Chapter 2 - THE BLOOD ON THE LEATHER
The armored Maybach tore through the Manhattan storm like a black ghost, its heavy engine roaring over the sound of the freezing rain.
Inside the cavernous backseat, the air was thick with the scent of wet wool, copper, and terror. Dominic Russo sat with his back pressed against the reinforced door, holding his wife across his lap. His tuxedo jacket, the one that had cost more than most cars, was wrapped tightly around Amelia’s trembling shoulders, rapidly soaking through with the rain and mud she had brought in from the Waldorf lobby.
“Keep your eyes open, mia regina,” Dominic commanded, his voice a low, rough anchor in the chaos of the moving vehicle. “Look at me. Only at me.”
Amelia’s head rested against his chest. Her skin was the color of old porcelain, completely drained of warmth. Her dark hair clung to her cheeks in wet, tangled ribbons. One of her hands gripped the lapel of his ruined tuxedo, her knuckles bone-white, while her other hand remained fiercely, protectively pressed against the swell of her pregnant belly.
“It hurts, Dom,” she whispered, her voice barely carrying over the rhythm of the windshield wipers. “Low. Like a knife twisting.”
Dominic’s jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. He placed his large, warm hand directly over hers on her stomach. Beneath his palm, he felt a sudden, terrifying tightening of her muscles—a contraction, violent and early. She was only six months along. This wasn't supposed to happen until the snow melted in Chicago.
“Leo,” Dominic barked toward the front partition.
“Three minutes out, boss,” Leo Rossi replied from the passenger seat. Leo was already coordinating the lockdown of New York Presbyterian. He had two earpieces in, barking orders to the syndicate’s cleanup crews, silencing the police scanners, and ensuring that no one except Dr. Harrison would be within fifty feet of the trauma bay when they arrived.
“Tell Harrison if he is not standing on the concrete when we pull in, I will burn his hospital to the ground,” Dominic said. The threat was not an exaggeration. It was a promise written in the cold, dead blue of his eyes.
Amelia gasped, a sharp, ragged sound that tore through the cabin. She curled inward, her nails biting into Dominic’s chest.
“I’m bleeding,” she choked out, tears finally spilling hot and fast down her freezing cheeks. “Dominic, I felt it when I hit the marble. The fall… the guards at the hotel…”
“They will pay,” Dominic murmured, pressing his lips to her damp forehead. “Every man who looked at you tonight will pay. But right now, you only focus on the heartbeat inside you. Do you understand me? You fight for him.”
The Maybach careened around a corner, the tires screaming in protest against the flooded asphalt, before diving into the subterranean ambulance bay of the hospital.
The heavy steel doors of the loading dock were already rolling shut behind them as the car jerked to a violent halt.
Dr. Harrison, a man who had taken Russo money for a decade to forget the gunshot wounds he treated, was waiting with a gurney, two trusted trauma nurses, and a face pale with genuine fear.
Dominic kicked the heavy car door open before the driver could even shift into park. He didn't wait for the medical staff. He lifted Amelia into his arms, feeling the sickening, wet warmth spreading across the skirt of her ruined silk gown.
“Get her on the bed,” Dr. Harrison ordered, gesturing frantically. “Let’s move! BP is crashing, get a line in her now!”
Dominic laid her gently on the sterile white sheets of the gurney. As the nurses swarmed her, cutting away the muddy canvas trench coat and the ruined silk, Amelia reached out, her fingers catching the cuff of Dominic’s shirt.
“The drive,” she panicked, her eyes wide and unfocused. “Dominic, the flash drive. The Romano files. I had them in the coat pocket. I protected them.”
“I have it. I have everything,” Dominic lied smoothly, stroking her cheek one last time before the medical team pushed the gurney through the swinging double doors of the trauma unit.
Dominic was left standing in the harsh, fluorescent glare of the concrete bay. His hands were covered in his wife’s blood.
He stared at his hands for three long seconds. In the underworld, blood was a currency. He had spilled rivers of it to secure his throne. But this blood was different. This blood carried his future. It carried the only light he had ever allowed into his dark, violent life.
“Boss,” Leo said quietly, stepping up beside him. He held out a pristine white towel.
Dominic took the towel and wiped his hands slowly, his face devoid of all emotion. When he spoke, his voice was the quiet, chilling register that always preceded a massacre.
“Where is the coat?”
Leo gestured to a biohazard bin near the entrance where the nurses had discarded the muddy, oversized canvas trench coat Amelia had been wearing.
Dominic walked over to the bin. He reached inside, ignoring the blood and the grime, and pulled the heavy fabric out. He plunged his hand into the deep right pocket where Amelia said she had hidden the encrypted flash drive—the drive containing the financial ledgers that proved Victor Romano was orchestrating a hostile takeover of the Russo ports.
His fingers met empty space.
The pocket was completely empty.
Dominic’s brow furrowed. Amelia had run through the streets. She had been shoved to the floor. It could have fallen out. But Amelia was meticulous. If she said she protected it, she protected it.
He plunged his hand into the left pocket.
His fingers brushed against cold, heavy metal.
It wasn't a flash drive.
Dominic pulled the object out and held it under the harsh hospital lights.
It was a solid silver lighter, heavily scratched, with a distinct, custom-engraved emblem on the front: a snarling wolf surrounded by a crown of thorns.
Leo stopped breathing.
Dominic stared at the lighter. The ambient noise of the hospital bay faded into a deafening silence.
David, the lead guard who had supposedly saved Amelia by pushing her out of the SUV, hadn't just pushed her. He had reached into her pocket. He had taken the Romano files to sell them back to Victor.
But David hadn't left this lighter in her pocket.
“Leo,” Dominic said, his voice entirely devoid of inflection.
“Dom,” Leo said, his voice cracking. “I swear to God.”
Dominic turned around slowly. He held the silver lighter up between his thumb and forefinger.
There were only two of these lighters in existence. Dominic carried one.
May you like
The other belonged to Leo Rossi, a gift Dominic had given him ten years ago when they swore a blood oath to protect the family above all else.
“You want to tell me, Leo,” Dominic asked softly, the danger rolling off him in invisible waves, “why the object you swore never to lose was found in my wife’s pocket tonight, right where Victor Romano’s files used to be?”
