Chapter 2 - Cold Blood, Warm Hands
The silence that followed Dominic’s question was thicker than the rain lashing against the glass panes of the cathedral ballroom.
*“May I carry him?”*
It was the first time in Dominic Russo’s entire life that he had asked anyone for permission to take what he wanted.
Before I could answer, Samuel went limp. His head rolled back against my shoulder, his small, dark eyelashes fluttering against cheeks flushed scarlet with fever. My knees buckled under the sudden dead weight.
I didn’t hit the polished marble floor.
Dominic’s arms caught us both. His left arm encircled my waist with crushing strength, anchoring me, while his right slid under Sam’s small back, lifting the boy effortlessly. The scent of him hit me instantly—sandalwood, rain, and the faint, bitter edge of expensive tobacco. It was the smell of three years of ghost stories.
“He’s burning through his clothes,” Dominic muttered, his voice trembling in a way I had never heard before. He pulled Sam flush against his crisp white dress shirt, completely unbothered by the damp mud on the boy’s sneakers. “What’s his baseline temperature?”
“A hundred and three point eight when we left the boarding house,” I whispered, my voice cracked and raw. “Tylenol didn’t touch it. His platelets dropped under twenty thousand two days ago. Dominic, if he bleeds internally—”
“He won’t.” Dominic shifted Sam into both arms, holding him like a piece of spun glass. He turned toward the double mahogany doors. “Clear the corridor!” he roared.
The command tore through the cavernous room, snapping three hundred paralyzed aristocrats out of their stupor.
“Dominic!”
The cane struck the floor. Once. Twice. Victor Russo stepped off the dais, his knuckles white against the carved silver handle. The older man’s eyes were twin chips of flint. “You step out of this sanctuary, and you desecrate this family’s name. Celeste is standing at the altar.”
Dominic didn’t even look back at his father. He looked down at the pale face of the son he hadn’t known existed five minutes ago.
“Let her stand,” Dominic said, his tone dropping from fury to an icy, lethal calm. “Call my driver. Bring the armored Maybach to the front portico. If the engine isn’t running when my boots hit the sidewalk, I will strip every security guard on the payroll of their badges and their kneecaps.”
“Dominic, wait!”
It wasn’t Victor. It was Celeste Avery.
She descended the velvet-carpeted steps, her silk gown whispering against the runners. She lifted her veil with steady, manicured fingers, revealing striking green eyes that held no rage—only an eerie, assessing clarity. She bypassed Victor entirely, walking straight toward Dominic and me.
Behind me, Noah and Lucas huddled against my legs, their small fingers twisted into the fabric of my wet denim jeans.
Celeste knelt down in front of Lucas. The fabric of her thousand-dollar dress puddled in the rainwater pooling near my sneakers.
“You’re Noah, right?” she asked Lucas softly.
“I’m Lucas,” the boy answered, his lip quivering, though he bravely tried to puff out his chest. “Noah is the one holding Mommy’s pocket. Who are you? Are you a princess?”
“No, sweetheart,” Celeste said, a faint, melancholy smile touching her lips. “I’m just an architect who almost built a house on quicksand.”
She looked up at Dominic.
“Take the car,” Celeste said calmly. “My father’s men hold the east gate. I’ll tell them to wave your convoy through. Victor had twelve patrol cars staged to keep out paparazzi. If you go through the main avenue, you’ll be trapped in an hour of traffic.”
Dominic stared at his bride-to-be, genuine shock flickering across his chiseled jaw. “Celeste—”
“Go, Dominic,” she said firmly, rising to her feet. “Save your son. We will settle the business of our broken alliance later. But do not let this boy die because two old men wanted a merger.”
Victor looked as though he had been slapped across the mouth. “Celeste! You forget yourself! The Avery family owes—”
“The Avery family owes you nothing that eighty million dollars couldn’t buy, Victor,” she cut in, her gaze drifting toward the black bank card sitting on the cocktail table. “And it seems your currency has a habit of coming back unspent.”
Dominic didn’t wait another second.
“Noah, Lucas, stay close to your mother,” he commanded, his voice dropping into the authoritative register of a general leading a squad through hostile territory.
Two hulking men in charcoal suits—Dominic’s personal security detail, men who answered only to him and not his father—instantly flanked me, boxing me and the boys inside a protective human wall.
“Mommy, my shoes are wet,” Noah whimpered, stumbling as we rushed down the grand hallway of the estate.
Before Noah could fall, one of the massive security guards scooped him up with astonishing gentleness, while Dominic glanced back, his dark eyes locking onto mine over Sam’s limp shoulder.
“I’ve got Lucas,” I gasped, hoisting my third son onto my hip. The weight of three years of exhaustion, fear, and poverty seemed to crash into my spine all at once, but adrenaline drove my legs forward.
The double doors of the estate burst open into the freezing Boston drizzle. The Maybach was idling at the curb, tires smoking slightly as the driver threw it into park.
Behind us, inside the warm, rose-scented sanctuary, I could hear Victor Russo shouting orders to his lieutenants. But the doors slammed shut, cutting off the noise of the mafia elite.
Dominic climbed into the spacious back seat first, pulling Sam onto his lap. “Get in, Maya. Now.”
I scrambled inside with Lucas, followed by the guard who handed Noah directly into my lap. The door slammed shut with the heavy, vacuum-sealed thud of reinforced ballistic steel.
“Harbor Children’s,” Dominic barked through the partition. “Don’t stop for red lights. Use the sirens.”
A hidden switch flipped, and an undercover police siren hidden behind the front grille began to wail, clearing the wet Boston traffic as the luxury tank surged forward.
In the dim, ambient LED lighting of the back seat, Dominic pulled off his tuxedo jacket with one hand, wrapping the warm cashmere around Sam’s shivering limbs. Then, his large hand gently cupped the boy’s burning forehead.
“His pulse is too fast,” Dominic murmured, his voice breaking. He looked up at me. For the first time, I saw the raw, bleeding humanity beneath the ruthless Don he had spent three years becoming. “Maya... what is wrong with our son?”
I pulled Noah and Lucas tighter against my chest, my throat tightening until it felt like swallowing glass.
“It started three months ago,” I whispered, watching Sam’s pale lips part with every shallow, agonizing breath. “Bruises that wouldn't heal. Fevers that spiked out of nowhere. The clinic in South Boston ran a basic blood panel, but the hematologist said his white cell count was erratic. They suspect severe aplastic anemia... or something genetic. Something that targets the bone marrow.”
Dominic’s face drained of every ounce of color. The silver at his temples gleamed under the streetlights flashing across the tinted windows.
“Genetic,” he repeated, the word tasting like poison on his tongue.
“The doctors told me they needed his biological father’s markers,” I said, tears finally spilling over my eyelashes, leaving warm tracks through the chill on my cheeks. “They said without an exact family match for an HLA antibody panel, his body will reject standard blood transfusions. He’s running out of time, Dominic. He’s bleeding from the inside out.”
Dominic stared at Sam. He reached out with two fingers, touching the tiny notch in the boy’s left eyebrow—the exact replica of the scar Dominic carried himself, the mark of every firstborn Russo son.
“My mother,” Dominic whispered, his eyes widening with horrifying realization. “She didn’t die of cancer, Maya. My father told everyone it was leukemia. But when I was seven, I remember the private doctors whispering about a rare autoimmune marrow deficiency. A bloodline curse.”
He looked up, his jaw clenching so violently that a vein pulsed violently against his temple.
“Victor knew,” Dominic hissed, the hatred in his voice vibrating through the leather upholstery. “Three years ago, when you found out you were pregnant and told my father... he knew what this blood carries. He didn't just pay you to protect the family name. He paid you to let my children die in the dark so he wouldn't have to admit our dynasty was rotten from the inside.”
Lucas tugged on Dominic’s cuff links. “Mister? Are you the prince from Mommy’s drawings?”
Dominic looked down at the boy on my lap. Slowly, he reached out, his calloused palm resting against Lucas’s damp cheek.
May you like
“I’m not a prince, Lucas,” Dominic said, his voice thick with unshed tears. “I’m your father. And I’m going to tear this city apart until your brother is safe.”
***
