Chapter 6 - The Lap of the Don
“Get him inside! Now!” I screamed, throwing the door open and scrambling out into the rain, my emerald dress tearing against the broken chassis.
“Mrs. Kessler, stay back!” Marcus shouted, raising a hand.
“Shut up, Marcus!” I roared, dropping to my knees in the wet gravel beside Dominic’s limp body. The silk of my gown soaked through instantly, icy and heavy, but adrenaline surged through my veins like pure electricity. “He’s in hypovolemic shock! Help me lift him into the back seat or you won't have a boss to take orders from in ten minutes!”
Marcus and Thomas blinked, stunned by the sheer ferocity in my voice, but their training kicked in. They grabbed Dominic under the shoulders and legs, hauling his heavy, dead-weight frame back into the rear seat of the Maybach.
I scrambled in after him, slamming the heavy door shut against the rain.
“Can the car drive?” I demanded, pressing my thumbs directly into Dominic’s wound, searching for the pressure point against the brachial artery.
“Radiator’s blown, but the block isn't cracked,” Thomas said, coughing on airbag dust as he threw the car into gear. The transmission groaned in agony, but the tires gripped, and the armored beast pulled out of the ditch, limping down the mountain road at forty miles per hour.
“Head for the safe house in Dover,” Marcus barked into his radio. “Call the trauma team! Code Black! I repeat, Code Black!”
“No trauma team,” I cut in, my voice slicing through the panic. “Whoever set this ambush knew our route from Lucian’s. If you call your private doctors, you don't know which one is on Lucian’s payroll. You have a med-kit in this car?”
Marcus turned from the front seat, his face pale. “Under the passenger seat.”
“Give it to me!”
He handed back a heavy canvas military aid bag. I ripped it open with my teeth, pulling out sterile gauze, trauma shears, and a combat tourniquet.
Dominic groaned, a low, guttural sound of pure agony as I sliced away his ruined tuxedo shirt. The wound was horrific—a jagged channel carved through the meat of his left bicep, nicking the vessel. Blood welled up, thick and dark, spilling across the leather seats.
“Look at me, Dominic,” I ordered, placing my knee on the floorboard and hauling his massive shoulders upward so his head rested against my lap. “Look at me!”
His eyelids fluttered open. The ice-gray eyes were glazed with shock, the pupils dilated to the rim. He looked up at me, his vision struggling to focus through the agony.
“Claire…” he whispered, his lips blue from blood loss.
“You don't talk,” I said, wrapping the tourniquet high on his arm and twisting the windlass with everything I had. “You stay awake. If you close your eyes, I swear to God, Dominic, I will let them elect Lucian tomorrow morning.”
A weak, wheezing cough shook his chest. “You… wouldn't dare.”
“Try me.” I locked the windlass into place. The bleeding slowed to a trickle, but he was burning through his reserves. His skin was clammy, cold as marble, his breath shallow and rapid.
The adrenaline began to recede, leaving behind the crushing weight of reality. We were trapped in a ruined, limping car speeding through a storm, surrounded by blood, with a dead man’s targets painted on our backs.
And Dominic—the iron Don, the executioner who had just carved four men down in the dirt—was trembling.
He wasn't shaking from fear; he was shaking from the sheer, overwhelming collapse of his nervous system. The mask was gone. The suit was gone. There was only a broken man bleeding out on a dark highway.
Slowly, deliberately, Dominic turned his face inward.
He pressed his cheek against the wet, emerald silk covering my thigh. He nestled his head into my lap, his heavy, scarred hand reaching blindly upward until his fingers found the hem of my gown, gripping the fabric like a drowning child clutching a lifeline.
In the rearview mirror, I caught Marcus’s eyes.
The scarred, veteran soldier was staring back into the rear cabin, his jaw slack, his face frozen in utter, speechless shock. In ten years of serving the Kessler family, through turf wars, betrayals, and executions, Marcus had never seen Dominic Kessler lean on a wall, let alone a human being. He had never seen him bleed without smiling.
And he had certainly never seen him lay his head in a woman's lap, defenseless, surrendered, and completely undone.
Marcus quickly averted his eyes, looking back out into the rain, a sudden, fierce respect hardening his features. He didn't say a word. He just clicked the safety off his rifle and watched the road.
I looked down at Dominic. His dark hair was soaked, dripping against my bare knee. With trembling, blood-stained fingers, I brushed the wet strands away from his forehead.
“I have you,” I whispered, tears finally burning the corners of my eyes, blurring the passing streetlights into streaks of gold. “Dominic, look at me. I have you. You’re safe.”
His breathing hitched. Beneath my hand, the rigid, unyielding tension in his skull and neck seemed to dissolve. For the first time since I had met him in that pediatric ward under the buzzing fluorescent lights, Dominic Kessler let out a soft, broken sigh, his body sinking entirely into my touch.
“Don't let go,” he murmured into the silk of my dress, his voice barely louder than the hum of the engine.
May you like
“I won't,” I promised, pressing my palm against his cold cheek as the car sped into the sanctuary of the shadows. “I won't let go.”
***
