Chapter 6 - Her Turn to Save Him
Blood spread beneath Dominic’s shoulder.
Abigail dropped beside him.
“Dominic!”
His eyes remained open.
“Safe room,” he forced out.
“I’m not leaving you.”
Evan approached.
“Move away from him, Abby.”
She looked up.
For years, that voice had controlled her.
Soft first.
Threatening second.
Violent when neither worked.
Something inside her finally broke free.
“No.”
Evan blinked.
“What did you say?”
“I said no.”
She pressed both hands against Dominic’s wound.
“You don’t own me.”
Evan lifted the pistol.
Then Dominic’s cane swept across his ankle.
Evan crashed to the floor.
The pistol slid away.
Abigail lunged for it.
Evan caught her leg.
She kicked hard.
Dominic, half-conscious, drove the metal cane into Evan’s forearm.
A gunshot thundered from the hallway.
Evan jerked.
Tommy stood there.
His weapon remained aimed.
The bullet had struck Evan’s shoulder.
“Move again,” Tommy said, “and the next one ends the discussion.”
Russo guards flooded the room.
Abigail barely noticed.
Dominic was losing blood.
She tore open his shirt.
“The bullet passed through.”
“Good?”
“Better than staying inside.”
He gave a weak smile.
“You always know how to cheer me up.”
“Don’t talk.”
“Bossy.”
“Dominic.”
His eyes closed.
Her heart stopped.
“Dominic!”
They transported him to Northwestern Memorial under heavy security.
For the first time in five years, Dominic returned to a hospital not as the shattered survivor of an explosion, but as a man who had voluntarily entered the world.
Surgery lasted two hours.
Abigail sat in the waiting room wearing his blood across her scrubs.
Tommy sat opposite her.
“He’ll make it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ve watched that man survive things that should have killed him.”
Abigail looked at her bruised wrists.
“I brought this to him.”
“No.”
Tommy’s tone was unexpectedly gentle.
“This was already coming.”
“He left the penthouse because of me.”
“He left because he finally found a reason stronger than fear.”
She looked up.
Tommy leaned forward.
“You didn’t make him reckless, Abigail. You reminded him he was alive.”
The surgeon emerged shortly after dawn.
Dominic would recover.
Abigail cried before she could stop herself.
When Dominic woke, she was asleep in a chair beside his bed.
He watched her for nearly a minute.
Then whispered, “You’re terrible at respecting professional boundaries.”
Her eyes opened.
She stood immediately.
“You got shot.”
“I noticed.”
She laughed through tears.
Dominic’s expression softened.
“Evan?”
“Alive. In custody.”
“Good.”
She studied him.
“You mean that?”
“I promised you.”
Something changed between them.
Not passion.
Not yet.
Something more fragile.
Trust.
The following afternoon, federal investigators arrived.
Henderson had begun cooperating.
Evan, facing kidnapping, assault, conspiracy and corruption charges, was suddenly interested in saving himself too.
Both named Alessandro Russo.
But there was a problem.
Alessandro had disappeared.
His Chicago properties were empty.
His overseas accounts had been drained.
He knew the network was collapsing.
And he blamed Dominic.
Three days later, Dominic received a package at the hospital.
Inside was Leo’s watch.
The one recovered after the bombing.
Dominic stared at it.
A note lay beneath.
You were always too weak to inherit my name.
No signature.
None was necessary.
Abigail found Dominic sitting alone by the hospital window that evening.
“You’re thinking about going after him.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And I don’t know who I become if I do.”
She sat beside him.
“What do you want?”
“Nobody has asked me that in a long time.”
“I’m asking.”
Dominic looked across Chicago.
He had inherited an empire before he was ready.
Inherited enemies.
Violence.
Rules written by dead men.
For years he believed strength meant enduring all of it.
Now he wondered whether strength might mean refusing it.
“I want out.”
Abigail said nothing.
“I want every legitimate business separated from everything my father built. I want the drugs gone. The bribery gone. The violence.”
“Can you do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then maybe that’s the first honest answer you’ve given yourself.”
Dominic looked at her.
“And what do you want?”
Her answer came slowly.
“My own apartment without checking the street before I enter it.”
He nodded.
“My career.”
Another nod.
“To stop apologizing when someone else hurts me.”
Dominic’s expression tightened.
“And maybe…”
She stopped.
“What?”
“To know what my life feels like when I’m not afraid.”
He understood that better than anyone.
His hand rested between them.
Palm upward.
An invitation.
Not a demand.
Abigail looked at it.
Then placed her hand in his.
Neither spoke.
Outside, Chicago moved beneath them.
But across town, inside an abandoned Russo-owned church, Alessandro Russo stood before a row of armed men.
On the table lay photographs of Dominic and Abigail leaving the hospital.
Alessandro tapped Abigail’s picture.
“My son has finally found something he’s afraid to lose.”
May you like
Then he smiled.
“So we take it from him.”
