Chapter 4 - The Inversion of the Blood
The penthouse was quiet when they returned, the afternoon sun casting long, orange bars of light across the white marble floors. Dawson had taken off his gray jacket, his silk shirt unbuttoned to his chest, revealing the jagged white scar that ran from his collarbone to his ribs—the remnant of an old knife fight in Cicero when he was nineteen.
Sienna sat at the kitchen island, a small bowl of ice water between her hands as she soaked her bruised wrists. Her forearms were already turning an ugly, deep purple where the wrench had struck the binder.
“You’re an idiot,” Dawson said, walking out of the bathroom with a roll of medical tape and a bottle of antiseptic. He sat on the stool beside her, his large thighs brushing against her knee, his face set in a hard, grumpy scowl.
“I saved your life,” she said, wincing as she pulled her hands out of the ice.
“I don't need a waitress from Pilsen to save my life, Brooks,” he muttered, his large hands reaching out and taking her right wrist with a tenderness that didn't match the rest of his body. He began wrapping the white linen tape around her skin with a practiced, professional efficiency. “I’ve been shot twice. I’ve been stabbed three times. Rossi couldn't hit hard enough to crack my skull.”
“He had an iron wrench, Dawson. You were looking at his shoes.” She watched his fingers move against her skin, his touch warm and surprisingly steady. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Act like you want someone to kill you.”
Dawson’s hand paused for a fraction of a second, his dark eyes lifting to look at her through his messy black hair. “In my family, if you aren't the monster, you’re the meat. My father didn't raise me to be a CEO. He raised me to be the guy they send when the CEO doesn't want to get his hands dirty.”
“He raised you to be a shield,” Sienna said softly, her thumb brushing the back of his bleeding knuckles. “And you’re tired of carrying it.”
Dawson stood up abruptly, knocking his stool back against the floor with a loud clatter. His face had gone cold again, the vulnerability disappearing behind that iron wall of arrogance. “You don't know anything about me, Sienna. You’re here to manage my schedule and keep my suits clean. Don't start trying to read my palms.”
Before she could answer, the private elevator clicked open.
Vittorio Moretti stepped into the room, his silver wolf-headed cane making a sharp, metallic tack against the marble. Behind him stood two of his primary enforcers, their hands tucked inside their long black coats.
Vittorio didn't look at his son. He walked straight over to the kitchen island, his sharp, yellowed eyes looking down at Sienna’s bandaged wrists, then at the ruined leather portfolio on the counter.
“The union signed,” Vittorio said, his voice like dry leaves scraping across a driveway. “Rossi’s men are back on the lines. But I hear you altered the financial structure of the Rosemont development without my authorization, Dawson.”
Dawson stepped between his father and Sienna, his chest rising as his shoulders squared. “The Rosemont margins were inflated anyway, old man. We bought the land for pennies from the crooked alderman in the Fifth Ward. If the trains stopped for a week, the casino would have been dead before the concrete was poured.”
Vittorio lifted his silver cane, the heavy metal wolf’s head coming to rest exactly against Dawson’s breastbone. “I don't pay you to think about logistics, son. I pay you to break the people who complain about them. If you start giving away five percent every time a teamster raises a wrench, the Bratva in the North Side will think we’ve turned into a charity organization.”
He turned his cold, dead gaze toward Sienna. “I told you to be useful, Miss Brooks. Not to turn my son into a social worker. If he does this again, your father’s debt to the Russians will be sold back to them by midnight.”
Sienna stood up from her stool, her bandaged wrists trembling but her voice entirely clear. “If you sell that debt back, Mr. Moretti, Rossi’s men will find out about the Evanston medical grant within an hour. I’ve already set a delayed email to the Chicago Sun-Times with the full financial records of your logistics front. If Dawson looks like a social worker, you look like a saint. But if I don't check in by five o'clock every day, you look like a federal indictment.”
Vittorio’s jaw tightened, his yellowed eyes narrowing until they looked like two slits of cold steel. The two enforcers behind him took a half-step forward.
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Dawson didn't wait for his father’s command. He reached into his waistband and pulled his silver-plated Beretta, pointing the barrel straight at the lead enforcer’s forehead.
“If anyone moves in this room,” Dawson said, his voice dropping into a register that made the glass chandelier above them hum with tension, “we’re going to find out how many seconds it takes to clear this penthouse.”
