Chapter 5 - Ten Seconds in the Shadows
The silence that followed Dominic’s declaration was so absolute that the mechanical ticking of the brass carriage clock on the mantelpiece sounded like the steady, countdown rhythm of a timed explosive.
Hannah’s hands began to shake uncontrollably. The yellow dusting cloth slipped from her paralyzed fingers, fluttering silently to the polished marble floor at her feet. She pulled her trembling arms into her ribs, her fingers clawing at the coarse gray linen of her uniform, her gaze darting between Dominic’s unblinking, lethal stare and her daughter’s innocent, smiling face.
She had known this day would come. She had rehearsed the lies in the quiet, sleepless hours of her small servant’s quarters on the fourth floor; she had told herself that if she kept her head down, if she bleached the bathrooms and pressed the tablecloths in silence, she could save enough money to buy two passports and disappear across the Canadian border before anyone looked closely at the baby’s face.
She had run out of time.
“I can explain,” Hannah whispered, her voice trembling so violently the words could barely hold their shape. “Mr. Caruso, please… I can explain everything.”
Dominic did not shift in his leather chair. His massive arm remained an unyielding cradle around the little girl, who was now happily inspecting the platinum cufflink on his right sleeve, tugging at the polished metal with her tiny fingers.
Dominic’s face was an impenetrable mask of dark granite. The jagged black ink climbing the column of his throat pulled taut as his jaw clenched, a corded muscle ticking beneath his dark stubble. He looked at the trembling young woman standing on his threshold, seeing the sheer, animal terror in her brown eyes—a terror that did not belong to a thief, but to a mother standing before a slaughterhouse.
“You have ten seconds,” Dominic said.
The voice was terrifyingly calm. It held no anger, no volume, no theatrical malice. It was the voice of a man who commanded three hundred armed enforcers, a man who had survived assassinations, a man who gave warnings only once before the machinery of his empire moved to erase an obstacle.
“Nine,” Dominic murmured, his eyes holding hers in an unyielding vise.
Hannah took a sharp, jagged breath. She knew who he was. She knew that behind those heavy mahogany panels, down in the courtyard below, two armored convoys idled with men who would bury her in a nameless pine grove outside the city limits if Dominic gave a single, microscopic nod of his head.
She stepped fully into the office.
With trembling hands, she reached behind her back, grasped the heavy brass levers of the double mahogany doors, and pulled them shut.
Click.
The heavy latches engaged with an airtight, vault-like thud that severed the private sanctum from the rest of the mansion.
May you like
Hannah did not approach the desk. She remained standing near the door, her spine pressed flat against the dark wood, her head held high despite the tears that were now streaming freely down her fair, flushed cheeks.
“Her name is Julianna,” Hannah said, her American accent clear, melodic, and carrying a sudden, fierce maternal defiance that stopped Dominic’s countdown mid-breath. “She was born on the fourteenth of February at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Providence. Exactly nine months after your brother walked into the Atlantic Ocean.”
