Chapter 9 - The Sovereign Clears the Board
Dominic held his daughter against his chest with his left arm, his muscular frame supporting her four-year-old weight as easily as if she were made of air. He did not let go of her for three full minutes, listening to the small, rhythmic hitches of her breathing as the storm inside her soul finally began to break.
Behind him, Valentina and Mia crawled across the flour, their small pastel skirts dragging through the white dust, and threw their arms around Dominic’s knees, burying their faces against his black trousers.
For the first time in fourteen months, all three sisters were touching their father simultaneously.
Dominic looked up over Lucia’s curls, his gaze locking onto Clara Vance, who remained kneeling in the flour beside them, her hands resting quietly in her lap, her eyes glistening with quiet, respectful tears.
He did not offer an apology for his earlier cruelty; in the world of Dominic Russo, words of regret were insults. He offered something infinitely more valuable: absolute, unyielding recognition.
"You stay," Dominic said.
His baritone was low, raspy, but it carried the unshakeable weight of an executive decree.
Clara looked at him, her hazel eyes steady. "Mr. Russo?"
"Your salary is quadrupled, effective this morning," Dominic said, each word falling like an anchor into stone. "You are not domestic staff anymore. You are their private guardian. You answer only to me. You do not clean baseboards; you do not touch linen carts. If you want forty pounds of flour in this kitchen every afternoon, Rosa will buy a warehouse of it."
Rosa Bennett let out a wet, breathless laugh from her stool, wiping her face with a flour-stained apron. "I'll order the truck myself, Dominic."
Clara looked at the three little girls clinging to their father's frame, then looked into the pale gray eyes of the man who ruled New York. She did not drop her gaze; she nodded once, a quiet, solemn acceptance of a covenant forged in the flour.
"I'll take care of them, Mr. Russo," Clara whispered.
Dominic nodded.
He slowly reached into his suit jacket, withdrew his encrypted titanium satellite phone, and tapped an eight-digit bypass code with his thumb. He brought the device to his ear without shifting his hold on Lucia.
"Marcus," Dominic said into the receiver.
The voice of his primary enforcer in Manhattan answered on the second ring, flat and alert: "Boss. You're in Long Island early."
"Bring twelve men from the executive protection detail," Dominic instructed, his voice dropping into a register of cold, terrifying finality that made the hair on the back of Rosa’s neck stand up. "Heavy tactical gear. Unmarked SUVs. Lock down the northern perimeter of the estate."
"Who is the target, Don Dominic?"
Dominic’s slate-gray eyes drifted toward the open kitchen window that looked out over the western gardens—toward the private security annex where Silvio Moretti had lived comfortably for fourteen months while an innocent child suffered in silence.
"Silvio," Dominic said softly.
A sharp intake of breath hissed over the satellite line. "Understood, Boss. Five minutes."
Dominic lowered the phone, slipping it back into his pocket.
He looked down at Lucia, who had pulled her head back from his neck to look at his face. Her small cheeks were stained with flour and dried tears, but her hazel eyes were bright, clear, and finally, miraculously alive.
"Lucia," Dominic murmured, his thumb gently wiping a speck of white dust from the tip of her small nose.
"Yes, Daddy?" she answered, the word sounding sweet and natural on her tongue, as if the fourteen months of silence had never existed.
"Can you do something for Daddy?"
"What?"
Dominic looked toward the prep island, where the balls of butter cookie dough were still sitting on the cutting boards.
"Help Clara finish the cookies," Dominic said softly, his lips curving into a genuine, beautiful smile that had not touched his face in nearly two years. "Daddy has some business to handle in the garden. But I'll be back before they come out of the oven."
May you like
Lucia looked at him for two seconds, studying the truth in his eyes, then nodded firmly with that same fierce, stubborn certainty that had made her grab his coat.
"Okay," she said. "We'll make a dragon for you."
