Chapter 2 - The Midnight Summons to the Vale Estate
My hand hovered inches from the black receiver, the plastic casing looking suddenly like a loaded weapon. The hum of the diner refrigerator felt deafening against the suffocating silence of the room. Frank’s eyes were wide with unadulterated terror, begging me with a single glance to take the phone and make it go away, or perhaps to vanish into thin air.
"Take it," Frank whispered hoarsely, his hand still outstretched. "Just... just answer it, Lily. Don't provoke them."
Swallowing hard against the dry knot in my throat, I reached out and took the phone from his shaking grip, bringing it slowly up to my ear.
"H-Hello?" I stammered, my voice sounding fragile and small even to my own ears.
For a second, there was only the sound of heavy, deliberate breathing on the other end of the line. Then a deep, calm voice spoke—not Marcus Reed’s aggressive bark, but a smooth, commanding tone that sent a strange shiver straight down my spine.
"Miss Carter," the voice said. It was Dominic Vale himself.
My breath hitched. "Mr. Vale... I-I'm sorry about earlier. I didn't mean to—"
"You are not staying at the diner anymore tonight," Dominic interrupted, his tone leaving absolutely no room for argument. "A black town car is idling at the alley entrance behind the kitchen. Get in."
"What? No, wait!" I panicked, my grip tightening on the phone. "I live ten minutes away, I can walk, I don't need a ride, I just want to go home—"
"This is not a request, Lily," Dominic said softly, though the underlying weight of absolute power was unmistakable. "My men are already holding your coat and bag. See you in twenty minutes."
Click.
The line went dead.
Before I could process the surreal nightmare unfolding around me, the back kitchen door swung open. Marcus Reed stepped into the diner, holding my worn winter coat and my canvas shoulder bag as if they were priceless artifacts. His expression was still grim and suspicious, but he didn't raise his voice.
"Let's go, Miss Carter. The boss doesn't like to wait."
Frank pressed himself back against the cigarette rack, whispering a silent prayer while avoiding eye contact. Realizing that fighting back against the New York mafia was an exceptionally short way to end up at the bottom of a river, I slipped my arms into my coat, grabbed my bag, and let Marcus escort me out into the pouring rain.
A sleek, bulletproof Mercedes Maybach was idling in the dark alley, its headlights cutting amber beams through the misty drizzle. Marcus opened the rear door, gesturing for me to step inside.
The interior of the car smelled of expensive leather, cedarwood, and faint cologne. The windows were deeply tinted, locking out the outside world completely. As soon as I slid across the plush seat, the door clicked shut, sealing me inside a private, rolling fortress.
The drive was agonizingly silent. We didn't head toward my cramped, rundown apartment on the north side of town; instead, the car sped past the city limits, climbing up the winding, wooded private roads toward the sprawling Hawthorne ridge. For decades, locals whispered about the massive iron gates and sprawling stone fortress hidden up there—the private sanctuary of the Vale family, a place where local police never patrolled and outsiders never returned from.
When the car finally rolled through towering wrought-iron gates guarded by men in tactical gear, my heart was hammering violently against my ribs. The vehicle glided to a halt in front of a grand, European-style stone manor lit by glowing architectural lanterns.
Marcus opened my door, extending a gloved hand to help me out. I ignored his hand, stepping out onto the wet cobblestone courtyard on my own trembling legs.
"Inside. Study on the second floor," Marcus instructed, nodding toward the heavy oak double doors.
I swallowed my fear, squared my shoulders, and walked up the stone steps. The front doors opened automatically before I even reached them, revealing a cavernous, high-ceilinged foyer decorated with dark wood, polished marble floors, and priceless oil paintings. A butler in a crisp black suit stood quietly at the foot of a grand staircase, bowing slightly as I approached.
"Right this way, Miss Carter," the butler murmured.
We climbed the sweeping staircase, walking down a wide hallway lined with Persian rugs, until we reached a set of heavy mahogany doors at the far end. The butler knocked twice, opened the door just enough for me to pass through, and closed it firmly behind me.
I stepped into a massive, elegant study dominated by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a crackling stone fireplace, and a large mahogany desk covered in neatly stacked dossiers and shipping manifests.
Standing by the window, looking out over the rain-slicked forest below, was Dominic Vale. He had removed his suit jacket, his white dress shirt rolled up at the elbows, revealing strong, corded forearms etched with faint scars.
He didn't turn around immediately. He took a slow sip from a crystal tumbler of amber whiskey, the ice clinking softly in the quiet room.
"You have a lot of courage, Lily," Dominic said quietly, finally turning to face me. In the warm glow of the fireplace, his sharp, handsome features looked even more striking, though his dark eyes remained intensely focused on me. "Or an astonishing lack of self-preservation."
"I told you," I said, my voice shaking slightly despite my best efforts to sound brave, "you were bleeding. I was just trying to help another human being."
Dominic took a slow step toward me, closing the distance between us with measured, deliberate strides. I instinctively took a step back until the edge of a heavy leather armchair pressed against the back of my legs.
"Nobody touches me, Lily," Dominic murmured, stopping just a foot away from me. The air between us suddenly felt charged, heavy, and intensely intimate. "Not my business partners, not my rivals, not even my own mother before she passed away. For twenty years, human contact has felt like a threat to me."
He raised his right hand—the same hand everyone in the underworld feared—and slowly brought it up toward my face.
May you like
I froze, my breath catching in my throat, my eyes widening as his knuckles hovered just millimeters from my cheekbone.
"Yet, when your hand touched my jaw down at that diner," Dominic whispered, his voice dropping to a low, husky register, "for the first time in my entire miserable life... it didn't feel like a violation. It felt like coming home."
