Chapter 10 - Blood and Resolution
Dominic didn't look like a businessman anymore. He looked like an angel of death.
His dark overcoat billowed behind him in the mountain wind, and his eyes were fixed entirely on Vincenzo, who was groaning on the ground, clutching a shattered leg.
“You,” Dominic whispered, his voice dangerously quiet as he walked slowly toward his former head of security.
Vincenzo spat blood onto the snow, trying to reach for his dropped firearm. “Boss… I can explain… Petrov offered—”
“I know what Petrov offered,” Dominic interrupted, raising his pistol and firing a single, precise shot into the snow inches from Vincenzo’s hand, stopping him cold. “I spent six years trusting you, Vincenzo. I treated you like a brother. And you sold my son out to save your own skin.”
“You’re finished, Dominic!” Vincenzo screamed hysterically, blood pooling beneath his leg. “Petrov is waiting for you at Pier 44 right now with an army! You’ll never make it out alive!”
Dominic didn't flinch. He didn't blink. He simply raised his pistol and fired two clean, definitive shots.
The echoes faded into the silent pine forest, leaving only the sound of the wind whistling through the branches.
Dominic slowly turned around and walked toward the wrecked SUV where I was still holding Lily tightly against my chest. He dropped his weapon back into his shoulder holster, dropped down onto one knee in the freezing snow right in front of us, and gently reached out his hand.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, his voice trembling slightly—the first sign of genuine vulnerability I had ever seen in him.
“No,” I whispered, tears freezing on my cheeks. “We’re okay… Lily is safe.”
Dominic gently brushed a stray tear from my cheek with his calloused thumb, his dark eyes filled with a fierce, burning intensity.
“I told you nobody would ever touch you or your daughter,” Dominic said softly. “And I keep my promises.”
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Two hours later, the federal authorities and the remaining loyal Moretti enforcers swept through Pier 44, dismantling the Queens syndicate before Viktor Petrov even realized his trap had been sprung. By sunrise, the war was over, and the New York underworld belonged entirely to the man who kneeling before my daughter in a Westchester ballroom just days ago.
We returned to the estate not as employees hiding in the shadows, but as family. As I tucked Lily into her bed that night, Dominic stood quietly in the doorway, watching over us with a peaceful expression I had never seen on him before.
