Chapter 7 - THE WOMAN HE COULDN'T BUY
Dominic found Elena packing.
He stood in the doorway.
“Where are you going?”
“Away from you.”
The words hurt him more than he expected.
Elena continued folding Noah's clothes.
“Victor isn't targeting Noah because of me. He's targeting Noah because I'm close to you.”
“So leaving makes you safer?”
“It makes my son safer.”
“I can protect him.”
Elena stopped.
“There.”
“What?”
“That.”
She faced him.
“You think everything can be solved by having more guards, more money, more power.”
Dominic's expression tightened.
“Those things kept us alive.”
“They also built the world that put you in that basement.”
Silence.
Elena's anger faded.
“I care about you, Dominic.”
His eyes changed.
She continued before courage abandoned her.
“More than I should. That's exactly why I have to think clearly.”
He stepped closer.
“Elena—”
“No.”
She put one hand against his chest.
“If there's ever going to be anything between us, I need to know you're not replacing one empire with another prettier one.”
He understood.
She wanted no castle.
No rescue.
No billionaire fantasy.
She wanted a man capable of walking away from power.
Dominic let her leave.
It was the hardest thing he had done since surviving the basement.
Three weeks passed.
Elena enrolled in nursing classes.
The Crane Foundation scholarship existed, but she refused special treatment and applied through the standard process.
She got in anyway.
Dominic did not contact her.
He respected what she had asked.
Noah was less respectful.
He secretly called Dominic from Mrs. Patterson's phone.
“Mom misses you.”
Dominic nearly dropped his coffee.
“Noah.”
“She gets mad when your name is on TV.”
“That doesn't necessarily mean she misses me.”
“She gets mad at people she likes.”
“Useful intelligence.”
“And she made too much spaghetti Tuesday.”
Dominic smiled despite himself.
“What should I do?”
“Bring garlic bread.”
Dominic considered taking romantic advice from an eight-year-old a new personal low.
Then the line went quiet.
“Noah?”
A man's voice replaced his.
“Hello, son.”
Dominic stopped breathing.
Victor.
Dominic stood so quickly his chair fell.
“Where is Noah?”
“Safe for the moment.”
“If you touch him—”
“There you are.”
Victor sounded amused.
“The son I raised.”
Dominic called Samuel from another phone while keeping Victor talking.
Victor wanted the evidence from Marcus's locker.
In exchange, Noah lived.
Dominic agreed immediately.
Samuel shook his head.
“You cannot give him that evidence.”
“Watch me.”
“Elena will kill you.”
“She can stand in line.”
They traced the call.
An abandoned Crane shipping terminal.
Dominic arrived carrying the evidence drive.
Victor waited inside.
Noah sat in a chair nearby, frightened but unharmed.
Dominic saw his father for the first time in eleven years.
Age had changed Victor.
Nothing else had.
“You look disappointed,” Victor said.
“I buried you.”
“And yet you never escaped me.”
Dominic placed the drive on a table.
“Let him go.”
Victor smiled.
“You'd trade billions for a cleaning woman's child.”
“Yes.”
“No hesitation?”
“No.”
Victor studied him with genuine fascination.
“Then she made you weak.”
Dominic looked toward Noah.
“No.”
He understood suddenly.
“She made me realize how weak I already was.”
Victor's smile faded.
Dominic had spent his life needing to win.
Elena had taught him there were things more important.
“Take the drive.”
Victor reached for it.
Dominic moved.
The lights went out.
Samuel's team entered from the rear.
Dominic grabbed Noah.
Gunfire erupted.
He covered the boy with his body and ran.
Outside, Elena arrived with federal agents.
She saw Noah.
“Mom!”
He ran into her arms.
Elena collapsed to her knees.
Dominic watched them.
For one second, relief replaced everything.
Then Samuel emerged.
“Victor got away.”
Dominic looked toward the harbor.
A speedboat was disappearing into darkness.
But something else bothered him.
Victor had abandoned the evidence drive.
Why?
Samuel examined it.
Then Dominic understood.
Victor had never come for the evidence.
He had come for Noah.
But not to kill him.
To force Dominic into public action.
A television inside the terminal was broadcasting breaking news.
Crane Holdings stock had collapsed.
Dominic's emergency transfers, made to satisfy Victor's demands, had triggered control provisions inside the company.
Someone had just purchased enough shares to take effective control.
The buyer's identity appeared.
Evelyn Crane.
Dominic stared.
Marcus's mother.
The woman they had rescued.
The quiet seventy-one-year-old widow everyone had assumed was another victim.
Elena came beside him.
“Dominic?”
May you like
He looked at the screen.
“My father wasn't working alone.”
