Chapter 2 - The Ghost in the Foyer
The marble tiles of the restaurant felt slick beneath my Italian leather shoes, but my feet moved forward as if dragged by a magnetic wire.
The heavy oak door of the men’s room swung shut behind me with a soft, pneumatic hiss. The sounds of Back Bay clattered in the background—crystal wine glasses chiming together, the murmur of old-money patrons discussing offshore accounts, the soft strum of a live Spanish guitar near the bar. None of it registered. All I could hear was the blood hammering against my eardrums like a war drum.
Ten feet away, near the coat check, stood Elena.
Six years. Two thousand one hundred and ninety days. I had spent every single one of those days believing she had walked away from me because she couldn't stomach the blood on my hands. I had believed she took the three million dollars my father’s estate had offered her to disappear and never look back. I had hated her for it. I had spent three years drinking myself to sleep, another two building an iron fortress around my chest, and the last year convincing myself that marrying Sloane Barrett was a smart, clean, transactional solution to a lonely life.
Yet there she was.
She was wearing a simple charcoal wool coat, slightly frayed at the cuffs. Her chestnut hair, which used to fall in wild curls past her ribs when she slept against my bare chest, was pinned up in a hurried, messy twist. She looked exhausted. There were pale purple crescents under her hazel eyes, the kind etched by years of chronic sleeplessness.
And around her knees swarmed the four boys.
"Mama, Noah wouldn't let me use the paper towels!" one of them whined, tugging at her hem.
"He used too many, Mama! He was making a bird nest!" another argued, jumping up to tap her shoulder.
"Leo, Mateo, stop," Elena said, her voice dropping into that quiet, fiercely gentle tone that used to disarm me in my darkest hours. "Put your gloves on. The cab is waiting on Boylston, and if we make the driver wait past seven, he’s going to cancel the fare."
She reached down, pulling a knit beanie over the smallest boy’s ears. As she bent, her sleeve rode up. There, on her inner wrist, was the tiny silver bird tattoo we had gotten together in a dingy parlor in Revere when we were twenty-four and stupid enough to believe love was stronger than my surname.
She was real.
"Elena."
My voice didn't come out as a shout. It was barely above a whisper, rough, cracked around the edges like dried cement. But in the quiet hush of the foyer, it carried.
Elena froze.
Her hand stayed pressed against the boy’s head. Every line of her slender frame seized into rigid stone. Slowly, agonizingly, she turned around.
When her hazel eyes collided with mine, the color drained from her face so fast I thought she was going to collapse right onto the runner rug. Her lips parted, pale and trembling. Her hand instinctively gathered the four boys behind her, shielding them with her body like a mother hawk facing a wolf.
"Dominic," she breathed.
The word held no warmth. It held raw, paralyzing terror.
That hurt more than any knife wound I had ever taken in the alleys of South Boston.
"You're in Boston," I said, taking two deliberate steps toward her. The air between us turned arctic. "You’ve been in Boston."
"Dominic, please," she whispered, her eyes darting frantically toward the revolving brass doors, calculating her escape route. "Don't do this here. Please. Just let us go."
"Let you go?" A dark, bitter laugh tore out of my throat. I looked past her shoulder at the four small faces peeking out from behind her coat. Four pairs of eyes—slate gray, identical to mine, identical to my late father’s—were staring back at me with wide, guarded curiosity.
"Who are they, Elena?" I demanded, though my soul already knew the answer. The truth was written in their high cheekbones, the slight crook in their noses, the stubborn line of their jaws.
"They're mine," she snapped defensively, her maternal instincts kicking in, overtaking her fear. "They're my children."
"And their father?" I asked, closing the distance until I was towering over her. The scent of her hit me—vanilla, rain, and almond soap. It was the exact same scent that had haunted every bed I’d slept in since she left. "Who was he, Elena? Tell me. Tell me right now so I can find the bastard who dared put my face on four boys."
Elena’s eyes flashed with that fiery defiance I had forgotten she possessed. She squared her shoulders, refusing to back down, even as her hands trembled.
"You don't get to ask that," she hissed under her breath, glancing down nervously to make sure the boys weren't terrified. "You gave up the right to ask anything about my life the night you sent your men to my apartment."
I frowned, a cold dread pooling in my gut. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Before she could answer, my phone buzzed violently against my ribs.
I ignored it. It buzzed again. A third time.
Elena pointed toward my chest. "Your life is calling, Dominic. Look at you. You’re wearing a three-thousand-dollar suit. You smell like an expensive boardroom. Go back to your empire and leave us alone."
"Mama?" the boy named Leo piped up, tugging at her sleeve. "Is this the man from the bathroom? Why is he looking at you like that?"
I dropped to one knee.
I didn't care that the wet slush from the doorway soaked into the fabric of my tailored trousers. I didn't care that the restaurant maitre d' was watching us with wide, nervous eyes, clearly debating whether to call security on Dominic Moretti.
I looked the boy straight in the eye. Up close, the resemblance was undeniable. He had the tiny scar just below his left ear, precisely where I had one from a childhood fall off my grandfather’s yacht.
"What's your full name, buddy?" I asked, my voice miraculously steady, though my heart was threatening to break through my ribs.
"Leo," the boy said softly. Then he puffed out his small chest, lifting his chin. "Leo Vincent Vance."
*Vincent.*
Vincent was my middle name. It was my grandfather’s name. A name Elena had sworn on a summer beach house porch that she would give our firstborn son.
I looked up at Elena. Tears were pooling in her lashes, glittering like fractured glass under the chandelier light.
"They're six," I said, the realization settling into my marrow with the weight of an anvil. "They were born seven months after you disappeared."
"Dominic, get up," she begged, a single tear escaping and rolling down her pale cheek. "People are staring. Please."
My phone rang again. This time, the ringtone was loud and persistent. The private ring for my consigliere and uncle, Salvatore.
*The proposal.*
It was 7:15. Sloane Barrett was waiting at the conservatory on the river. The flowers had been flown in from Holland. Two hundred members of Boston’s political and financial elite were sipping vintage Dom Pérignon, waiting for the Don of the Moretti family to cement an alliance that would buy us judges, senators, and immunity for the next thirty years.
The ring in my pocket felt like a burning coal against my flesh.
I stood up slowly, towering over Elena once more. I reached into my jacket, pulled out my phone, and swiped to decline the call without ever taking my eyes off hers.
"Your cab is canceled," I said quietly.
"Dominic, no—"
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"Your cab is canceled, Elena," I repeated, my tone shifting from stunned lover to the head of the Moretti syndicate. It was an absolute command. "You and my sons are coming with me."
***
