Chapter 7
She didn’t wake Dominic.
She went to Victor.
Victor looked at the photo for a long time. Then he looked at her. He had dead eyes, and at that moment they were the kindest eyes she had ever seen, and she hated that.
“You should not have gone to meet your brother,” he said.
“I know. Help me.”
Victor went to Dominic. At two in the morning, Dominic came out of his office with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled, looking like a man who had not slept in a week. He saw the photo in her hand. He took it. He looked at it. He looked at her.
She said, before he could speak: “I’m sorry. I went to see him. I didn’t tell you. I know what that was.” She held his gaze. “I know I made you a target. I know I made him a target. I know.”
He didn’t rage. He didn’t threaten. He said, very quietly:
“Did you know they were watching him?”
“No.”
A long silence. The fire ticked in the hearth. The Atlantic breathed against the cliff.
“Get dressed,” he said.
The warehouse was a cathedral of rust and shadow. Floodlights blazed down from the girders, and Alexi Tarasov sat at a long table in the center of the open floor like a king holding court. He was in his sixties, thick-bodied, wearing a fine coat over a gold watch, and his malice was genuine — the real thing, not the polished version his enforcers wore.
Liam was zip-tied to a chair ten feet away. His face was bruised. His eyes were open, and he was terrified, and he looked at Norah like she was the last light in the world.
Alexi began to speak. His terms were precise: the debt reinstated, with interest. Public humiliation for Dominic — a public recantation, an apology, a bending of the knee. And Norah delivered to his people for “collection.”
“Collection,” Dominic repeated. Flat. “You mean you’ll take her.”
“I mean I’ll take her,” Alexi said. “And I’ll take my time. And then I’ll send her back to you in pieces, so you understand what it costs to humiliate Alexi Tarasov in front of his city.”
Norah stood very still. She had seen men die. She had held chests closed. She had never been the price before.
Dominic listened to all of it without expression. He let the words fall around him like rain.
Then he slid a manila envelope across the table.
Alexi looked at it. He didn’t touch it.
“Open it,” Dominic said.
Alexi opened it. Inside: photographs. A young man, maybe twenty, caught on surveillance footage getting into a car. A high school. A soccer field. A house in Seattle.
Alexi’s youngest son. Currently in witness protection under a federal deal. Dominic had the file. One phone call, and the protection disappeared, and the men Alexi had crossed on his way up would find his son before the sun rose.
The temperature in the room changed. It was the kind of cold that happens when the whole world shifts.
“The debt stays nullified,” Dominic said. His voice was quiet, and it carried. “The woman stays with me. Your son stays alive. This is the last conversation we have about this.”
Alexi stared at the photographs. Norah watched the calculation happen in his face — the weighing of a son against a principle, of blood against pride. She had seen that calculation before, in the eyes of fathers in the ER, deciding whether to spend the money or save the child.
He nodded. Once.
Dominic stood. He looked at one of his men, who crossed the floor and cut Liam loose.
Liam stumbled. He looked at Norah. And then Dominic turned to her, and extended his hand. Palm up. An invitation. Not a command.
She took it.
Outside, the air was cold and clean. The sky was starting to gray. Liam stood in the headlights of the cars, shaking, his wrists raw, his face a ruin of relief and shame.
Dominic looked at him for a long moment.
“Boston tonight,” he said. “Tomorrow you’re on a plane. Victor has an envelope with your name on it — enough to start somewhere clean. You don’t come back.”
Liam looked at Norah. She nodded.
May you like
Liam opened his mouth. Closed it. Then: “Thank you.”
Dominic didn’t answer. He opened the car door for Norah.
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