Chapter 10 Dominic #2
My weight is crushing her, but when I try to pull away, her arms tighten around my neck, refusing to let me go.
I stay buried inside her, her body still clenching softly around me, while the last tremors work through us both.
Only when her grip finally loosens do I withdraw—a slow, wet slide that leaves her gasping and leaves me hollow in a way I have no name for.
I collapse against her immediately, pressing my face into the curve of her neck, pulling her flush against my chest. My hand finds her hip, anchoring her there.
The heavy silence of the Gold Coast compound surrounds us.
Outside this room, I am the Don. Outside this door, I have a war to finish, an empire to protect, and brothers who look to me for every order.
But in this bed, I am just a man who has finally found his breath.
I slowly roll to the side, taking her with me, keeping her body pressed the length of mine. I throw my heavy leg over hers, keeping us entirely tangled. I drag the duvet up over her bare shoulders.
Before either of us can speak, a sharp, mechanical vibration buzzes against the mahogany nightstand.
I stiffen. It's the burner phone. The one I gave Sienna last night after I called Lucia.
Sienna shifts, her eyes darting to the nightstand. The screen is illuminated in the dim light. She reaches over to the nightstand, her fingers brushing the cold glass where the burner phone sits. She pushes up onto her elbow, the duvet falling away from her chest, and grabs the small, black device.
I watch her face. I don't breathe.
Sienna swipes the screen. Her eyes scan the short line of text. She stops. Her throat bobs as she swallows. Slowly, she turns her head to look at me, her expression incredibly soft, carrying an emotional weight that makes my chest ache.
Without a word, she turns the screen toward me.
It's a text from a Pine Valley area code.
Thank you for telling me about her. Keep breathing, fratello.
I stare at the glowing letters. Lucia sent this to the burner—the phone I gave Sienna. She is reaching past me to the woman I told her about on the call last night. She is opening a door that I have no right to walk through, and she is inviting Sienna to step inside it.
I texted my sister four words the night she ran. It was always you. She sent back silence for a year. And now, after one phone call where I admitted there was a woman in my brownstone—a florist who stayed after hearing the worst of me—Lucia is reaching out. Not to me. To her.
"Dominic," Sienna whispers. She drops the phone onto the mattress and moves closer, pressing her palm flat against the center of my chest, right over my hammering heart. "She's not just forgiving you. She's welcoming me."
I close my eyes. The burn in the back of my throat is thick and jagged. I reach up and cover her hand with mine, lacing our fingers together.
"I don't deserve it," I say, the words rough.
"No," Sienna agrees softly, entirely honest. "You don't. But family isn't about what we deserve. It's about who we bleed for." She leans in, pressing a warm, lingering kiss to the corner of my mouth.
I open my eyes, looking at the woman who found me surrounded by blood and chose to stay. The morning sun warms the copper of her hair against my chest, and for the first time in two decades, the light doesn't feel like a warning.
I sit up, pulling away from the warmth of the bed. The air in the room is cool against my sweat-dampened skin. I walk to the heavy oak armoire, pulling out a pair of dark slacks and a crisp white button-down. "Get dressed."
Sienna blinks, pulling the sheet up to her collarbone. "What? Why? Are we under attack?"
"No." I slide my arms into the shirt, leaving the top three buttons undone. I turn to face her, strapping my leather shoulder holster over my chest and checking the weight of the Glock 19. "We are going for a ride."
"To where? Dominic, I thought I wasn't allowed out of the compound."
"You aren't," I reply, my tone leaving zero room for argument. "But you lost your flower shop because of me. The Bellantis burned your grandmother's legacy to the ground to send me a message. I can't undo the fire. But I can build you a fortress."
Her eyes widen, a spark of something fragile and desperately hopeful catching in the amber depths.
Forty-five minutes later, I am sitting in the back of the armored SUV, Sienna tucked firmly against my side, my hand settled at the curve of her waist. Santi is behind the wheel, his massive shoulders tense, his eyes scanning the mirrors with lethal precision.
Two chase vehicles flank us. We are a moving armory.
We pull into a private, cobblestone alleyway in the Gold Coast, just three blocks from the main brownstone.
The alley ends in a dead end, surrounded by towering brick walls topped with iron spikes.
At the end of the alley stands a two-story structure made entirely of reinforced steel and ballistic glass.
Santi kills the engine. "Perimeter is clear."
I step out first, my hand resting on the butt of my weapon beneath my tailored suit jacket.
I reach back, wrapping my hand tightly around Sienna's waist as I lift her down onto the pavement.
My grip lingers, fingers pressing into the wool of her coat, before I guide her forward.
She is wearing a dark green wool coat I had delivered this morning, her copper hair spilling over the collar.
I guide her to the front of the glass building. The interior is empty, but the morning sun floods the space, illuminating the massive custom-built stone basins, the state-of-the-art climate control vents, and the reinforced steel workbenches.
Sienna stops dead in her tracks. Her mouth parts.
"It's entirely off the grid," I tell her, my voice dropping low near her ear.
"The deed is buried in three ghost shells.
The glass is bulletproof. The doors require a biometric scan to open.
Santi has already installed a direct line to the compound's security hub.
" I turn her gently by the shoulders to face me.
"It's yours, Sienna. A greenhouse. A shop.
Whatever you want to make it. You will never have to stop working with your hands, but you will do it where no one can ever touch you. "
Tears well in her eyes. She doesn't speak. She just throws her arms around my neck, burying her face in my chest, holding on to me so tightly I feel it in my bones. I wrap my arms around her, burying my face in her hair.
"Thank you," she chokes out. "Dominic... thank you."
"I will give you the world, Sienna. You just have to let me paint it in armor."
I pull back, swiping a tear from her cheek with my thumb. "Let's go inside. I want you to see the back room. I had a reinforced walk-in cooler built for the—"
I stop.
My eyes catch on something on the ground, just inches from the heavy steel front door of the new shop.
It's a sleek, black envelope.
The blood in my veins turns to ice. This location is a secret. Fabio finalized the shell-company purchase at 3:00 A.M. last night. Santi swept the perimeter at dawn. No one knows this building belongs to the Costa family. No one.
"Dominic?" Sienna asks, feeling the sudden, violent tension locking every muscle in my body. "What's wrong?"
"Santi," I bark, my voice echoing off the brick walls of the alley.
Santi is out of the SUV in a second, his weapon drawn, his eyes scanning the rooftops. He moves to cover Sienna without being told, placing his massive frame between her and the open alley.
"Keep her behind me."
I step forward, crouching down in front of the reinforced glass door. The envelope is unmarked. I pull a pair of black leather gloves from my coat pocket, slip them on, and pick it up. The paper is heavy and expensive.
I slide my thumb under the flap and break the seal.
Inside is a single, glossy photograph.
I pull it out. The breath completely leaves my lungs.
It is a picture of Sienna. She is stepping out of the armored SUV in front of the brownstone, her copper hair catching the cold Chicago streetlight.
One hand is reaching back toward the vehicle, her thin cotton sundress clinging to her damp skin as she shivers in the Chicago air.
The angle is from across the street—a long lens, patient and precise, shot from the shadow of a parked vehicle or a darkened storefront window.
They caught the exact moment he claimed me.
I recognize the moment. Last night. The moment we arrived at the compound after L'Ombra. She had been outside the vehicle for less than fifteen seconds before Santi ushered her through the reinforced front door. Fifteen seconds in the dark, and they already had the shot.
My vision edges in red. The Bellantis didn't just burn down her shop to send a message. They slipped this photograph under the door of a secret location we bought hours ago to send a different message entirely.
We see you. We know where she stands. We are patient enough to wait.
I turn the photograph over. Scrawled in thick, black ink on the back are four words.
Welcome to the neighborhood.
I crush the photograph in my fist, the glossy paper snapping under the violent pressure of my grip. A terrifying, cold clarity washes over me.
They used a long lens and a street-level angle, possessing the patience to wait for a fifteen-second window.
This could be external surveillance—a Bellanti team with a telephoto lens and the resources to watch our compound around the clock.
That alone is devastating. It means they've mapped our movements, timed our arrivals, catalogued the faces entering and leaving the brownstone.
But the envelope is here. At a location purchased through three ghost shells less than twelve hours ago. A location no Bellanti surveillance team should know exists.
Either they have a long lens and limitless patience, tracking every vehicle that leaves our compound and following it to every destination. Or they have someone close enough to know which shell company signed the deed at three in the morning.
I don't know which answer destroys me more.
I turn around. Sienna is watching me from behind Santi's massive frame, her amber eyes wide with fear, sensing the absolute, murderous shift in my demeanor.
"What is it?" she whispers.
I walk to her, wrapping my arm around her waist, pulling her flush against my side. I look at Santi. My brother is staring at my clenched fist, his dark eyes calculating, already running scenarios behind the patient stillness of his face.
"Get her back to the SUV," I order, my voice stripped of all humanity.
It is the voice of the Don. The voice of the reaper.
"Lock the brownstone down. Full security audit.
Every camera feed from the last seventy-two hours pulled and reviewed frame by frame.
Every shell company transaction traced for access leaks.
I want to know how they found this building. "
"External or internal?" Santi asks, his voice quiet and deliberate. It is the right question. It is the question that will determine whether this war is fought on the streets or inside my own walls.
"That's what we're going to find out," I say.
Santi nods once, his jaw set like granite.
I look down at Sienna. I trace the line of her jaw, feeling her rapid pulse beneath my fingers. I just found my soul, and now I have to drown it in blood to keep her safe.
"They're watching us," I tell her, my voice dropping to a low, lethal frequency. "They know your face. They know where you stand when you step out of the vehicle. And they knew about this building before the sun came up."
She inhales a jagged breath. She looks at the crushed photo in my hand.
"I am going to find them," I vow, my eyes burning with a cold, focused rage that has replaced the heat of the last twelve hours. "Whether they're sitting in a van across the street or sitting at my own table—I will find them. And when I do, I will make their death a legend in this city."
Sienna doesn't flinch. She doesn't pull away. She squares her shoulders beneath the green wool coat and takes my hand—the one not crushing the photograph—and laces her fingers through mine.
"Then find them," she says, her voice steady. "But you come back to me, Dominic. Every night. You come back to our bed."
The vise around my chest loosens a fraction. I press my mouth to her forehead, hard and brief.
"Every night," I promise.
I guide her back to the SUV, my hand firm at the small of her back.
When we reach the vehicle, I open the armored door and lift her in—my hands at her waist, holding her a beat longer than necessary, my thumb pressing once against her hip through the wool before I close the door.
A seal. An anchor. Mine, inside. Threats, outside.
I remain standing for a moment in the cobblestone alley, the cold Chicago wind whipping at my coat.
I look at the reinforced greenhouse—the fortress I built for her hands, for her art, for the legacy the Bellantis tried to burn.
And I look at the black envelope on the ground.
The war in Chicago hasn't even begun. It's just gotten closer than I ever imagined it could. And I will burn down the whole fucking city, and everyone in it, to make sure the fire never touches her.