Chapter 2 - Dominic DeLuca
By nine the next morning, Boston had turned my humiliation into entertainment.
Margot stood barefoot in my kitchen, scrolling through her phone with the expression of someone reading casualty reports.
“Do you want the good news?”
“No.”
“Excellent. There isn't any.”
I pushed my coffee away.
My photograph was everywhere. Someone had captured the precise second Julian announced Rosalie's name. In the picture, my smile was still there.
That was the cruelest part.
I looked happy.
Three seconds later, I hadn't been.
“Stop reading.”
Margot dropped the phone facedown.
The front door opened.
My father walked in looking as though he had not slept. Charles Hawthorne had always been a handsome man, but lately fear had hollowed him out. He carried a leather folder under one arm.
Behind him came my mother.
And behind her came Julian.
I stood.
“No.”
“Aurelia,” my father said.
“No.”
Julian stopped near the doorway. “I came to explain.”
“You had a ballroom.”
His jaw tightened.
“I never meant to humiliate you.”
“Then you have terrible aim.”
Margot made a small approving sound.
My father looked at her.
“Margot, perhaps—”
“I’m staying.”
I loved her for that.
Julian stepped closer. “What happened between Rosalie and me wasn't planned.”
“How long?”
Silence.
“How long, Julian?”
“Four months.”
The answer landed strangely.
Not because four months was worse than one night.
Because four months contained birthdays. Dinners. Sunday breakfasts. Messages from him saying he was working late.
Four months meant decisions.
My father interrupted.
“There are larger matters we need to discuss.”
I stared at him.
“Larger than my boyfriend sleeping with my sister?”
His face changed.
And suddenly I understood why he had brought the folder.
“Sit down,” he said.
I didn't.
He opened it anyway.
Hawthorne Maritime had been founded by my grandfather and expanded by my father into a respectable regional shipping company. I knew business had been difficult.
I hadn't known we were forty-eight hours from losing it.
Loans.
Liens.
Personal guarantees.
The Back Bay house.
My mother's trust.
Everything.
“How much?” I asked.
My father gave me the number.
Margot swore.
Julian didn't react.
That bothered me.
I looked at him.
“You knew.”
“Aurelia—”
“You knew.”
His silence answered.
My father rubbed his forehead.
“Julian's family offered to help us restructure.”
There it was.
The real proposal.
Rosalie hadn't merely stolen my boyfriend.
Julian had chosen the sister who could make the right social marriage while his family gained leverage over a desperate company.
I looked from one man to the other.
“You were going to let me marry him without telling me he had financial control over Dad?”
“It wasn't like that,” Julian said.
“It sounds exactly like that.”
My mother whispered my name.
Then the doorbell rang.
Nobody moved.
It rang once more.
Margot went to answer it.
She returned thirty seconds later without sarcasm.
That frightened me more than anything.
“Aurelia,” she said, “there's a man here asking for you.”
“Who?”
“He says his name is Dominic DeLuca.”
Julian went completely still.
My father went pale.
I noticed both.
“Who is Dominic DeLuca?”
No one answered immediately.
Then Julian said, “My father.”
I laughed because there was no sensible alternative.
“The man from the car?”
Julian's face changed.
“What car?”
I walked past him.
Dominic DeLuca stood in our foyer wearing charcoal wool instead of last night's black dinner jacket. Daylight made the silver in his hair more obvious. It also made him more dangerous somehow. At night he had seemed mysterious.
In daylight, he looked established.
Permanent.
His gray eyes moved over me once, stopping at my face.
“Ms. Hawthorne.”
“Mr. DeLuca.”
So the D belonged to him.
Behind him stood the same driver.
Dominic held a slim black folder.
My father appeared behind me.
“Dominic.”
“Charles.”
They knew each other.
Not casually.
There was history in the single word.
Dominic looked at the documents on our kitchen table.
“I assume you've told her.”
My father stiffened. “This is a family matter.”
“It became my family's matter when my son attached himself to it.”
Julian entered.
“Dad.”
Dominic did not look at him.
That was worse than anger.
“Go home, Julian.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“No. You need to learn the difference between being heard and having something worth saying.”
Julian flushed.
I almost enjoyed it.
Almost.
Dominic handed me the folder.
Inside was a financial summary of Hawthorne Maritime.
It was more complete than my father's.
“You investigated us?”
“I investigate anything my family may become financially connected to.”
My stomach tightened.
“You knew Julian was going to propose to Rosalie?”
“No.”
That answer came instantly.
“But you knew about them?”
A pause.
“Since yesterday afternoon.”
“And you didn't tell me.”
“It wasn't my secret to reveal in a ballroom.”
I wanted to hate that answer.
Instead, I understood it.
I turned another page.
A corporation named North Atlantic Holdings had purchased a significant portion of Hawthorne Maritime's distressed debt.
Yesterday.
I looked up.
“Yours?”
“Yes.”
My father stepped forward.
“Dominic, we had an understanding.”
“We had a negotiation. Those are different things.”
“What do you want?” I asked.
Dominic finally looked directly at me.
“Nothing from you.”
“Men like you don't spend this much money for nothing.”
The corner of his mouth shifted.
Barely.
“Good.”
“What?”
“You ask the correct question.”
Julian moved between us.
“Dad, leave her out of this.”
For the first time Dominic's expression hardened.
“You left her in the middle of it when you made a private betrayal public.”
Julian looked away.
Dominic returned his attention to me.
“I bought the debt because another bidder intended to force liquidation. Your father's company employs four hundred and twelve people. I dislike destroying functioning businesses to satisfy impatient creditors.”
“That's very charitable.”
“No.”
His gaze didn't move.
“Charity expects gratitude. Business expects competence.”
He placed a card on the table.
“If you want to know what actually happened to Hawthorne Maritime, come to my office tomorrow at ten.”
My father said sharply, “Aurelia will do no such thing.”
Dominic looked at him.
“She is thirty years old, Charles.”
The room went silent.
He looked back at me.
“Ten o'clock.”
Then he left.
I stared at the card.
DeLuca Strategic Holdings.
No title beneath his name.
Apparently, he didn't need one.
Julian waited until the front door closed.
“You don't know him.”
I looked at my former boyfriend.
“Neither did you, apparently.”
“Aurelia, I'm serious.”
“So am I.”
“He isn't a normal businessman.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
Julian glanced toward my parents.
Nobody answered.
And that was when Margot, who had been unusually quiet, picked up her phone.
Her face changed.
She turned the screen toward me.
An old newspaper photograph showed Dominic twenty years younger, walking out of a federal courthouse surrounded by attorneys.
The headline beneath it included two words that changed the temperature of the room.
DeLuca crime family.
I looked toward the window.
The black sedan was disappearing around the corner.
May you like
For the first time, I wondered whether the stranger who had rescued me from the worst night of my life had been waiting outside that ballroom by coincidence.
Or whether Dominic DeLuca had known exactly who I was before I ever told him my name.
