Chapter 1 - He Raced Home Thinking His Quiet Lover Was About to Be Killed—Then He Found the Syndicate Heiress Begging Nora for MercyBeatrice’s hands were shaking so violently that she could barely hold the telephone receiver.
The screaming from the formal drawing room had finally stopped.
The silence afterward was worse.
She dialed the one number she had been strictly forbidden to call during business hours.
When the deep, gravelly voice answered, Beatrice did not waste time with a greeting.
“Please come home now.”
She swallowed a sob.
“She’ll destroy her.”
At that moment, Dominic Gallo was sitting at the head of a rusted aluminum table in a meatpacking-district warehouse.
The air smelled of ammonia and old copper.
Across from him, the Russo brothers were sweating through tailored suits while trying to explain how an entire shipment had disappeared between the docks and a distribution center.
Dominic did not care about explanations.
He cared about time.
At thirty-eight, he had already become the kind of man whose name changed the volume of a room. He ran the Gallo organization with a degree of control that made shouting unnecessary.
He tapped one finger against the steel face of his Rolex.
A dull metallic click repeated through the warehouse.
“You’re giving me weather reports, Thomas.”
His voice barely rose above a murmur.
The cavernous room carried it anyway.
“I didn’t ask about the storm offshore. I asked where the crates are.”
Thomas Russo opened his mouth.
Before another excuse emerged, a telephone vibrated against the table.
Not a burner.
Dominic’s personal phone.
Only three people had the number.
Two were standing behind him with suppressed weapons beneath their coats.
The third was Nora.
Dominic looked down.
The caller identification did not say Nora.
It said HOME KITCHEN.
Cold moved through his chest.
Beatrice had worked for his family for twenty years.
She knew the rules.
A call to that telephone during a sit-down meant someone was dead or close to it.
Dominic raised a hand.
The Russo brothers immediately stopped talking.
He answered.
“Speak.”
“Mr. Gallo.”
Beatrice’s breathing was erratic.
Somewhere behind her, someone was crying.
“You need to come back to the house right now.”
Dominic was already standing.
His chair scraped hard against the concrete.
The men behind him moved automatically, hands dropping toward their weapons.
“Who is in the house? Did the perimeter alarm trip?”
“No. No alarm.”
Beatrice struggled to speak.
“It’s Miss Vivien. She bypassed the gate security. She just walked in.”
Dominic went still.
“She cornered Nora in the drawing room.”
Vivien.
Dominic’s blood seemed to cool.
Vivien was not merely an old associate.
She was the daughter of Arthur Bell, head of the West Side Syndicate.
She had been raised inside violence and had learned to inflict pain before most people learned how to negotiate.
A year earlier, Dominic severed both his business ties and his personal relationship with her.
Vivien had never forgiven either decision.
Nora was different.
At least Dominic believed she was.
She restored paintings.
Spent weekends reading in the conservatory.
Flinched when cars backfired.
The two women had no business being alone in the same room.
“Where are the guards?” Dominic demanded. “Where is Frankie?”
“I don’t know.”
Beatrice began crying.
“I heard something break. Then shouting. Miss Vivien was screaming about taking back what belonged to her.”
A pause.
“Then more glass broke.”
Her voice dropped.
“Please come home now. She’ll destroy her.”
The line went dead.
Dominic did not say goodbye to the Russos.
He ran.
Outside, rain was coming down hard enough to blur the lights.
Vivien liked knives.
She liked leaving marks.
Dominic could already imagine Nora trapped in that room, quiet and gentle, her paint-stained hands raised uselessly against someone who had spent her whole life learning how to hurt people.
The thought produced a pressure in his chest that felt almost physical.
Panic.
He had not felt it since childhood.
Since bleeding in the gutter of the neighborhood where he grew up.
At the armored SUV, Dominic pulled open the driver’s door and ordered the chauffeur into the back seat.
Tires screamed against wet pavement.
He accelerated out of the industrial park and began cutting through traffic with terrifying precision.
Red lights meant nothing.
The wipers moved frantically across the windshield.
His hands tightened around the steering wheel until his knuckles went white.
Every second stretched.
Beatrice’s words repeated in his head.
She’ll destroy her.
Dominic knew what Vivien was capable of.
She had broken grown men physically and psychologically.
She was spite wrapped in expensive clothing.
When Dominic ended their relationship, she promised she would destroy the one thing that eventually gave him peace.
He had doubled security.
Restricted access.
Placed Nora inside a beautiful estate guarded like a fortress.
He had thought he was protecting her.
Now Vivien had walked through the front door.
He remembered the way Nora looked at him when he came home late.
The way she seemed to understand his silences.
Her small frame.
Her quiet voice.
She would not even know how to throw a punch, he thought.
She would stand there and take it.
The image dragged a growl from his throat.
Dominic swerved into the oncoming lane to bypass stalled traffic.
The SUV clipped the mirror from a delivery truck.
He never stopped.
Hold on.
The words repeated like prayer.
Just hold on, Nora.
The wrought-iron gates of the estate appeared through the rain.
Dominic approached far too fast.
He expected them to resist.
They were already open.
That was the first sign that the situation was worse than Beatrice had managed to explain.
He braked hard.
The SUV slid across wet gravel.
Before it fully stopped, Dominic was outside with a pistol in his hand.
Rain soaked his suit instantly.
The main doors stood slightly open.
The security keypad beside them had been smashed into fragments.
Dominic entered with the practiced silence of a man trained by years of violence.
The foyer was empty.
No screaming.
Only the grandfather clock.
Rain drifting through the open entrance.
Frankie lay near the coat closet.
The two-hundred-pound guard was unconscious, a purple bruise spreading across his jaw.
He was breathing.
Dominic moved on.
The double doors to the drawing room were closed.
A dark liquid was creeping beneath them and across the cream runner.
Blood.
Dominic stopped.
The gun suddenly felt heavier.
For the first time in his adult life, the head of the Gallo family was afraid to open a door.
For a fraction of a second, he closed his eyes.
Then he kicked.
The doors flew inward.
Dominic entered with his pistol sweeping from left to right.
He expected to fire.
He stopped.
The drawing room looked as though an explosion had gone off inside a museum.
Silk drapes hung torn from their rods.
The antique glass coffee table had become thousands of fragments across the Persian rug.
Leather-bound books lay scattered across the floor.
Furniture had been overturned.
At the center of the room, Vivien was on her hands and knees.
She was crying.
Not standing over Nora.
Not smiling.
Crying uncontrollably.
Her designer trench coat had been ripped open down the back.
Her blonde hair was matted with blood and expensive Scotch.
Her nose was visibly broken.
Her face was swollen beyond recognition.
Her entire body shook.
Dominic stared.
Then he looked past her.
Nora sat in his leather wingback chair.
She was alive.
She was not crying.
Her legs were crossed at the ankles.
A crystal tumbler rested in one hand with a finger of amber liquor remaining inside.
The knuckles of her other hand were split and bleeding.
A heavy iron fireplace poker lay casually across her lap.
The metal tip was red.
Her usual neat brown hair had come loose and fallen in wild waves over her shoulders.
She wore a simple white linen dress.
Crimson splatter marked the fabric.
The blood was not hers.
Nora took a slow drink.
Then she looked at Dominic.
Her eyes were wrong.
He knew those eyes.
They belonged to people who had gone somewhere cold inside themselves.
“Home early,” she said.
Her voice was completely steady.
Dominic lowered his gun.
His mind could not reconcile the woman in front of him with the woman he had believed he knew.
“Nora.”
Vivien made a broken sound from the floor.
She tried to crawl toward Dominic.
“Dom.”
Blood ran over her lips.
“Please. Get her away from me.”
She began sobbing harder.
“She’s crazy. She’s a psychopath.”
Nora stood.
Slowly.
Vivien recoiled so violently that the back of her head struck a side table.
She curled into herself.
Nora walked over.
She did not raise the poker.
She crouched in front of Vivien.
With her bruised, bloody hand, Nora carefully moved a strand of matted blonde hair away from Vivien’s face.
The gesture was almost tender.
“I told you what would happen if you came into my house again.”
Her voice was low and empty.
“I told you I was done being quiet.”
Vivien squeezed her eyes closed.
“Did you think I was joking?”
Vivien shook her head frantically.
Nora stood.
She turned toward Dominic.
She looked at the weapon hanging loosely in his hand and at the shock on his face.
No apology followed.
No collapse.
“Beatrice shouldn’t have called you.”
Nora crossed to the bar cart.
She moved a shard of glass with her bare foot.
“I had it handled.”
The meaning of Beatrice’s call finally became clear.
She’ll destroy her.
Beatrice had not been afraid for Nora.
She had been afraid for Vivien.
Dominic stared at the woman pouring herself another drink.
“Who are you?”
Nora looked at him over the glass.
The corners of her mouth moved into a dark, humorless smile.
“I’m exactly who I needed to be to survive your world.”
She drank.
“Now are you going to help me clean this up, or are you going to stand there?”
Footsteps began pounding down the hallway.
Dominic raised his left hand.
The men stopped at the threshold.
Leo, his top lieutenant, stared into the room.
He had survived two gang wars.
He had seen bodies pulled from car trunks and dragged out of water.
The sight of Vivien broken on the Persian rug still made his jaw drop.
“Boss.”
His hand hovered near his holster.
“What happened?”
“Get her up.”
Dominic’s voice returned to something flat and controlled.
“Bag over her head. Basement.”
Leo glanced at Nora.
“Don’t ask questions. Don’t speak to her.”
He nodded.
Two men entered.
They hauled Vivien upright.
She did not resist.
Her legs dragged behind her.
A faint line of blood marked the floor.
As they passed Nora, Vivien stared at her with open terror.
The doors closed again.
Nora set down her glass.
The crystal struck the side table sharply.
“You’re getting mud on the rug.”
Dominic looked at his boots.
Then at the blood.
Nora was genuinely irritated by the mud.
He holstered his weapon.
Then crossed the ruined room and stopped less than one foot from her.
“You want to tell me what happened?”
His voice had the low, dangerous edge he used during interrogations.
“I defended my home.”
“Vivien had two armed guards outside and a driver.”
Dominic gestured toward the hallway.
“Frankie is unconscious.”
He studied her.
“You expect me to believe you dismantled a trained syndicate killer and her crew by yourself?”
“Her men stayed near the cars.”
Nora walked toward the broken window.
“Vivien wanted this private.”
Rain blew through the opening.
“She slapped Beatrice.”
Dominic's eyes shifted.
“What?”
Nora's face changed.
Only slightly.
But the coldness became something sharper.
“She walked into this house because someone disabled the eastern gate. Frankie challenged her. She hit him with a brass sculpture before he could draw.”
Dominic glanced toward hallway.
“Then she found Beatrice.”
Nora looked down at her bloody knuckles.
“Beatrice told her to leave.”
“What did Vivien do?”
“She slapped her.”
Dominic's jaw tightened.
“Twice.”
Nora turned toward him.
“The second time Beatrice fell.”
Dominic said nothing.
“That's when I stopped asking politely.”
He looked at poker.
Nora followed his gaze.
“I didn't use it until Vivien pulled a knife.”
“She had a knife?”
Nora pointed toward fireplace.
A pearl-handled blade lay beneath overturned chair.
Dominic knew it.
He had given it to Vivien six years earlier.
Something bitter moved through him.
“Did she cut you?”
“No.”
“Then whose blood is on your dress?”
“Mostly hers.”
“Mostly?”
“Frankie's.”
Dominic stared.
Nora sighed.
“I checked him before Beatrice called you. His head was bleeding. I got it on my hands.”
He stepped closer.
“Let me see them.”
“No.”
“Nora.”
“My hands are fine.”
“Your knuckles are open.”
“They've been worse.”
That sentence stopped him.
“When?”
Nora realized mistake.
Dominic saw it.
There.
A crack.
He moved more carefully.
“Before me?”
She looked toward rain.
“Yes.”
“Who hurt you?”
“No one.”
“That's not what I asked.”
She laughed without humor.
“You really do think every scar on a woman means some man put it there.”
“Usually in my world, it does.”
“That's your problem.”
“My problem?”
“You think this is your world.”
She faced him.
“It isn't.”
Something in her tone made his instincts rise.
“Explain.”
“Vivien didn't come here because she's jealous.”
“She told Beatrice she wanted back what belonged to her.”
“Yes.”
“And you think that means me.”
Dominic's eyes narrowed.
“What else?”
Nora walked to shattered table.
Kicked aside glass.
Then bent and retrieved small black object from beneath sofa.
A flash drive.
Dominic stared.
“What is that?”
“The reason she came.”
“Where did you get it?”
“From her coat.”
“What's on it?”
Nora looked at him.
“Your death.”
Silence.
Dominic's expression did not change.
Nora crossed to desk, inserted drive into laptop, and opened folder.
Photographs appeared.
Dominic leaving warehouses.
Vehicle routes.
Security rotations.
Floor plans.
Bank accounts.
Names of men in his organization.
Then one document.
A schedule.
Tomorrow.
9:40 p.m.
Dominic Gallo was scheduled to attend charity gala at Metropolitan Museum.
Beside his name:
PRIMARY TARGET.
Below:
SECONDARY: LEO MARTIN.
TERTIARY: NORA VALE.
Dominic looked at her.
“Why are you listed?”
“That is question you should be asking.”
“Nora.”
“My name isn't Nora Vale.”
The room seemed to contract.
“What?”
She removed small gold chain from neck.
A ring hung beneath blouse.
Not engagement ring.
Signet.
Dominic recognized crest.
He had seen it once on dead man's hand.
The Moretti family.
An organization destroyed twelve years earlier in a war that left twenty-three people dead.
Dominic looked at Nora.
“Where did you get that?”
“It belonged to my father.”
His blood cooled.
“Your father?”
“Gabriel Moretti.”
Dominic took one step back.
Gabriel Moretti had been feared from Brooklyn to Atlantic City.
Then betrayed.
His home burned.
His wife killed.
His daughter officially died with her.
Dominic remembered newspaper photograph.
A twelve-year-old girl.
Brown hair.
Quiet eyes.
No body had ever been recovered.
“Nora.”
She shook head.
“No.”
For first time since he entered room, emotion broke through.
“My name is Eleanor Moretti.”
Dominic stared.
“Nora was what my mother called me.”
Rain hammered windows.
“I survived the fire.”
“How?”
“My father trained me to.”
Dominic's mind raced.
“You were twelve.”
“I was twelve when I learned being helpless gets you buried.”
She pointed toward basement.
“Vivien knows who I am.”
“How?”
“Because her father helped kill mine.”
Dominic's hand curled.
“Arthur Bell?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew?”
“For years.”
“You've been living in my house for eighteen months.”
“Yes.”
“Sleeping beside me.”
“Yes.”
“While investigating Bell?”
“Yes.”
“And me?”
Silence.
That was answer.
Dominic stepped back.
“You came here for me.”
“At first.”
“To kill me?”
“At first.”
The words should have produced rage.
Instead something colder.
Pain.
“You thought I helped murder your family.”
“I had evidence.”
“Had?”
“I was wrong.”
“When did you decide that?”
“Before I moved into this house.”
“But you stayed.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She looked at him.
That answer frightened her more than violence.
“Because I fell in love with you.”
Dominic laughed once.
Empty.
“You expect that to make this better?”
“No.”
“Good.”
He turned away.
For eighteen months he had believed Nora needed protection from his world.
She had entered because of it.
He looked back.
“Does Beatrice know?”
“Some.”
“Leo?”
“No.”
“Frankie?”
“No.”
“Who else?”
“One person.”
“Who?”
Before Nora could answer, gunfire erupted outside.
Dominic drew weapon.
Leo shouted from hallway.
“BOSS!”
Another burst.
Glass shattered.
Nora dropped instantly, rolled behind stone fireplace, and pulled a compact pistol from beneath her dress.
Dominic stared.
“You were armed?”
“Focus.”
He almost laughed from disbelief.
Men stormed estate.
Not Vivien's remaining guards.
Professionals.
Nora fired twice.
Two shots.
One attacker fell outside window.
Dominic's eyes snapped toward her.
“You said you restored paintings.”
“I do.”
“You shoot like military.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“Apparently.”
They moved together.
Strangely natural.
Back-to-back.
Dominic covering door.
Nora covering window.
Leo entered.
“Six men. Maybe more.”
“Vivien?”
“Gone.”
Dominic turned.
“What?”
“Basement guard is dead.”
Nora swore.
Leo stared at her gun.
Then blood.
Then Dominic.
“Boss, what exactly—”
“Later.”
Nora checked magazine.
“Vivien wasn't rescued.”
Dominic looked at her.
“What?”
“She was extracted.”
“Difference?”
“She knew attack was coming.”
Nora grabbed flash drive.
“She wanted us looking at her while someone else came for this.”
“Who?”
Nora's face hardened.
“The only person besides me who knows I'm Eleanor Moretti.”
“Name.”
Nora looked at him.
“Your brother.”
Dominic went completely still.
“My brother is dead.”
Nora's answer came softly.
May you like
“No, Dominic.”
“Your brother is the reason mine is.”
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