His head lifted.
The vulnerability disappeared.
“I end it.”
“How?”
“I cut off the head of the snake. All of them. Tonight.”
“The Moretti brothers?”
“They’re having a sit-down at their warehouse in the meat-packing district. They think they have me on my heels after the breach today. They think I’m busy plugging holes in my own ship.”
Dominic entered his walk-in closet.
Sadie followed.
He removed a tactical vest from a reinforced drawer and began loading magazines into it.
“You’re walking into a trap.”
“I know.”
“They’re waiting for you to retaliate.”
“That’s why I’m taking everyone. Carmine. The entire Western crew. We hit the warehouse. We don’t ask questions. We don’t take prisoners.”
Dominic reached for a rifle.
“We burn it to the foundation.”
Sadie grabbed his arm.
“You could die.”
He looked at her hand and then into her eyes.
“If I don’t go, you spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder. You spend the rest of your life as a target.”
His thumb moved along her jaw.
“I told you that you belong here. I told you I would keep you safe. I intend to keep that promise.”
He kissed her.
It was desperate and bruising, tasting of copper, scotch, and impending violence.
Sadie gripped his shoulders and kissed him back with a ferocity that surprised her.
When they separated, Dominic took the rifle.
May you like
“Lock the bedroom door. Do not open it for anyone but Carmine or me.”
Sadie remained in the closet as his boots disappeared down the hallway.
