Chapter 3 - Secrets in the Blood
Dominic didn’t speak for ten seconds. The only sounds in the grand cathedral were Tommy’s pathetic whimpers from the floor and the rain hammering relentlessly against the stained-glass likeness of Saint Jude—the patron saint of lost causes.
“Vincent,” Dominic commanded, his voice cold enough to freeze water.
“Yeah, boss?” Vincent answered from ten paces back, eyeing Tommy’s bloody knee with thinly veiled nervousness.
“Call Gabriel. Tell him to prep the surgical suite at the brownstone on Astor Street. No hospitals. No staff. Just Gabriel. If anyone asks, the bride had a fainting spell.”
“Got it,” Vincent said, reaching for his encrypted phone.
“And Vincent?” Dominic’s eyes shifted, dark and predatory. “If a single word about my nephew leaves your lips, I will peel your skin off while you’re tied to a chair in the meatpacking plant. Understand me?”
“I’m with you, Dom. You know that. Always have been,” Vincent said quickly, his hands shaking slightly as he dialed.
Dominic slipped his Kimber back into his shoulder holster. He walked over to Clara, paused for a split second, and then slid one arm beneath her shoulders and the other beneath her knees.
Clara gasped, clenching her teeth against a cry of pure agony as the crude aluminum brace shifted against her torn flesh. Her head fell back against his chest. She smelled of rain, cheap lavender soap from a roadside laundromat, and copper.
“Hold on to my neck,” Dominic said.
She hesitated, her fingers hovering near his lapel, before curling tightly into the fabric of his jacket. Despite her slight frame, she had a grip born of hard labor.
Dominic carried her down the center aisle, past the pool of Tommy’s blood, past the abandoned floral arrangements, and out into the biting storm. A convoy of black Cadillac Escalades sat idling at the curb, their hazard lights slicing through the gray Chicago downpour.
Within twenty minutes, they were inside Dominic’s private Astor Street estate. It wasn't an ordinary mansion; it was a fortress. Bullet-resistant glass, reinforced steel framing behind the drywall, and an underground trauma clinic staffed exclusively by Gabriel Rossi, an ex-military surgeon who owed his medical license and his life to Dominic’s father.
Dr. Gabriel cut away the $12,000 silk dress from Clara’s thigh with heavy medical shears. When the fabric peeled back, Gabriel inhaled sharply through his teeth.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Gabriel muttered, adjusting his surgical lamp. “Who did this butchery?”
“I did,” Clara whispered from the gurney, her knuckles white where she gripped the stainless-steel rail.
Dominic stood at the foot of the bed, his tuxedo jacket discarded, his dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar. He watched as Gabriel used bolt cutters to sever the bent aluminum rods and carefully unwrapped the bloody layers of duct tape.
Tied securely around the final layer of gauze was the midnight-blue ribbon.
Dominic stepped forward and carefully, almost reverently, took the ribbon in his hand. The fabric was frayed at the edges. Dried dark blood stiffened one corner. Four months ago, his sister Sophia had stood in his kitchen wearing a custom midnight-blue dress, laughing as she celebrated her son Mateo’s sixth birthday. Three days later, her BMW had been fished out of thirty feet of muddy river water near the Pulaski bridge. The front windshield had been kicked out. Two bodies were supposedly swept away by the undertow.
“Start talking, Clara,” Dominic said softly. “Start from the beginning, and do not leave out a single breath.”
Clara closed her eyes as Gabriel swabbed the festering wound with iodine. She hissed in pain, tears finally leaking down her cheeks, but her voice remained steady.
“Four months ago,” she began, staring up at the sterile ceiling lights. “I was working the night shift at the Starlight Motel out off Route 47. Miles away from the city. Two in the morning. It was raining just like this. A woman came stumbling into the lobby carrying a little boy. She was bleeding from her chest. Her car was gone. She had no shoes.”
Dominic took a step closer, his heart hammering against his ribs like a sledgehammer. “Sophia.”
“She didn't tell me her name at first,” Clara whispered. “She only told me that men in black tactical gear had forced her off the highway, shot out her tires, and were hunting her down like an animal. She said... she said the call came from inside her brother’s house.”
Dominic froze.
“What did you say?” Dominic’s voice dropped to a razor’s edge.
Clara turned her head toward him, her hazel eyes shining with fierce conviction. “She said her own family signed her death warrant. She begged me to hide her boy. She took the ribbon from the belt of her dress and tied it around Mateo’s wrist, telling him that as long as he had it, his mother was with him.”
“Then why do you have it?” Dominic asked.
Clara swallowed, her chest heaving. “Because twenty minutes later, the headlights came up the motel gravel. A man in a ski mask kicked open the office door. He wasn't looking to kidnap them, Dominic. He was looking to put bullets in their heads. He shot Sophia right in front of me.”
Dominic felt the room tilt on its axis.
“Sophia pushed Mateo behind the ice machine,” Clara continued, tears running freely now. “The shooter turned his gun on the kid. I didn't think. I just grabbed the heavy iron fire extinguisher off the wall and tackled the man. His gun went off. The bullet went clean through my knee.”
Dominic stared at the star-shaped scar, his mind reeling. “You took a bullet for my nephew.”
“I smashed that bastard’s face with the extinguisher until he stopped moving,” Clara said, her voice dropping to a trembling register. “Then Sophia... with her last dying breaths... she pulled that ribbon off Mateo’s wrist. She tied it around my leg to help slow the bleeding. And she made me swear on my soul that I would never, ever let the Castiglione family find that boy.”
A deafening silence fell over the room.
May you like
“Because she told me,” Clara finished, looking straight into Dominic’s dark, shattered soul, “that the man who paid for the hit was your right hand. Vincent Corvo.”
***
