Chapter 2 - The Giant and the Accounts
The room remained so quiet that the faint hum of the ice machine behind the bar sounded like a drill.
Dominic Vale didn’t look away from Noah. For three long seconds, the most feared man in Manhattan simply stared at a four-year-old in a faded dinosaur hoodie who had just called him a giant.
Then, the corner of Dominic’s mouth twitched.
“Only to kids who should be asleep,” Dominic said. His voice was low, deep, and surprisingly gentle—a contrast so sharp it made my chest ache.
Noah blinked, squeezed his eyes shut, and buried his face right back into the crook of my neck. Within five seconds, his breathing evened out into heavy, exhausted sleep again.
“Sit, Abigail,” Dominic repeated. He pointed with two fingers toward the high-backed leather chair beside his own. “Before your arms give out.”
I didn’t argue. I slid into the leather armchair, pulling Noah tightly into my lap and tucking my wet coat around his legs. The leather was warm. The faint scent of expensive cedar, fine tobacco, and vintage bourbon radiated off Dominic, cutting through the damp chill clinging to my skin.
“How do you know my name?” I asked, keeping my voice down so Noah wouldn't wake. “I’ve never met you. I’ve never worked for you.”
“You work for Northstar Freight,” Dominic said, leaning back and resting his broad forearm on the mahogany table. “Which means, whether you knew it or not, you’ve been working for me for six years.”
My breath caught in my throat. “Northstar is yours?”
“The legitimate half is,” Dominic replied calmly. “The shipping terminals, the fuel contracts, the customs clearances—those belong to the Vale family. The seventeen shell companies you uncovered three weeks ago? Those were created by Vanessa Sloan and a man named Marcus Vance.”
My jaw went slack. “You know about the shell accounts?”
“I know Vance has been trying to skim from my logistics network for eighteen months,” Dominic said. His slate-grey eyes locked onto mine, terrifyingly intense. “What I didn’t know was how he was moving the money without leaving a footprint on my internal audits. Until my intelligence chief called me three hours ago and told me a low-level forensic accountant at Midtown corporate had just downloaded forty-eight million dollars’ worth of encrypted ledgers onto a thumb drive and vanished into a thunderstorm.”
I reached down, my hand instinctively grasping the small hard shape of the USB drive tucked inside the hidden lining of my bra.
“It’s not Vance’s money,” I whispered. “It’s yours.”
“It’s mine,” Dominic agreed. “And the two men who followed you down Tenth Avenue weren’t sent to ask for it back. They were sent to make sure you never spoke to a prosecutor—or to me.”
A cold shiver ran straight down my spine. The image of Noah’s red dinosaur backpack sitting alone in the middle of our empty apartment living room flashed behind my eyes.
“They went into my apartment,” I said, my voice cracking despite my best efforts to stay composed. “They took a picture of my son outside his preschool. They left it on his bag.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed into slits of dark, liquid steel. The ambient warmth in his posture vanished, replaced instantly by an icy, predatory stillness that made every muscle in my body freeze.
“They threatened the boy?” Dominic asked softly.
“Yes.”
Dominic didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t swear. He simply turned his head toward the shadowy corner of the Hudson Room, where a tall, broad-shouldered man in a dark trench coat stood motionless.
“Gabe,” Dominic said.
The man stepped forward instantly. “Boss.”
“Call the detail. I want Marcus Vance’s perimeter monitored by midnight. And tell Julian to bring the armored Yukon to the side alley.”
“Right away, Mr. Vale.”
Gabe vanished into the shadows of the club.
Dominic turned back to me. He looked down at my wet hair, my cheap, water-logged flats, and the subtle tremor in my hands as I held my son.
“You’re coming with me, Abigail,” he said quietly.
“I don’t know you,” I blurted out, my protective maternal instincts warring fiercely with my exhaustion. “You’re a criminal. Everyone in this city knows who you are.”
“You’re right,” Dominic said without an ounce of offense. “I am a dangerous man. But I don't target women, I don't threaten four-year-olds, and nobody dies under my roof unless I put them there myself. Right now, you have a choice. You can step back out onto Tenth Avenue where Vance’s men are waiting with silenced pistols, or you can come to my home, eat a warm meal, and show me exactly how forty-eight million dollars walked out of my bank accounts.”
I looked down at Noah’s peaceful face. I looked at my own ruined shoes. Then I looked into Dominic Vale’s eyes.
May you like
There was no mercy in him for his enemies—that much was written in the scars on his knuckles and the quiet authority in his shoulders. But as he looked at my son, his hand reached out and gently pulled the damp hood off Noah’s forehead so the little boy could breathe easier.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Take us.”
