Chapter 13 - Blood and Confession
The basement infirmary smelled of antiseptic and ozone.
While Dominic’s private medical staff tended to the wounded soldiers on the upper levels, Dominic sat on the edge of an examination table, his shirt torn open to reveal a jagged piece of shrapnel embedded in his left oblique. He hadn't made a sound when the surgeon pulled it free with forceps, only clenching his jaw until the tendons in his neck stood out like cables.
I stood beside him, holding a basin of warm water and a sterile gauze pad.
"I can do it," I told the doctor quietly.
The elderly physician glanced at Dominic, who gave a brief, imperceptible nod. The doctor bowed his head and backed out of the room, leaving the heavy steel door closed behind him.
I dipped the gauze into the warm water, pressing it gently against the crimson wound on Dominic's side. He didn't flinch, but his hand came up, resting lightly over my hip, his thumb tracing the curve of my waist through the silk of my blouse.
"You shouldn't have done that," he said quietly, his voice low in the quiet room.
"Shot that man?" I asked, dabbing the blood away. "He was about to blow your head off, Dominic."
"Not that," he said. He reached down with his other hand, taking my left hand in his, raising it between us. The gold wedding band gleamed under the harsh fluorescent lights. "This. You had the papers. You had the car waiting at the back gate. You could have walked away before Falcone's bird touched the grass."
I paused, looking down at his chiseled face. The dark stubble along his jaw, the deep scar cutting through his left eyebrow, the fierce, unyielding hunger in his dark eyes that never seemed to dim when he looked at me.
"And go where?" I asked softly. "My mother sold me out before I was even old enough to understand what money was. My father turned my very genetics into an offshore bank account. The entire world sees me as currency, Dominic. Everyone except you."
Dominic’s breath hitched. His fingers tightened around mine, pulling me closer until I was standing between his parted thighs, my chest inches from his.
"Don't saint me, Tessa," he growled, though there was an agony of truth in his voice. "I took you to break Costa. I forced this ring on your finger while you were lying in a hospital bed because I needed a weapon against the Council."
"And then you gave me the choice to take it off," I countered, looking dead into his eyes. "Costa would have chained me in a basement. Falcone wants to cut my marrow out on an operating table in Montauk. You... you stood between me and twenty assault rifles and told your men to burn the world down before letting them touch me."
I pressed the clean bandage against his skin, taping it securely.
"I'm not a victim anymore, Dominic. And I'm not running. If my blood holds the key to eighty billion dollars, then that money belongs to us. Not Falcone. Not my mother."
A dark, intoxicating heat flared in Dominic's eyes. He caught me by the back of the neck, his large hand tangling in my hair, and pulled my mouth down to his.
The kiss was fierce, desperate, and tasted of salt and adrenaline. It wasn't gentle. It was the collision of two broken survivors binding themselves together in the wreckage of a war. When he parted from my lips, his breathing was as ragged as mine, his forehead resting against mine.
"Enzo!" Dominic barked without breaking eye contact with me.
The intercom on the wall buzzed instantly. "Yes, Boss?"
"Did we take a live one?"
A pause. "One of the tactical commanders from the east wing. Bullet in his femur. He's tied to an iron chair in cellar four."
Dominic’s lips brushed against my temple, his whisper sending a violent shiver down my spine. "Come, Tessa. Let's go find out where your mother is sleeping tonight."
Cellar four was a stone chamber that had remained unchanged since the prohibition era. A solitary bulb hung from a frayed yellow cord, illuminating a man stripped to his undershirt, his hands zip-tied behind a cast-iron radiator. His leg was mangled, a pool of dark blood pooling beneath his boot.
Dominic walked into the circle of light like an archangel of vengeance, rolling up his sleeves. I walked beside him, folding my arms, the pearl-handled pistol resting securely in the pocket of my coat.
The captive looked up, spitting blood onto the concrete. "Rossi. You're dead. The Don... he didn't just come with men. He bought the docks. He bought the governor. New York is being closed off. You're trapped on this island."
Dominic didn't even raise his voice. He walked to the wooden workbench against the wall, selected a heavy set of steel pliers, and walked back to the chair.
"I don't care about the docks, and I don't care about the governor," Dominic said casually, testing the spring of the pliers. "I want the location of the extraction facility in Montauk."
"Go to hell," the mercenary snarled in a thick Sicilian accent. "I took an oath to the Falcone family."
Dominic sighed, stepping forward. But before he could raise the tool, I stepped in front of him.
Both Dominic and the captive stared at me.
I walked up to the bloody man, leaning down until my face was inches from his. "You were on the comms, weren't you? You heard what my mother said about the Vance cipher."
The man sneered. "What of it, little girl?"
"The cipher isn't just a string of code," I said, bluffing with every ounce of confidence I possessed, staring through his soul. "It's an encrypted dead-man's protocol. If my heart stops, or if my marrow is drawn without the override key that only I possess, every single euro in those eighty-billion-dollar accounts self-destructs into an unrecoverable void. Falcone gets nothing. You get nothing. Your families in Sicily get nothing."
The mercenary’s eyes flickered with a sudden, sharp doubt. Marcus Vance was notorious for his paranoia; the lie was so plausible it felt like gospel.
"Falcone is using you as cannon fodder for an account he can't open without my consent," I whispered, my voice dripping with cold authority. "Tell Dominic where the facility is, and you walk out of this cellar with a million dollars and a ticket to South America. Refuse... and I'll let my husband spend the next forty-eight hours showing you why they call him the Butcher of Brooklyn."
The man swallowed hard. He looked from my ruthless, unblinking glare to Dominic, who was standing behind me with a smirk that could curdle milk.
"Montauk..." the mercenary choked out, his spirit breaking in a single breath. "The old naval radar base. Sub-level three. Falcone has a team of twenty men and a medical transport plane on standby at the private airstrip. They leave for Sicily at dawn."
Dominic stepped forward, clapping a heavy hand on my shoulder.
"Enzo," Dominic called out to the shadows. "Put him in a cell and give him medical attention. He earned his ticket."
May you like
Dominic turned to me, his dark eyes shining with absolute reverence. "Get dressed, Tessa. We're going to Long Island. It’s time to settle your family’s debts."
***
