Chapter 3 - Fear would keep him silent more reliably than trust.
“Listen to me.”
She leaned closer.
“You’re going home. You’re drinking water. Tomorrow you come back to work.”
Aris trembled.
“And you forget this happened.”
She held his gaze.
“Because if you go to the police, Frank comes back, and I may not be here to tell him to put you down.”
Aris swallowed.
Then nodded once.
Clara stood.
Her shift still had 3 hours remaining.
She was finished.
It was time to speak to the man pulling every string.
Dominic Gallo did not hide.
His legitimate businesses were operated with the same cold precision as everything else.
Clara knew where to find him because Frank had casually left a matchbook at the nurses’ station during his earlier visit.
The Onyx Club.
A high-end supper club downtown.
Clara did not dress for it.
Faded jeans.
Black turtleneck.
Combat jacket.
The thick white envelope in her pocket.
Outside, freezing sleet swept across the city.
The Onyx Club was closed to the public on Thursdays.
The neon sign was dark.
2 men smoked beneath the awning.
They saw Clara and straightened.
“Closed.”
“Tell Dominic I’m here.”
The men exchanged a look.
“Who are you?”
“The woman who saved his brother.”
Clara stopped several feet away.
“Tell him to come outside or I’m leaving.”
1 of them made a call.
He listened.
Then opened the brass door.
“He says you can come in.”
“I’m not going inside.”
Clara remained in the rain.
“I told you. Tell him to come out.”
It was a power play.
A reckless one.
Demanding that a mafia boss meet her on the sidewalk was the sort of decision that could end in the harbor.
But Clara was exhausted.
Angry.
Finished with his rules.
3 minutes later, the door opened.
Dominic stepped outside.
No suit.
Heavy wool sweater.
Dark trousers.
Casually lethal.
He stopped beneath the awning and looked at Clara standing in the rain.
“You’re wet.”
“And you’re a problem.”
The corner of his mouth moved.
Barely.
He gestured toward the door.
“Come inside. Drink. Towel.”
“No.”
Clara removed the envelope from her jacket.
She walked toward him and shoved it against his chest.
Dominic caught it.
Looked down.
Then back at her.
“I don’t want it.”
Rain ran down Clara’s face.
“And I don’t want you paying my rent. I don’t want your men choking doctors in my stairwell.”
She pointed toward him.
“I want you out of my life.”
Dominic held the envelope.
“My man went too far. The doctor was a risk.”
“He understands that.”
Clara’s anger rose.
“And now he thinks I belong to you. He thinks I’m dirty.”
“You care what a coward thinks?”
“I care that my life is being hijacked.”
Her voice cut through the rain.
“I saved your brother. That was the transaction.”
She stepped closer.
“You owe me nothing. I owe you nothing. Leave me alone.”
Dominic stepped from beneath the awning.
Rain immediately soaked his hair.
He ignored it.
He walked until only inches separated them.
Clara stayed still.
This time, she did not flinch.
“The transaction is not complete.”
His voice carried terrifying weight.
“Toby was shot by the Maroni family. It was a hit. They failed.”
Clara frowned.
“What does that have to do with me?”
“They know Toby survived. They know he was taken to St. Jude’s.”
Dominic’s eyes locked on hers.
“They have police on payroll.”
Clara’s stomach tightened.
“Like the men who visited your hospital today.”
The detectives.
Dominic continued.
“They’re looking for whoever treated him. If they find the doctor, they find the records. If they find the records, they find where Toby was transferred.”
Cold moved through Clara.
“They weren’t there to arrest Aris.”
“No.”
Dominic’s voice softened.
“They were there to interrogate him.”
He held her eyes.
“Frank didn’t choke Aris to protect you. He did it to keep my brother from being handed back to people who want to finish the job.”
A pause.
“And to keep them from learning about you.”
Clara stared.
The danger was larger than Dominic.
It was the entire world surrounding him.
“If the Maronis learn that a nurse with no family and no protection saved Toby, they will take you off the street.”
Dominic’s tone was brutally clinical.
“They’ll torture you until you tell them where he is.”
He paused.
“Then they’ll shoot you.”
Clara stepped backward.
For the 1st time, the certainty in her broke.
The rain suddenly felt much colder.
“So paying my rent…”
“Let my men watch your building 24 hours a day without you noticing.”
He lifted the envelope.
“And this was enough money to disappear if everything collapsed.”
Clara felt sick.
The belief that she could keep her head down and remain outside the darkness had been an illusion.
She was already in the crossfire.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her voice cracked slightly.
“Because you wouldn’t have listened.”
Dominic answered without hesitation.
“You would have run.”
“And running without protection right now gets you killed.”
He reached toward her.
His hand moved slowly.
Clara forced herself not to react.
He gently took her elbow.
Then pulled her beneath the awning.
Out of the driving sleet.
“Keep the money.”
He slid the envelope back into her wet jacket.
“You’re going to need it.”
“I have a job.”
“You can’t go back to the hospital until I finish the Maronis.”
“I can’t just stop working.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
Dominic opened the heavy brass door.
“You’re with me now.”
Clara looked through the doorway into the dark warmth of the club.
Then back toward the violent city street behind her.
There was no middle ground left.
She inhaled.
Then crossed the threshold.
The Onyx Club was silent.
Lemon polish.
Aged leather.
The ghost of expensive cigar smoke.
The reinforced windows turned the storm outside into something distant.
Clara stood on a Persian rug dripping water across the hardwood.
She felt like a stray animal brought into a museum.
Dominic walked behind the mahogany bar and poured 2 fingers of amber liquor into a heavy crystal glass.
He did not ask whether she wanted it.
He pressed it into her cold hand.
“Drink.”
Clara barely drank alcohol.
Her teeth were chattering.
She swallowed the liquor like medicine.
Heat burned through her throat and settled heavily in her stomach.
She coughed.
“Upstairs.”
Dominic moved toward a door at the rear.
A staircase led to a private residence above the club.
It did not resemble the theatrical lair she might have imagined.
It was a luxury penthouse with almost no personal detail.
Expensive furniture.
Bare walls.
No photographs.
A space built for a man who existed without actually living.
Dominic opened a closet.
He removed a gray sweatshirt and drawstring sweatpants.
“Bathroom is down the hall. You can’t stay in wet clothes.”
10 minutes later, Clara returned.
The shower had warmed her body.
Not her thoughts.
Dominic’s clothes swallowed her.
She had rolled the waistband 3 times.
The sleeves covered most of her hands.
Dominic sat at a large steel dining table with a laptop open.
He ended a rapid Italian phone call without saying goodbye.
“Toby is being moved here in the morning.”
Clara pulled out a chair.
“He needs round-the-clock monitoring. Antibiotics. Dressing changes. Pain control.”
She drew her knees toward her chest.
“So you didn’t only bring me here to hide.”
Her voice hardened.
“You brought me here to work.”
“I brought you here to keep you alive.”
Dominic leaned back.
“The medical care is convenient.”
“How long?”
“Until I find the man who shot Toby.”
His voice flattened.
“Until the Maroni family understands they cannot touch what belongs to me.”
Clara’s skin tightened.
“What belongs to you?”
She dropped her feet to the floor.
“I don’t belong to you.”
Dominic tilted his head.
“No.”
His gaze remained steady.
“You don’t.”
He paused.
“But the city doesn’t know the difference. As far as they’re concerned, you’re under my protection.”
His voice remained calm.
“That makes you mine to defend.”
“And when it ends?”
Clara did not look away.
“Do I get to walk out the door?”
“Yes.”
Immediate.
No hesitation.
Clara exhaled.
She wanted to believe him.
Her instincts warned that men with Dominic’s power did not release things easily.
“Why did you move across the country?”
The question struck like a physical blow.
Clara’s defenses slammed shut.
“You ran a background check.”
“Of course.”
Dominic did not apologize.
“Clara Hayes. 31. No criminal record. 5 years ago, Seattle. Married to David Cole. Corporate lawyer.”
He watched her.
“Then you disappeared, changed back to your maiden name, and took graveyard shifts at a struggling hospital.”
He leaned slightly forward.
“Why?”
Clara’s hands closed into fists.
David’s name tasted like ash.
“You already know.”
Her voice became bitter.
“You saw the police reports. The restraining orders the judge refused because David played golf with him.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“I saw them.”
“Then why ask?”
“I want to hear it from you.”
Clara’s anger broke through.
“You want to hear how he threw me down stairs?”
She stood.
“How he broke my collarbone and told the ER doctor I slipped?”
Her breathing quickened.
“Is that what you want, Dominic?”
Silence flooded the penthouse.
Clara had not spoken those words aloud in 5 years.
They felt poisonous.
Dominic’s face remained unreadable.
His eyes had gone black.
“No.”
His voice was very quiet.
“I wanted to know if he was why you closed your eyes when I raised my hand.”
Clara looked away.
“Yes.”
She stared at the steel tabletop.
“He was.”
Dominic stood.
Clara’s shoulders hitched.
Another involuntary flinch.
He saw it.
Stopped immediately.
Then walked to the window and turned his back.
“David Cole is a dead man.”
Clara blinked.
The sentence had been delivered like a weather report.
“He’s in Seattle. He doesn’t know where I am.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Dominic looked over his shoulder.
“No one who put hands on you gets to keep breathing.”
His voice remained calm.
“I’ll make the call tonight.”
“No.”
Clara stood so quickly that the chair scraped the floor.
“No.”
She moved toward him.
“You don’t get to do that.”
“I escaped him.”
Her voice shook with anger.
“I survived him. He’s in my past.”
“He’s in your muscle memory.”
Dominic turned toward her.
“He’s still in the way you flinch.”
“And your solution is more violence?”
Clara stepped closer.
“Killing him does not fix me.”
She pointed toward Dominic.
“It only makes you a murderer, and I will not have his blood on my hands.”
Her eyes held his.
“Call it off.”
Dominic did not speak.
“Promise me.”
Clara moved closer still.
“You don’t touch him.”
Dominic reached out.
Her breath caught.
She forced herself to stay.
Forced her eyes open.
His scarred hand brushed a wet strand of hair from her cheek.
The touch was impossibly light.
“I promise.”
His voice rumbled.
“I won’t hunt him.”
Then his gaze hardened.
“But if he ever finds you, if he ever comes to this city, I will pull his spine out through his throat.”
Clara believed him.
And somewhere inside the broken part of her, the promise felt disturbingly comforting.
For 3 days, Dominic’s penthouse became a sealed, sterile world.
Toby arrived on a stretcher, pale and fragile, accompanied by 4 heavily armed guards.
Clara took control immediately.
The guest bedroom became a functional recovery room.
She monitored Toby’s vitals.
Managed his IV antibiotics.
Changed dressings.
Controlled his pain.
Dominic was rarely home.
He left before sunrise and returned long after Clara had gone to bed.
Outside, the city seemed to be burning.
Clara caught fragments on the news.
Warehouse fires.
A judge found dead inside his vehicle.
The Maroni and Gallo families were tearing each other apart.
Her most constant company was Frank.
The giant enforcer sat on a stool near the front door, either cleaning his gun or completing crossword puzzles with a tiny golf pencil.
He rarely complained.
Rarely spoke.
Occasionally asked if Clara wanted coffee.
On the 4th night, the bubble broke.
2:15 a.m.
Clara sat in the living room reading a medical textbook Frank had retrieved from her apartment.
The refrigerator hummed quietly.
Then came a heavy thud from the floor beneath them.
The club.
Frank stopped in the middle of writing a crossword answer.
May you like
He did not immediately look up.
His pencil lowered.
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