Chapter 2 - Thank You for Making It Easy
“For making my decision easy.”
Dominic’s face went still.
Audrey pressed the elevator button.
“Audrey, what decision?”
She almost admired the question.
He had spent his adult life anticipating betrayals, hostile takeovers, police raids, rival crews, and men who smiled while planning his funeral.
Yet somehow he had failed to anticipate the consequence standing directly in front of him.
The elevator doors opened.
Audrey stepped inside.
Dominic followed.
She put her hand against his chest.
“No.”
It was one word, but it stopped him.
“You don’t get to follow me and turn this into one of your problems to solve.”
His jaw tightened.
“Where are you going?”
“Somewhere you aren’t.”
“Audrey—”
The doors closed.
Only when Dominic disappeared behind polished steel did her composure finally fracture.
Audrey covered her mouth.
Her shoulders shook.
Then she remembered the ultrasound photograph.
Her empty hand dropped instinctively toward her stomach.
The photograph.
She had left it upstairs.
For one irrational second, she almost pressed the button for the penthouse again.
She couldn't.
Not yet.
Audrey left the building through the underground garage and climbed into her car.
She drove without knowing where she was going.
Chicago blurred around her in rain and headlights.
Her phone rang twelve times.
Dominic.
She silenced it.
Then came messages.
Please answer.
Tell me where you are.
I need to explain.
The fourth message made her laugh through her tears.
Please let me know you're safe.
Safe.
She had spent four years convincing herself she was safest beside Dominic Calder.
Now she understood the difference between physical safety and trust.
At 5:42 p.m., Audrey pulled into the parking lot of a small hotel near Lincoln Park.
She rented a room under her maiden name.
Audrey Bennett.
Seeing it printed on the receipt nearly broke her.
Inside room 417, she locked the door, removed her wet coat, and sat on the edge of the bed.
Then she cried.
Not elegantly.
Not quietly.
She cried until her ribs hurt.
Eventually her hand settled over her stomach.
Six weeks pregnant.
The doctor had smiled that morning.
“Everything looks exactly where it should be.”
Audrey had laughed.
She and Dominic had stopped actively trying eight months earlier after fertility appointments had turned intimacy into calendars, temperature readings, and disappointment.
Then, unexpectedly, this.
A miracle on the same day her marriage ended.
Her phone buzzed.
This time it wasn't Dominic.
Maya: Audrey? Dominic's people are calling me. Are you okay?
Maya Bennett was Audrey’s older sister and the only person in Chicago who disliked Dominic openly enough to tell him so at Christmas dinner.
Audrey typed:
Can I stay with you?
The reply arrived instantly.
Always.
Audrey packed herself back into her coat.
Across the city, Dominic Calder stood alone in his bedroom.
Serena was gone.
The room still smelled faintly of her perfume.
He hated it.
He hated the shirt she had worn.
He hated the bed.
Most of all, he hated himself.
“Boss?”
Dominic looked toward the doorway.
Marcus Hale, his security chief, stood there.
“Her car was picked up heading north.”
Dominic's eyes sharpened.
“Where?”
“Lincoln Park. We lost visual around Fullerton.”
Dominic grabbed his coat.
Marcus blocked the doorway.
Nobody blocked Dominic Calder.
Marcus had known him for nineteen years, which was probably why he survived doing it.
“Don't.”
Dominic stared at him.
“Move.”
“If she ran because of you, sending six men after her is not going to improve the situation.”
“She could be a target.”
“She could also be a woman whose husband just broke her heart.”
Dominic's expression hardened.
Marcus lowered his voice.
“Give her tonight.”
Dominic looked toward the floor.
That was when he saw it.
A small black-and-white photograph half hidden beneath the dresser.
He bent down.
Picked it up.
And stopped breathing.
At first, his mind refused to understand what he was looking at.
Then he read the printed information along the edge.
CALDER, AUDREY
His thumb moved over the tiny shape in the center.
Marcus watched the blood drain from Dominic’s face.
“What is it?”
Dominic couldn't answer.
His wife was pregnant.
Audrey had walked into their home carrying proof that they were finally going to have the child they had once desperately wanted.
And she had found Serena in his shirt.
Dominic sat down heavily on the edge of the bed.
Marcus had seen him after shootings.
After his father died.
After federal agents arrested three of their men.
He had never seen him look like this.
“She came home to tell me.”
Marcus understood.
“Jesus.”
Dominic stared at the ultrasound.
He remembered Audrey crying in their bathroom fourteen months earlier after another negative test.
He remembered holding her.
He remembered promising that she was enough.
Then, six weeks ago, after a vicious argument about the life he refused to leave behind, he had gotten drunk.
Serena had found him.
And Dominic had destroyed the best thing that had ever happened to him in a hotel room he could barely stand to remember.
Marcus finally spoke.
“What are you going to do?”
Dominic looked at the photograph.
“The only thing I can.”
“Which is?”
“Tell her the truth.”
But two floors below, inside a black sedan parked across from Calder Tower, Serena Voss was making a phone call.
“He found the ultrasound,” she said.
A man's voice answered.
“Then we move tonight.”
Serena looked up toward the glowing penthouse windows.
“And Audrey?”
There was a pause.
May you like
Then the man said:
“She was never supposed to leave that building alive.”
