22. Chapter 22
“Sir, someone’s banging on the door at your place,” Lizzy’s voice crackled through the comms, tight with urgency.
Tony whipped around to see the monitors. The feed lit up with Naomi—her hair tangled, her shirt torn, her face streaked with tears. She was pounding on his door, frantic, wild-eyed.
Something inside of him went icy cold.
“Go!” Sal barked, his voice edged with steel. “She’s hurt.”
Tony was already moving, bolting out of the security room, boots pounding through the tunnel. Every muscle in his body burned with the need to get to her, but his chest ached with something else—fear. A fear he hadn’t felt since he was a boy, the kind that made his lungs clench and his blood roar.
She’s hurt. Who did this to her? Who the hell had dared put hands on her?
He didn’t slow, didn’t breathe, didn’t think. He exploded up the stairs, through the steel-reinforced door, and sprinted for the foyer.
Naomi.
She was inside now. One of his men had brought her in. She was sobbing, shaking so hard she could barely stand, her broken cries echoing off the marble floor.
“Tony!” she gasped, and his name on her lips just about split him in half.
“I’m here, love,” he rasped, and pulled her into his arms.
She collapsed against him, trembling like a leaf in a storm. This wasn’t the soft kind of crying. These weren’t pretty tears. These were wrenching, raw sobs that came from her very bones. It gutted him. He tightened his hold until he could feel every shiver, every jagged breath.
When her knees buckled, he scooped her up, cradling her against his chest. He carried her straight to his office, kicking the door shut behind him with a violent slam. Sitting down, he kept her on his lap, holding her as though the sheer force of his grip could put her back together.
She buried her face in his neck, her sobs breaking his composure one ragged sound at a time.
Tony reached for his phone with one hand, rage a steady hum beneath his skin. “Check the monitors,” he growled into the communications line to Lizzy. “I need to know what happened to her.”
“I’m on it, boss.” Her voice shook, but it was steady with determination.
Seconds later, his phone pinged. The feed lit up.
And there it was.
Tom Peterson. His hands on Naomi. Her shirt tearing. His chubby, filthy hands on her.
Tony’s vision tunneled, the red haze of fury blurring the edges of his sight. He could hear his own pulse hammering in his ears.
The door opened and Sal stepped in, Paulo at his shoulder. Tony turned his phone around and both men watched the footage. Both went still, their faces darkening to masks of outrage.
“We’ll take care of this,” Paulo said, his tone deadly calm. “There won’t be much of him left.”
Tony didn’t even look up. His arm locked around Naomi’s waist, anchoring her to him. His voice was low, lethal. “No. He’s mine.”
The weight of those words dropped like a stone. Sal and Paulo bristled, but they didn’t argue. They understood. This wasn’t about territory or retribution. This was personal. His woman had been hurt. This was blood for blood.
Tony’s jaw clenched as Naomi’s sobs began to ease. She shifted against him, pulling back just enough for him to see her face. That’s when he saw the mark—red blooming across her cheek, swelling where Tom Peterson had struck her.
He’d hit her.
Tony had seen it on the feed. But seeing the bruise forming on her soft skin—on his Naomi—ignited something primal in him. The kind of fury that destroyed men. The kind of fury that burned cities to the ground.
Her hiccupping whisper cut through his storm. “Are you leaving me?”
He swallowed hard. “I just need to do one thing,” he told her, his voice rough.
She studied him, her lashes wet, her expression trembling between fear and bravery.
Then she nodded, clutching the tattered edges of her shirt around her.
“Before you… do anything to him,” she whispered, her voice barely audible, “would you contact his ex-wife? So, she can stay with the boys? They’re going to need someone to take care of them. ”
Tony froze. Even now—broken, sobbing, shaken to her very core—she was thinking of those boys. That disgusting bastard’s boys. Protecting them even though their own father had just tried to destroy her.
His throat tightened. He stroked her hair, his touch gentler than he’d thought himself capable of. “Yes,” he promised. His voice cracked with conviction. He looked up at Sal, his gaze hard. “Tell Ben or Lizzy—find the mother. Bring her to the house.”
Sal was already moving, reaching for the door. Paulo followed, closing the door behind him to give them privacy.
Tony sat back down, and Naomi settled back into his lap without hesitation, curling into him as though he were the only safe place left in the world. Her nose pressed to his neck, her arms tight around his shoulders.
Exactly where she belonged.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice hoarse but steady.
His grip tightened. His lips brushed the top of her head tenderly.
In his chest, the fury coiled tighter, sharper, harder. For Naomi’s tears, for her trembling, for the bruise on her cheek, Tom Peterson’s hours were numbered.