Chapter 2 - The Weight of the First SlumberThe silence in the grand bedroom stretched for ten agonizing heartbeats. Dominic’s throat remained tight, a heavy knot of unspooled grief pressing against his airway.
Lily did not fidget. She sat cross-legged on the silk coverlet, her small fingers gently curling around the foam stuffing spilling from her rabbit's torn ear. She simply waited, her dark eyes reflecting the amber glow of the bedside lamp.
"It was the best story I have ever heard," Dominic finally managed, his voice raspy, sounding like stones grinding together after a century of disuse.
Lily beamed, a wide, gap-toothed smile breaking across her face. "I knew it. Mama says my stories are magic."
She yawned, a massive, jaw-cracking effort that immediately betrayed her small body's limits. Without another word, she slumped sideways, her head coming to rest comfortably against Dominic’s heavy, monogrammed silk quilt. Within seconds, her breathing evened out. The tiny storyteller was fast asleep, utterly safe in the lair of New York’s most feared underworld kingpin.
Dominic stared down at her. He didn't move. He didn't call Sophia. Instead, slowly, deliberately, he swung his legs up onto the mattress and lay back against the pillows.
He closed his eyes.
The darkness behind his eyelids didn't immediately rush in with the screech of metal, the smell of rain, and the blinding headlights of the truck that had stolen his wife and unborn child. Instead, for the first time in three agonizing years, he heard a rustle of dry leaves in the African savannah. He heard a lion named Leo whisper into the night.
I caught a rabbit today, my love. I went to the place where we liked to watch the sun go down.
May you like
A single tear slipped from the corner of Dominic’s eye, soaking into the pristine linen. The knot in his chest dissolved, replaced by a profound, hollow lightness.
When morning light pierced through the heavy velvet drapes, Sophia stood frozen in the doorway, her hands flying to her mouth in sheer terror as she saw her boss asleep—truly, deeply asleep—with her toddler curled up against his knee.
