Chapter 2 - “Where are we?”
“My home.”
“Absolutely not.”
Dominic opened his door. “For tonight, it’s the safest place in Boston.”
“And tomorrow?”
He looked back at her.
“We’ll see who’s still alive tomorrow.”
She should have run.
She knew that.
But her legs carried her out of the car and into the elevator because the unknown men already had her name, her number, and her face.
Dominic’s penthouse was nothing like she expected.
No gold statues. No vulgar displays of power.
It was quiet. Dark. Controlled. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the harbor. Books lined one wall. A grand piano sat untouched near the glass. Everything looked expensive, but not loud.
A woman in her 60s entered from the hall carrying a medical kit.
“Sit,” she told Chloe.
Chloe blinked. “Who are you?”
“Rosa. I raised that one.” She pointed at Dominic without looking impressed. “So I have patience for frightened children and impossible men.”
Dominic removed his jacket. “Check her for glass.”
“I’m fine,” Chloe said.
Rosa gave her one look. “You are shaking hard enough to rattle your bones. Sit.”
Chloe sat.
Only then did she notice the blood on her sleeve.
Not hers.
Dominic’s.
He had a thin cut along his forearm where the mirror glass had caught him.
“You’re bleeding,” she said.
Dominic looked down as if mildly inconvenienced. “So are you.”
Rosa found a small shard of glass embedded near Chloe’s collarbone. Chloe hissed as the woman removed it.
Dominic stepped closer.
Chloe noticed.
So did Rosa.
“I survived worse than tweezers,” Chloe muttered.
Dominic’s mouth twitched.
Almost a smile.
Almost.
Leo entered with a tablet. “Phone was cloned before the call. Burner bounced through 3 towers. No clean trace.”
Dominic’s expression emptied.
“What about the shooter?”
“Alive. Not talking.”
“He will.”
Chloe’s stomach turned.
Dominic saw it and said nothing.
That silence was worse than an explanation.
Rosa finished cleaning Chloe’s cut and taped gauze over it. “She needs rest.”
“I need to go home,” Chloe said.
“No,” Dominic and Rosa said together.
Chloe stared at them.
Rosa shrugged. “For once, he’s right.”
Dominic turned to Leo. “Send men to her apartment. Quietly. Bring clothes, documents, anything important.”
Chloe stood. “You can’t just send men into my apartment.”
Dominic faced her. “Then tell me what you need.”
“My life back.”
His eyes held hers.
“That may take longer.”
She hated the truth of it.
She gave Leo the address through clenched teeth and listed what mattered: the shoebox of documents under the bed, her mother’s locket in the chipped blue mug, work clothes, phone charger, medication from the bathroom cabinet.
Leo listened carefully.
Then left.
Dominic poured a glass of water and handed it to her.
She did not take it.
“You’re used to people obeying you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“At least you admit it.”
“I find lying inefficient.”
“Funny, coming from a mafia boss.”
His gaze sharpened. “Is that what I am?”
“That’s what people say.”
“And what do you say?”
Chloe laughed softly, exhausted and angry. “I say men don’t try to assassinate accountants in restaurants.”
Dominic’s eyes warmed with something dangerous.
“Fair.”
She took the water at last.
Hours crawled by.
Rosa showed her to a guest room larger than Chloe’s entire apartment. The bed was dressed in white linen. A city of lights glittered beyond the windows. On the chair lay folded clothes that still had tags on them.
Chloe did not sleep.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the gun.
At 3:17 a.m., she gave up and opened the bedroom door.
Voices came from downstairs.
Dominic’s study door was half open.
She knew she should not listen.
She listened anyway.
Leo’s voice was low. “Shooter’s name is Evan Cole. Ex-military. Contract work. Paid through 3 shells.”
“By who?”
“That’s where it gets strange.”
A pause.
Then paper slid across wood.
Dominic said nothing for a long time.
When he finally spoke, his voice was colder than Chloe had ever heard it.
“Say it.”
Leo exhaled. “The payment trail points to Bennett Medical Holdings.”
Chloe’s blood turned to ice.
Bennett.
Her name.
Dominic said, “That’s impossible.”
“Company folded 8 years ago. But the account reactivated last week.”
Chloe stepped back.
The floor creaked.
The room went silent.
Dominic opened the door.
Their eyes met.
“You heard.”
“My mother’s name was Elaine Bennett,” Chloe whispered. “She worked in hospital administration, not some medical holding company.”
Dominic’s face changed.
Not shock.
Recognition.
“What?” she demanded.
He did not answer fast enough.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Dominic looked past her, toward the dark windows.
“Your mother came to my father 12 years ago,” he said. “She had evidence against men who were selling hospital contracts to launder money.”
Chloe felt the hallway tilt.
“No.”
“She disappeared before she could testify.”
“She didn’t disappear. She raised me.”
“Under a different life.”
Chloe backed away. “Stop.”
Dominic stepped closer. “Chloe—”
“No. You don’t get to rewrite my mother because some account has my last name on it.”
His voice softened. “I’m not rewriting her. I’m telling you someone may have found what she hid.”
Her pulse hammered.
“What did she hide?”
Dominic’s answer was quiet.
“A ledger.”
Chloe thought of her apartment.
The chipped blue mug.
The locket.
Her mother’s shoebox under the bed.
Then Leo’s phone rang.
He answered, listened, and went still.
Dominic turned. “What?”
Leo looked at Chloe.
“Her apartment was hit before our men arrived.”
Chloe gripped the wall.
“Burned?” Dominic asked.
“No,” Leo said. “Searched. Professionally.”
“My locket,” Chloe whispered.
Leo looked grim. “Gone.”
Chloe’s eyes filled, but no tears fell.
Her mother’s locket was the last thing she had.
The last warm piece of a woman who had died holding Chloe’s hand and apologizing for leaving her with nothing.
Dominic’s expression darkened into something deadly.
“Whoever took it,” he said, “will return it.”
Chloe looked at him then.
Really looked.
The man everyone feared was standing barefoot in a dark hallway, sleeves rolled, blood drying on his arm, promising vengeance for a waitress he had known only by name yesterday.
And that scared her in a different way.
By sunrise, Chloe Bennett no longer had a job she could return to, an apartment that was safe, a phone that belonged to her, or a past she understood.
She stood in Dominic Moretti’s penthouse wearing clothes she had not bought, guarded by men she did not trust, protected by a criminal who watched her like she had become the center of a war.
At dawn, Rosa brought coffee.
Leo entered behind her with a small evidence bag.
Inside was Chloe’s mother’s locket.
Chloe rushed forward. “You found it?”
Leo did not smile.
“It was delivered downstairs 10 minutes ago.”
Dominic took the bag.
A folded slip of paper was tucked behind the chain.
He opened it.
Chloe saw only one sentence before Dominic closed his fist around it.
But it was enough.
SHE IS NOT ELAINE BENNETT’S DAUGHTER.
The room went silent.
Chloe stared at Dominic. “What does that mean?”
Before he could answer, the locket clicked open by itself.
Inside, where her mother’s photo should have been, was a tiny black drive.
Dominic’s face went pale.
For the first time since Chloe had met him, the most dangerous man in Boston looked afraid.
May you like
Because engraved on the drive were 2 words:
MORETTI BLOOD.
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