Chapter 3 - The Scent of Betrayal
Six months passed. Winter slammed into the jagged coastline of Maine, burying Elena’s small rented cabin in snow. She had transformed completely. Her dark, expensive blowout was now a tangled mop of honey-blonde curls. She wore oversized flannel shirts and worked behind the counter of a dusty, forgotten antique bookshop in a town where the population barely broke a thousand. Her belly was heavy, aching with the weight of the two restless lives inside her.
She lived in a constant state of hyper-vigilance. Every dark SUV that rolled down Main Street made her blood run cold. Every man in a tailored suit made her reach for the panic button she kept in her pocket. But they never came. She had successfully outrun the devil.
Back in New York, the devil was starving. Dominic had become a ghost of his former self. The business was thriving—brutally, violently so—because Dominic no longer possessed a shred of mercy. Rivals who previously would have been negotiated with were now systematically eradicated. He lived in the office, sleeping on a leather couch, staring at the small white envelope and the diamond ring that sat on his desk. I saw everything. The words were burned into his retinas.
Gabriel entered the office late one Tuesday night, dropping a thin manila folder onto the desk. Dominic didn’t look up from his ledger. “I told you not to bother me unless it was about a shipment, Gabe.”
“It’s not a shipment,” Gabriel said softly.
Dominic’s pen stopped.
“A cash-only clinic in Portland, Maine, got audited by the state,” Gabriel explained, his voice tight. “An anomaly in the paperwork. A woman matching Elena’s description, paying out of pocket under the name Clara Davis. Routine prenatal care. But, Dom…” Gabriel hesitated, a rare occurrence.
Dominic’s head snapped up, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. “What?”
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“The medical records indicate a twin pregnancy. Eight months along.”
Dominic couldn’t breathe. Twins. His children. He stood up so fast his chair crashed to the floor. The empire, the money, the blood—none of it mattered. “Fuel the jet,” he commanded, his voice trembling for the first time in his life.
