Chapter 7 - No More Secrets Between Us
Ethan survived surgery.
The bullet passed through the upper shoulder without striking an artery.
Clara sat beside his hospital bed until sunrise.
Dominic sat outside.
He could have left.
He had an organization to stabilize.
Marlowe's network was collapsing.
Federal raids were spreading.
Captains needed orders.
Banks needed pressure.
Three docks had temporarily stopped moving freight.
Yet Dominic remained in a plastic chair outside a hospital room drinking terrible vending-machine coffee.
At 6:18 a.m., Clara came out.
He stood immediately.
"How is he?"
"Sleeping."
"Doctor?"
"He'll recover."
Dominic nodded.
Clara looked exhausted.
More than exhausted.
She looked emptied.
He opened his arms.
No words.
Clara stepped into them.
Dominic held her.
Carefully because of her ribs.
Carefully because everything between them still felt new.
She pressed her face against his chest.
For several minutes neither spoke.
Then Clara whispered:
"You knew about Thomas."
"Yes."
She pulled away.
The tenderness disappeared from her expression.
Dominic recognized the danger immediately.
"How long?"
"Eighteen months."
Her eyes widened.
"Eighteen months?"
"Clara—"
"You let me investigate him."
"I needed your reaction to be real."
She stared.
"You used me."
The words hit harder than Dominic expected.
"Not like that."
"Exactly like that."
People moved around them.
Nurses.
Doctors.
Families.
Neither noticed.
Clara lowered her voice.
"You let me believe Thomas helped put my car through a guardrail."
"I didn't know he wasn't involved in the attack until yesterday."
"But you knew he was working against Marlowe."
"Yes."
"And you said nothing."
"I was protecting the operation."
Clara laughed once.
Cold.
"Interesting."
"What?"
"Yesterday you announced to an entire room that I'm your partner."
She looked directly into his eyes.
"Apparently partnership has classifications."
Dominic's jaw tightened.
"Thomas would be dead if Marlowe discovered him."
"And I nearly died because I didn't know the battlefield."
"Those are separate things."
"No."
Clara stepped closer.
"They are exactly the same thing."
Dominic had negotiated with killers.
Federal prosecutors.
Politicians.
Union bosses.
None frightened him like Clara when she became completely calm.
"If we're together," she said, "you don't get to decide which dangers I'm intelligent enough to understand."
"I wasn't questioning your intelligence."
"You were deciding for me."
"To keep you alive."
"There."
Clara pointed at him.
"That."
"What?"
"You keep saying partnership until protection becomes inconvenient."
Dominic stared.
She continued.
"You want me beside you as long as you still get to stand in front of me."
"Yes."
The answer came too quickly.
Clara stopped.
Dominic breathed.
"Yes."
He repeated it more quietly.
"I want to stand in front of you."
"Why?"
"Because I can take the bullet."
"So can I."
"I don't want you to."
"And you think I want you to?"
Silence.
That was the problem.
They were equally terrified.
Dominic looked toward Ethan's room.
"I don't know how to do this."
Clara's anger shifted.
"What?"
"This."
He gestured between them.
"I know how to protect employees."
"Captains."
"Assets."
"Territory."
His voice lowered.
"I don't know how to protect someone I love without trying to control every variable around her."
Clara became absolutely still.
Dominic realized what he had said.
He could have corrected it.
He didn't.
The hospital corridor seemed to narrow.
Clara whispered:
"You love me?"
Dominic looked almost irritated.
"Apparently."
Despite herself, she smiled.
"Apparently?"
"I've had a difficult week."
Clara laughed.
Then winced because of her ribs.
Dominic reached for her.
She allowed him.
"Don't make me laugh."
"I'll put it on the list."
"What list?"
"Things I'm not allowed to do."
"That list is becoming long."
"I noticed."
Clara looked at him.
The anger was not gone.
But something more important had entered beside it.
Truth.
"Say it properly."
Dominic frowned.
"What?"
"You know what."
He looked down the corridor.
"Here?"
"Yes."
"You're extorting me emotionally."
"I learned from criminals."
Dominic looked back.
Then he touched her face.
"I love you."
No hesitation this time.
No apparently.
Clara's eyes filled.
"I have for longer than I'm comfortable admitting."
She covered his hand.
"I love you too."
Dominic closed his eyes briefly.
As though the words frightened him more than gunfire.
Clara leaned into him.
Then whispered:
"But I'm still angry."
"I assumed."
"And Thomas?"
"I tell you everything."
"Everything relevant."
"Everything."
She studied him.
"No secret operations involving my life."
"Agreed."
"No using me without telling me."
"Agreed."
"No deciding my choices because you're scared."
Dominic hesitated.
Clara raised an eyebrow.
"I'm working on that one."
"Dominic."
"Fine."
"Agreed."
She kissed him.
Not gently this time.
Not cautiously.
The kiss contained fear, anger, exhaustion, and five years of restraint finally collapsing.
A nurse walked past.
Then walked faster.
When they separated, Dominic rested his forehead against hers.
"Your brother is going to hate me."
"He already does."
"Good."
"Why good?"
"I'd worry if he approved of me."
Clara smiled.
For the first time, the future existed beyond the next threat.
But peace had not arrived yet.
Marlowe was in federal custody.
Richard was dead.
Thomas had returned to Dominic's side.
Yet the flash drive still contained thirty-two names.
Some bought.
Some undecided.
And one category bothered Clara most.
Unknown.
Three names had no status.
No payment.
No loyalty assessment.
One belonged to a man named Gabriel Russo.
Dominic's oldest captain.
His father's closest friend.
The man who had helped raise Dominic after his father died.
Clara found Dominic later that afternoon in an empty hospital conference room.
She placed the tablet before him.
"Gabriel."
Dominic looked at the name.
"No."
"We have to consider it."
"No."
"Dominic."
"He held me when my father died."
"And?"
Dominic looked up sharply.
Clara did not retreat.
"You told me everything."
He stared at her.
She continued.
"So we're going to do this differently."
"No assumptions."
"No sacred names."
"No blind loyalty."
Dominic looked back at the tablet.
Gabriel Russo.
Age sixty-four.
Forty years in the organization.
No suspicious transfers.
No known contact with Marlowe.
But his name was in the file.
Unknown.
"Why would Marlowe track him?" Dominic asked.
"Because he couldn't classify him."
Clara sat opposite.
"Maybe Gabriel rejected him."
"Then he'd be marked loyal."
"Unless Marlowe never approached him."
Dominic understood.
"Because Gabriel approached Marlowe."
Clara nodded.
The possibility was worse.
Dominic called Leo.
"Find Gabriel."
The answer came twenty minutes later.
Gabriel Russo was gone.
His apartment empty.
Phone disconnected.
Car abandoned near Grand Central.
On the kitchen table, investigators found one envelope.
Dominic's name was written across it.
Inside was a single handwritten sentence.
YOUR FATHER DID NOT DIE THE WAY YOU WERE TOLD.
Dominic read it twice.
Clara watched the blood leave his face.
His father had died twenty-two years earlier.
Officially, a heart attack.
Unofficially, everyone knew the stress of leadership had killed him.
Dominic folded the note.
"What does this mean?"
Clara asked.
He looked toward her.
For the first time since she had known him, Dominic Romano looked like a son instead of a king.
"I don't know."
He placed the note on the table.
May you like
"But we're going to find out."
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