Chapter 6 - The Secret in the Harbor
The name struck Dominic like a physical round to the sternum.
Julianna.
He looked down at the child in his arms. The little girl looked up at the sound of her name, her wide, pale-gray eyes sparkling with innocent curiosity, letting out a small, questioning chirp before returning to her exploration of his wrist.
Dominic’s thumb unconsciously stroked the baby’s soft cheek, his mind executing the arithmetic with terrifying, instantaneous precision.
February fourteenth. Nine months after May fourteenth of the previous year.
May fourteenth was the night the warehouse in Gary had burned. The night Dominic had received the satellite call from federal agents informing him that Julian’s vehicle had been found riddled with high-caliber rifle rounds on the access road, and that the loading dock had been consumed by an accelerant fire so hot that DNA extraction had taken four weeks to confirm.
“Where did you meet him?” Dominic asked. His voice was lower now, stripped of the ticking countdown, but vibrating with a dark, dangerous gravity that demanded the marrow of the truth.
Hannah swallowed hard, wiping a tear from her jaw with the back of her wrist, her chest heaving beneath her white apron.
“I was an intensive care nurse at Rhode Island Memorial,” Hannah began, her voice steadying as the memory took shape in the quiet room. “Two years ago. Julian was brought in through the trauma bay under an assumed name—Julian Miller. He had three stab wounds to the abdomen and a collapsed lung from an altercation at the maritime docks in Newport.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened. He remembered that month. He had sent Julian to Rhode Island to oversee the acquisition of an independent cargo fleet. Julian had reported that the negotiations were peaceful, that he was spending his evenings sailing off Block Island.
The liar. The magnificent, reckless liar.
“He stayed in my unit for three weeks,” Hannah whispered, a faint, heartbreaking softness touching the corners of her trembling mouth. “He was supposed to be under private security, but he kept bribing the orderlies to bring him cheap coffee and comic books. When he was discharged, he came back to the hospital every Tuesday afternoon with bouquets of white hydrangeas, waiting outside the staff entrance until my shift ended.”
She looked across the room at her daughter, her brown eyes glistening with an ocean of unhealed grief.
“We rented a small saltbox cottage in Narragansett,” Hannah continued softly. “For six months, Mr. Caruso, he wasn't a mob prince. He wasn't a syndicate heir. He was just Julian. He woke up at dawn to fix the porch steps. He learned how to cook clam chowder from a yellow cookbook. He played the guitar on the beach while the sun came up. He told me he was going to walk away from his family’s business. He said his brother… he said you had already carried enough darkness for both of you, and that he wanted to earn an honest life before he asked me to marry him.”
May you like
Dominic’s breath hitched in his throat. He looked down at the floorboards, feeling the cold, ancient grief he had locked behind iron doors tearing through his ribs. Julian had wanted out. Julian had found peace on a cold beach in Rhode Island, while Dominic had been ordering executions in Chicago to protect a throne his brother never wanted.
“And the night of the fire?” Dominic demanded, his voice cracking slightly on the final syllable.
