Chapter 4 - THE BLOODSTAINED COAT
“Caroline!”
Dominic’s voice shattered the sound of the pouring rain.
He fell to his knees on the wet cobblestones, pulling the motionless woman into his arms. The dark wool coat was soaked through, heavy with rain and blood.
Emily was screaming, reaching for her mother. I dropped to the ground, pulling Emily against my chest, shielding her eyes from the blood pooling on the stones.
“Mommy! Please, Mommy!” Emily sobbed, fighting against my grip.
Dominic’s hands shook as he brushed wet, tangled hair away from his wife’s face. She was pale, her lips blue from the cold. There was a deep laceration across her forehead, and her breathing was dangerously shallow.
“Marco! Get an ambulance! Now!” Dominic bellowed.
“Boss, the police will ask questions,” Marco hesitated, standing over them with an umbrella.
“I don't care about the police! Get a damn ambulance!” Dominic roared.
Caroline’s eyelids fluttered. She let out a weak, agonizing gasp.
Dominic leaned down, pressing his forehead against hers. “Caroline. Baby, stay with me. I’ve got you.”
Her glassy eyes slowly opened. It took a few seconds for them to focus in the harsh security lights. When she finally recognized the man holding her, she didn't smile. She didn't look relieved.
She looked absolutely terrified.
Caroline began to thrash weakly in his arms, pushing against his chest with whatever strength she had left.
“No,” she whimpered, her voice raspy and broken. “Please… Dominic, please don't.”
Dominic looked confused, his heart breaking all over again. “Don't what? Caroline, you’re safe. You’re home.”
“Don't hurt her,” Caroline begged, tears mixing with the rain on her face. She frantically looked around until her eyes landed on Emily, who was crying in my arms. “Let Emily go. I did what you asked… I stayed away…”
Dominic froze.
The rain seemed to stop falling.
“What are you talking about?” Dominic asked gently, smoothing her hair. “Who asked you to stay away?”
Caroline let out a dry, rattling cough. “You did.”
“No,” Dominic swore, shaking his head. “Caroline, I never told you to leave. I’ve been looking for you for four years.”
Caroline’s trembling hand reached up and grabbed the lapel of Dominic’s suit.
“The men,” she whispered, her eyes wide with trauma. “The men you sent to the hotel four years ago. They had guns, Dominic. They said if I ever contacted you… if I ever tried to see Emily… you would kill my sister.”
My breath caught in my throat.
Dominic went completely rigid. “What men?”
“The men with the lion tattoos,” Caroline sobbed, her strength fading. “They said it was your order. They said I asked too many questions about the business… and I became a liability.”
Dominic looked up. He looked past Marco. He looked directly at the grand entrance of the mansion, where Victoria was standing under the portico, watching them in horror.
The Moretti family crest was a lion.
And the men who handled Victoria’s personal security all bore the tattoo.
Dominic slowly laid Caroline down on his own suit jacket. He stood up in the rain. The sorrow that had consumed him for four years evaporated, replaced by a cold, calculating wrath that made even Marco step back.
“Victoria,” Dominic said. His voice wasn't loud. But it carried through the storm like thunder.
Victoria shook her head, backing toward the front doors. “Dominic, she’s confused. She’s lying!”
Dominic began walking up the front steps. Slowly. Purposefully.
“You hired our own enforcers to hold my wife at gunpoint?”
“She was a threat to the family!” Victoria screamed, stepping back into the foyer.
Dominic walked inside, dripping wet. The thirty-six guests had crowded into the hallway, but they parted like the Red Sea when they saw his face.
“You threatened her sister’s life?” Dominic asked.
“I had to protect the empire!” Victoria cried, pointing a shaking finger at the door. “Dominic, listen to me! Four years ago, I caught her digging into the old man’s ledgers! The offshore accounts! If she went to the feds, we would all go to prison! I gave her money and told her to run, but she wouldn't leave without the kid! So I had to use force!”
“You let me mourn her,” Dominic whispered, the betrayal suffocating him. “You watched me cry in my office. You watched Emily cry for her mother every night. And you sat at my dinner table and told me it was my fault she left.”
Victoria backed into the grand staircase. “I did what our father would have done!”
Dominic reached into his jacket.
For a terrifying second, I thought he was going to pull a weapon.
Instead, he pulled out his cell phone.
“Marco,” Dominic said without looking away from his sister.
“Yes, boss.”
“Call the capos. Call the family council. Victoria is out. She’s stripped of her name, her accounts, and her protection.”
Victoria gasped, clutching the banister. “You can't do that! I’m a Moretti!”
“Not anymore,” Dominic said coldly. “You have thirty minutes to pack your bags and leave my city. If I ever see your face again, you won't need to worry about the FBI. You’ll worry about me.”
Victoria collapsed onto the stairs, sobbing hysterically.
Outside, the sirens of an ambulance wailed in the distance, cutting through the storm.
I was still sitting on the wet ground, holding Emily, while Marco and the guards tended to Caroline.
I thought the nightmare was finally over. The villain was exposed. The mother was home.
But as the paramedics arrived and carefully lifted Caroline onto a stretcher, her dark wool coat shifted. A heavy, metal object fell out of her pocket and clattered onto the cobblestones.
I reached out and picked it up.
It was an old, tarnished gold pocket watch.
I stared at it, my heart stopping completely.
The watch had a distinct crack across the glass face, and a beautiful engraving of a soaring eagle on the back.
I knew this watch.
I grew up staring at this watch on my mantelpiece.
It belonged to my late father. The father who supposedly died in a car accident twenty years ago.
May you like
I looked at Caroline, who was being loaded into the ambulance.
Why did Dominic’s wife have my dead father’s watch?
