Chapter 2 - The Mask Slips
The air in the subterranean cellar felt ten degrees colder than the winter morning outside, thick with the copper stench of spilled blood and stagnant stone.
Dominic Vale did not look at Nathan Cross when his second-in-command gasped that theatrical question from the threshold. Dominic’s focus remained pinned entirely on the woman shivering beneath his heavy cashmere overcoat.
Mia’s pulse fluttered beneath the thin skin of her throat like a trapped moth. Her collarbone was scored with dark, ugly contusions, and the skin around her wrists had been stripped raw down to the dermis by coarse sisal rope.
“Drink this. Slowly,” Dominic murmured, his deep baritone stripped of its customary lethal edge. He unscrewed a silver flask from his pocket, pressing the rim to Mia’s cracked lips. It was pure water.
Mia swallowed greedily, coughing as the liquid hit her parched throat. Harper clung to her mother’s waist, her small face buried in the wool of Dominic’s coat, weeping so hard her narrow shoulders shook in violent rhythm.
“Harper,” Mia rasped, her voice sounding like gravel dragged across glass. “My baby… my sweet baby…”
“She’s safe,” Dominic said. His eyes swept over Mia’s injuries with calculating precision. Two broken fingers on her left hand. Dehydration. Mild hypothermia. Someone had struck her across the temple with enough force to split the brow. “Nobody touches you again. Look at me, Mia. Nobody.”
Mia looked up. Her amber eyes, usually so bright and attentive whenever she served his morning espresso in the library, were clouded with terror—not just for herself, but for him. She lifted a trembling hand, grabbing the lapel of his suit.
“Dominic…” she choked out, breaking every rule of house protocol by using his given name. “Claire… she wasn't alone. In the foundation vault… the second ledger… Nathan—”
She went limp before she could finish the sentence, consciousness slipping away as the adrenaline that had kept her alive for seventy-two hours evaporated into blackness.
“Mia!” Harper screamed.
“She’s only sleeping, little one,” Dominic whispered, lifting Mia into his arms with effortless grace. She weighed almost nothing. “Daniel, take Harper. Wrap her in your jacket. Marcus, call Dr. Mercer directly. My private line only. If anyone from the local hospital or the Bennett family asks why Mercer is driving ninety miles an hour up the Taconic, they get a bullet in their radiator.”
“Understood, Boss,” Marcus barked.
Dominic turned toward the doorway.
Nathan still stood there, his frame filling the iron-framed opening. His posture was calculated sympathy, hands open, eyebrows knit with what looked like deep brotherly concern. But Dominic had spent seventeen years reading the micro-expressions of cartel capos, crooked senators, and hitmen. He saw the almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of Nathan’s mouth—the cold, calculating assessment of a predator whose trap had sprung too early.
“Let me carry her, Dom,” Nathan said smoothly, stepping forward with outstretched arms. “You just got back from Jersey. You’re exhausted. I’ll set her up in the staff quarters and put two guards on the door.”
“Get out of my way, Nathan,” Dominic said. His voice was not loud, but it possessed the deadly resonance of a chambering round.
Nathan paused, his arms hanging frozen in mid-air. “Dom, I know this looks insane, but we don’t know who did this. If Claire really locked that door, she must have been terrified of an intruder. We need to handle this quietly before the house staff panics.”
“My housekeeper was bound, beaten, and starved under my own dining room floor for three days while my goddaughter roamed the property in bare feet,” Dominic said, stepping forward until his chest was inches from Nathan’s. Dominic was taller, broader, and carried the terrifying gravity of a man who ruled five boroughs with an iron fist. “Nothing about this is going to be quiet.”
Nathan held his gaze for two seconds before slowly stepping aside, lowering his head in apparent submission. “Of course. Whatever you need.”
Dominic walked past him, carrying Mia up the spiral staircase into the warmth of the grand estate. But in the reflection of an antique gilt mirror mounted on the stair landing, Dominic saw Nathan slip his right hand into his pocket, retrieve an encrypted black satellite phone, and type a single, furious message with his thumb.
May you like
The war had not started in the streets of Manhattan or the docks of Brooklyn.
It was already inside his house.
