Chapter 2 - The Web of Collateral
The heavy mahogany doors of Dominic’s study clicked shut behind us, cutting off the low murmur of security personnel pacing the hallway. The silence inside the room felt suffocating.
I stood in the center of the Persian rug, staring at the glossy photographs spread across the desk. Marcus Wynn—the man who had ruined my life, stolen my mother’s legacy, and vanished into thin air—was sitting under the warm Mediterranean sun in Nice, France, sipping an espresso with Roland Pike.
"Explain," I said, my voice dangerously steady.
Dominic leaned back in his wheelchair. The shadows of the study accentuated the sharp angles of his jaw, the hard line of his lips, and the cold calculation in his dark eyes.
"Two years ago," Dominic began, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly baritone, "Roland Pike wanted to eliminate me. He couldn’t beat me in business, and he couldn’t take my territory. So he hired an offshore strike team to sabotage my vehicle."
My breath hitched. "The car accident."
"It wasn't an accident," Dominic said quietly. "My driver died instantly. I woke up three days later in an ICU with my spinal cord severely bruised and two ribs punctured. The hitman required a five-million-dollar untraceable deposit before pulling the trigger."
He tapped the photograph of Marcus.
"Roland didn't want to use his own accounts or shell companies that federal investigators monitored," Dominic continued. "He needed a clean, naive target with access to high-volume client escrow funds. Roland’s operatives targeted Marcus. They offered him double-digit returns on offshore investments. Marcus got greedy. He siphoned your design firm's client funds, laundered them through three dummy corporations, and transferred them straight to Roland’s hit team."
The room seemed to spin. I grabbed the edge of the desk to steady myself.
"My business..." I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. "My firm wasn't just ruined by a corrupt partner. My life was gutted to pay for your assassination."
"Yes," Dominic admitted. There was no hesitation, no attempt to sugarcoat it. "Marcus thought he was just stealing to get rich. He didn't realize until it was too late that he had become an accomplice to high treason in the underworld."
"And you knew," I spat, turning on him. "When your contact called me six months ago offering to pay off my debts if I married you... you already knew all of this."
"I did."
"Why, Dominic?" Tears of anger burned the back of my eyes. "Why bring me into your world? Why make me sign an eighteen-month marriage contract?"
Dominic wheeled himself closer until he was standing—sitting—directly in front of me. He reached out, his warm, calloused fingers gently brushing against my wrist, though I tried to pull back.
"Because the moment Roland realized Marcus had panicked and fled, Roland set eyes on you," Dominic said softly, his dark eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that made my heart hammer against my ribs. "Roland was going to have you killed, Claire. To erase the last living connection to the money trail. I couldn't let that happen."
"So you bought me?" I demanded.
"I protected you," Dominic countered, his voice hardening into steel. "I put my ring on your finger. In New York, even Roland Pike knows that touching Dominic Vale’s wife means absolute annihilation. I paid your debts to restore what was taken from you. I bound you to me for eighteen months to give my intelligence team enough time to hunt down Marcus and dismantle Roland’s network piece by piece."
"And what about tonight?" I asked, my voice trembling. "Roland stood in front of three hundred people and called you half a man. He humiliated you, and you just sat there!"
Dominic’s lips curved into a cold, lethal smile. The vulnerability I had seen in the ballroom vanished, replaced by the terrifying aura of the man who ruled New York's underworld.
"Roland thinks he broke me six months ago," Dominic murmured, leaning in close. "He thinks the wheelchair rendered me powerless. I let him believe it, Claire. A beast in a cage makes men careless. And tonight, Roland got careless."
Gabriel stepped forward, pulling a encrypted tablet from his suit jacket. "Mrs. Vale, while Roland was busy making a spectacle in the ballroom, our tech team bypassed his personal server in his penthouse. We found the offshore bank records."
Dominic looked up at me, his gaze softening just a fraction. "I promised you justice, Claire. Not just for me, but for your firm. For your mother's memory. But to catch a snake, you have to let him think you're his prey a little longer."
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I looked down at the platinum band on my finger. The contract that I thought was a cold, business transaction was actually a shield. But looking at Dominic now—the dark, complex man who carried the weight of an empire on his shoulders—I realized something far more dangerous.
I was falling for my fake husband. And in a war against Roland Pike, love was the ultimate liability.
