Chapter 5 - The Shelter of the Slate
I couldn't speak. My throat was completely closed, my vision blurring as the adrenaline began to leave my system, leaving behind nothing but a raw, hollow terror. I looked at his face—the severe jaw, the high cheekbones, the grey eyes that had looked at me with such tenderness in the art galleries of Chicago, now bloodshot and wild with panic.
"Don't... don't touch me," I managed to whisper, my hands still clamped defensively over my stomach. "You... you said I wasn't a concern. You told her I would be taken care of quietly."
Dominic let out a sound that was half-sob, half-growl, his forehead dropping onto my knees, his broad shoulders shaking against the fabric of my sweater. "I was lying to them, Megan," he wept, his voice muffled against my legs. "They had bugs in my walls. They had eyes on my elevators. If I had given them even a single hint that you were my life, they would have done to you what they just tried to do now. I had to make them believe you were nothing to me so I could buy forty-eight hours to move my security teams into your perimeter."
He raised his head, his hands finally coming down to cup my face, his thumbs gently wiping away the tears and the plaster dust from my cheeks. "But you ran. You used your keycard right after Isabella left, and by the time I realized you had heard the meeting, you were gone. I’ve spent ninety days dying, Megan. Ninety days tearing down every network in the country just to find where you hid."
I stared at him, the weight of his words crashing through the wall of betrayal I had built over the last three months. "The engagement... the announcement..."
"It was a trap," Dominic said, his voice dropping into that quiet, terrifying register of certainty. "The Moretti family was trying to force a merger to cover up a thirty-million-dollar deficit in their New York ports. They were going to use the wedding celebration to assassinate my senior captains. I needed the press release to go live so they would bring their main execution teams into Chicago, where I could isolate them."
He slowly moved his gaze down from my face. His eyes landed on my hands, which were still protecting the distinct, rounded swell beneath my sweater. His breath hitched, his entire body going rigid as he realized the truth of the medical records Leo had recovered.
"The... the ashes in the sink," Dominic whispered, his hand shaking as he placed his wide palm gently over mine, feeling the solid, living warmth of my belly. "Leo found the burnt ultrasound. You... you came to tell me that morning."
"I was going to tell you we were having a baby," I sobbed, my head falling forward against his shoulder as the final fragments of my resistance shattered. "And then I saw her adjusting your jacket. I saw the ring box. I thought... I thought our child would just be an inconvenience to your legacy."
Dominic wrapped his massive arms around me, pulling me up against his chest with a fierce, desperate strength that felt less like an embrace and more like a man holding onto a life raft in the middle of a Category 5 hurricane. He buried his face in my hair, his chest heaving as he rocked me back and forth on the blood-stained floor of the Boston apartment.
"You are my legacy, Megan," he swore into my skin, his voice cracking with an unyielding vow. "You and this baby. I don't give a damn about the shipping lanes or the New York seats. I will burn every throne in this country before I let anyone put a target on what is mine."
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The door to the apartment swung open again, and Leo entered, followed by four heavy-set Chicago guards with clean-up bags and tactical rifles.
"Boss," Leo said, his eyes avoiding the bodies on the floor. "The Moretti scouts in the street have been neutralized, but the New York office just went dark. They know the hit failed. We need to get the lady to the safehouse in Maine before the highway patrol locks down the state line."
