Chapter 7 - The Ledger of Blood and Stone
Dominic did not speak immediately. The silence in the room stretched for ten agonizing seconds, each tick of the distant grandfather clock sounding like an executioner’s axe striking wood.
He looked down at the soaked black jacket resting on his arm. He raised his right hand, his calloused thumb gently brushing a stray drop of champagne from the dark fabric of his vest. He looked at the moisture on his skin, then wiped his thumb clean against the edge of his pocket.
"Dom Pérignon," Dominic murmured softly.
His voice was conversational, almost gentle, yet it carried across the four-thousand-square-foot room with terrifying clarity.
"Nineteen-ninety-six vintage," he continued, taking one slow, measured stride toward Vivienne. "Reaped from the southern slopes of the Marne valley. Aged twelve years in chalk cellars before release. Two thousand dollars a bottle at the current market rate."
Vivienne could not speak. Her throat felt as though it had been packed with dry sand.
Dominic stopped two feet from her face.
Up close, the sheer physical density of his frame was suffocating. He smelled of cedarwood, cold rain, expensive tobacco, and the faint, unmistakable metallic tang of gun oil. His pale gray eyes looked down into hers, stripping away every shred of her manufactured pride, reducing her to an insect pinned beneath a glass slide.
"My grandfather bought the vineyard that produced that vintage, Vivienne," Dominic whispered.
The words fell between them with the weight of an iron portcullis slamming shut.
"He bought it in nineteen-eighty-two," Dominic continued, his voice dropping into a low, intimate register that made Vivienne’s knees tremble. "To celebrate the birth of my older brother. He paid for the soil with gold bars smuggled out of Genoa in the ballast tanks of a cargo freighter."
He tilted his head slightly, his dark wavy hair catching the golden glow of the chandeliers.
"And you poured it onto my floor like tap water."
Vivienne’s mouth worked silently, opening and closing, but no words emerged. A single, hot tear broke from her left eye, cutting a clean track through her powder, running down her pale cheek to drip onto the sparkling neckline of her gown.
"I... I didn't know..." she managed to croak out, the words barely a breath. "My father... he told me..."
"Your father told you what he wanted you to believe," Dominic interrupted softly. "Your father told you that because you wear silk and live on the eighty-second floor, you are the master of this city."
Dominic turned his head away from her, looking down at Arthur Campbell, who remained kneeling on the Carrera marble, his forehead still pressed toward the stone.
"Arthur," Dominic said.
May you like
"Yes, Mr. Valerio," the manager gasped from the floor, his voice muffled by the stone.
"Rise."
