Chapter 6 - Celeste's Reckoning
Celeste Avery did not look like a woman who had been left at the altar of the most high-profile wedding of the decade six hours ago.
She had stripped off the ivory silk gown, replacing it with a sharply tailored navy wool coat, high leather boots, and a silk scarf tied neatly at her throat. Her pale blond hair was swept up into a severe, elegant chignon, and her posture was as straight as a steel rod.
Standing beside her in the vast, chandelier-lit foyer of the Beacon Hill estate was an elderly gentleman in a tweed suit, clutching an embossed leather briefcase to his chest as if it contained nuclear launch codes.
Dominic descended the grand staircase with deliberate, measured steps, keeping his gun tucked discreetly behind his back, though his hand never left the grip. I followed two steps behind him, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
“Celeste,” Dominic said, stopping at the bottom of the landing. “You shouldn't be here. The press is camped outside your father’s townhouse.”
“The press can choke on their own microphones,” Celeste replied, her voice crisp, calm, and utterly devoid of self-pity. She looked past Dominic, her cool gray eyes landing on me.
A flicker of respect passed through her gaze.
“Ms. Vance,” Celeste said, inclining her head slightly. “I trust your son is still holding on?”
“He’s alive,” I said, stepping onto the marble floor beside Dominic. “Barely.”
“Good,” Celeste said. She turned to the elderly gentleman beside her. “Arthur, open the case.”
The old man hurried over to the heavy mahogany center table, flicked the brass latches of the briefcase, and folded it open. Inside lay three thick, bound volumes stamped with the crest of the *Clinique de Montreux*, accompanied by several encrypted optical storage drives.
Dominic’s eyes widened. For the first time since I had crashed his wedding, I saw complete, unadulterated shock on his face.
“The Laurent archives,” Dominic breathed, taking a step forward as if he were looking at an apparition. “How did you get these?”
“My grandfather wasn't a fool, Dominic,” Celeste said, leaning against the table, her tone carrying the sharp, cold intelligence of a woman who had played chess in rooms full of wolves her entire life. “When your father approached my family two years ago proposing our marriage, my father was thrilled by the financial prospects. I, however, do not enter business partnerships without conducting full due diligence on my counterparty.”
A faint smirk appeared on her face as she looked at Dominic.
“I knew about the eighty million dollars, Dominic.”
The entire room went dead silent.
Even Marco, who was standing guard near the front doors, looked stunned.
Dominic’s jaw tightened. “You knew?”
“I didn't know the full story,” Celeste admitted, looking down at the leather volumes. “I knew Victor had authorized an off-ledger wire transfer from the family’s private Bahamian reserves three years ago, flagged under a liquidation clause. When I pressed my grandfather’s legal team to investigate why Victor was so desperate to merge our trusts, Arthur discovered these files in our private vaults in Geneva.”
She tapped the leather cover of the top volume.
“Victor didn't just want to hide your mother’s illness from the syndicate, Dominic. He used your mother as an experimental subject.”
A sickening chill swept through the room. I felt the air leave my lungs, my hand reaching out instinctively to catch Dominic’s forearm. Beneath his sleeve, his muscle was as hard as cold iron, trembling with a fury so immense it seemed capable of leveling the house.
“What did you say?” Dominic’s voice was barely a whisper, but it made the old lawyer, Arthur, take a nervous step back.
“Your mother didn't die naturally of her autoimmune condition,” Celeste said, her voice dropping into a somber, serious tone. “She was improving under Dr. Laurent’s care. But the experimental treatments were costing Victor millions, and more importantly, Laurent’s team had identified that the genetic mutation was passed exclusively down the maternal line to male offspring. That meant *you* were a carrier, Dominic.”
Celeste looked him straight in the eye.
“Victor couldn't risk the syndicate discovering that the sole heir to the Russo empire carried a defective gene that could incapacitate him or his future sons. So he cut the clinic’s funding, ordered Dr. Laurent to cease the stabilizing treatments, and brought your mother back to Boston to die in private. Then he threatened Dr. Laurent with total ruination if he ever published the genetic sequence.”
“Jesus Christ,” I breathed, bile rising in the back of my throat. “He murdered his own wife to protect a corporate balance sheet.”
“And he planned to do the same to your boy, Maya,” Celeste said softly, looking at me with genuine sorrow. “Victor knows that as long as Dominic’s sons carry this active mutation without a permanent cure, Dominic is vulnerable. He wanted those children erased—either by paying you off, or by letting Samuel die quietly in a hospital bed while Dominic was tied to me at an altar.”
Dominic stood motionless.
His face was completely devoid of color, his skin pulled taut over his high cheekbones, making him look like a carved marble statue of vengeance.
“Arthur,” Dominic rasped, his voice sounding like broken glass. “Is the synthesis formula in those drives?”
“Yes, Mr. Russo,” the old lawyer said quickly, adjusting his glasses. “Dr. Laurent preserved the entire molecular blueprint for the targeted monoclonal antibody therapy. It is fully documented. Dr. Al-Mansoor can feed this data directly into an automated protein synthesizer and have the custom infusion ready within six hours.”
“Marco!” Dominic shouted, not turning his head. “Get Dr. Al-Mansoor down here right now. Hand deliver these drives to him. If he needs any equipment, any chemical base, have the couriers bring it under armed escort.”
“On it, boss!” Marco grabbed the briefcase and took the stairs three at a time.
Celeste watched him go, then slowly pulled her gloves back onto her slender fingers.
“I’m sorry, Dominic,” she said quietly. “I should have brought this to light before today. But until I saw those three boys standing in the aisle with your face, I thought Victor was simply an aggressive businessman. I didn't realize he was a butcher.”
Dominic looked at the woman he had almost married.
He didn't offer a corporate platitude. He stepped forward, took her gloved hand in both of his, and bowed his head slightly.
“You saved my son’s life, Celeste,” Dominic said, his voice thick with an honesty that cut through the shadows of the room. “The Russo family is in your debt. Whatever the Avery firm needs—whatever protection, whatever capital, whatever trade routes—you have it for life. On my soul.”
Celeste offered a sad, tired smile. “Just make sure you take that old bastard down, Dominic. If you leave him with an ounce of power, he will come for those boys again.”
“He won’t have the chance,” Dominic said, his eyes turning to black ice.
Before Celeste could respond, the wail of a perimeter siren shattered the quiet of the estate.
The heavy, crimson security lights above the foyer doors began flashing in a frantic, rotating rhythm.
On the security console near the archway, an alarm began to chime rapidly. Dominic lunged toward the monitors.
The multi-screen display showed the front gates of the compound.
Three heavy, black industrial trucks—the kind used for commercial construction—had rammed the wrought-iron gates, tearing them off their stone hinges. Behind them, four unmarked black SUVs were speeding up the winding, tree-lined driveway, their headlights cutting through the dark November mist.
“Dominic!” I screamed, my thoughts instantly flying to the floor above, where Lucas and Noah were sleeping by the fire and Sam was hooked to his dialysis machine.
Dominic slammed his fist onto the master intercom button on the wall.
“All stations, this is Dominic! Code Red! Weapons free! Victor’s strike team has breached the front gate! Protect the west wing with your lives!”
He turned to me, grabbing my face between his large, rough hands, pulling my forehead against his.
“Maya, listen to me,” he said, his voice steady, commanding, and filled with an electric adrenaline that made my hair stand on end. “Take Celeste. Go up the back service stairs to the library. Lock the steel reinforcement door from the inside. Do not open it for anyone except me or Marco.”
“Dominic, no!” I cried, grabbing his wrists, terror clawing at my throat. “There are dozens of them! They came to finish it!”
“Let them come,” Dominic whispered, a terrifying, beautiful grin touching his lips—the smile of a man who had finally been given permission to burn his demons to ash. “They think they’re attacking an estate. They don't know they’re walking into an abattoir.”
He kissed me.
It was not a gentle, hesitant reunion. It was a fierce, bruising, desperate kiss that tasted of rain, copper, and ten years of buried fire. It was a vow pressed into my mouth, leaving me breathless and dizzy.
May you like
“Go,” Dominic commanded, pushing me toward the rear staircase just as the first concussive blast of automatic rifle fire shattered the stained glass above the front doors.
***
