Chapter 9 - THE SURGERY AT MIDNIGHT
The words hung in the sulfur-choked air like poison.
Dominic’s body went completely rigid in my arms.
The warmth that had softened his espresso eyes evaporated into absolute, murderous ice.
"What did you say?" Dominic whispered.
The tone was so quiet, so devoid of human emotion, that even Zeus took half a step backward.
Victor Moretti laughed.
A wet, bubbling choke of crimson foam.
"Don Carmine... he knew you had Julian’s drive," Victor wheezed, clutching his shattered ribs.
"He sent the Commission's private enforcement unit to Lake Forest thirty minutes ago."
"While you were playing hero in the mud..."
"Your mother was signing over the Castellano shipping terminals to New York."
Dominic didn't yell.
He didn't stomp his boots.
He reached down, grabbed Victor by the collar of his expensive fur coat, and hoisted the two-hundred-pound mobster clean off the sofa with one arm.
He dragged him across the concrete floor toward the edge of the locomotive pit.
"Dominic, wait!" I cried, grabbing his forearm.
My fingers dug into the hard muscle of his sleeve.
"If you kill him now, you lose the leverage!"
Dominic stopped.
His eyes burned into mine.
For a second, I didn't see the man who had wrapped me in his wool sweater.
I saw the apex predator of the Midwest underworld.
A man who had survived twenty years of betrayals and ambushes.
"He touched my mother, Nora," Dominic growled.
"Then use him to get her back," I said.
My voice was firm.
I didn't back down.
I stepped into his space until our faces were inches apart.
"The Commission operates on protocol, right?"
"They need Victor to verify the transfer of the Pullman terminals."
"If Victor is dead, Carmine can claim you went rogue and order every family in America to wipe you out."
"If Victor is alive and broken, he testifies that Carmine staged Julian's murder."
Dominic stared at me.
His chest rose and fell in heavy, rhythmic surges.
He looked from my eyes down to Victor dangling over the edge of the pit.
Slowly, Dominic opened his fingers.
Victor crashed onto the concrete with a pathetic groan.
"Frankie," Dominic commanded without looking back.
"Sir?"
"Put Moretti and Matteo in zip-ties."
"Throw them in the refrigerated compartment of the meat truck."
"Keep them on ice until I call for them."
"Yes, boss."
Dominic turned to Luca, who was holding his sister Sofia by the shoulders.
"Luca, take your sister to Safehouse Four in Oak Park."
"Nobody enters that house except my personal medical team."
"Thank you, Mr. Castellano," Luca choked out, bowing his head.
"I won't forget this."
Dominic walked over to Zeus.
He inspected the fresh bandage on the dog's flank.
A thin line of dark red had begun to seep through the white gauze where Zeus had leaped from the catwalk.
"His stitches tore," Dominic noted, his jaw tightening with guilt.
"Because he jumped to save you," I said softly, kneeling beside the dog.
Zeus leaned his heavy head against my collarbone, letting out a soft whimper of exhaustion.
The adrenaline was finally draining from his massive body.
His paws were caked with black grease and dried blood.
"We need a clean room," I said.
"My veterinary suite at the mansion is burned," Dominic murmured.
"Then we go to Hope Haven," I answered, looking up at him.
Dominic frowned.
"Your shelter?"
"It has a full surgical suite, an autoclave, and thirty dogs who will bark if anyone steps within three blocks."
"It's the safest place in Chicago right now."
Forty minutes later, the armored black Suburban pulled into the gravel alley behind Hope Haven Rescue on 47th Street.
The smell of rain-washed pavement and autumn leaves was a relief against the stench of burning diesel.
The shelter was intact.
Dominic’s strike team had washed away the spilled kerosene and secured the perimeter.
Inside, the warm scent of cedar shavings, dry kibble, and clean towels welcomed us.
A chorus of joyful barks erupted from the kennels as we walked in through the back service door.
Zeus lifted his ears, his tail giving three slow, tentative wags.
He was home.
I led Zeus into the clean, brightly lit treatment room.
I prepped the stainless steel table with sterile towels.
"Up you go, buddy," I murmured.
Dominic helped me lift the hundred-pound dog onto the table.
His hands were surprisingly gentle for a man who had broken two collarbones an hour earlier.
I washed my hands thoroughly at the sink with surgical soap.
I pulled on sterile latex gloves.
"Hold his head, Dominic," I instructed.
"Talk to him."
Dominic stood at the head of the table.
He placed his large, calloused palms on either side of Zeus’s broad jaw.
He leaned down until his forehead touched the dog's scarred brow.
"You did good, boy," Dominic murmured in low, rumbling Italian.
"Bravo cane. Riposati."
Zeus’s eyes fluttered closed under the hypnotic sound of his master's voice.
I cleaned the wound with saline.
Two of the exterior nylon sutures had pulled through the skin during his jump.
I re-numbed the tissue and placed three neat, tight mattress stitches across the gap.
My hands worked with practiced, effortless rhythm.
Dominic watched my fingers.
He didn't speak.
He just watched the care, the patience, and the profound gentleness with which I treated the animal everyone else had called a monster.
"You could have run tonight, Nora," Dominic said softly into the quiet room.
"When the lights went out at the estate."
"You could have slipped through the kitchen doors and disappeared."
I tied off the final suture with surgical scissors.
I taped a fresh, clean pad of sterile non-stick gauze over Zeus’s flank.
I peeled off my gloves and tossed them into the biohazard bin.
I looked at Dominic across the metal table.
"I don't run from things that need help," I said.
"Zeus needed me."
"And you?" Dominic asked, taking a step around the table.
His espresso eyes held mine with an intensity that made the air feel thin.
"Did I need you?"
"You were about to bleed all over my clean floor," I said, pointing at his left shoulder.
A dark red stain had soaked through his linen shirt where a glass shard had sliced him during the breach.
Dominic looked down at his shoulder as if noticing it for the first time.
A faint, tired smile touched his lips.
"A minor scratch."
"Sit down, Dominic," I commanded softly.
"Before I have to suture you without an anesthetic."
For the first time that night, the feared mafia boss of Chicago obeyed an order without question.
He sat on the metal treatment stool.
I took a pair of shears and cut away the bloody sleeve of his shirt.
His shoulder was sculpted, corded with dense muscle and scarred by old battles.
A three-inch laceration ran across his deltoid, weeping fresh dark blood.
I poured antiseptic over a cotton sponge.
"This is going to sting."
"I've felt worse," he said.
I pressed the sponge to the wound.
Dominic didn't flinch.
He didn't draw a sharp breath.
He just kept his eyes fixed on my face.
I cleaned the wound carefully, my fingers brushing against the hot, bare skin of his shoulder.
An electric jolt raced down my spine.
My breath hitched in my throat.
We were inches apart.
The room smelled of antiseptic and the rich, masculine scent of his skin.
I could feel the heavy, steady thud of his heart beneath his ribs.
"Nora," he murmured, his voice dropping into a register that made my knees feel weak.
"Yes?"
His right hand reached up.
His calloused thumb brushed against my cheekbone, tracing the faint smudge of soot beneath my eye.
The touch was impossibly tender.
"My brother died trying to save an innocent soul," Dominic whispered.
"I thought this city was full of wolves."
"Then I met you."
My heart hammered against my ribs.
I leaned slightly into the warmth of his palm.
"I'm just a girl who loves broken dogs, Dominic."
"You're the only person who ever saw the truth in him," Dominic said, looking down at Zeus sleeping peacefully on the table.
"And the only person who ever saw through me."
He leaned in slowly.
His lips brushed mine.
Soft.
Hesitant.
Then deep, fierce, and breathless.
The kiss tasted of rain, danger, and a promise that shattered every defense I had ever built.
My hands came up to rest against his strong jawline, my fingers tangling in his dark hair.
He pulled me against his chest with his uninjured arm, holding me as if I were the only solid thing in a collapsing world.
When we finally parted, our foreheads rested together, our breathing ragged and shared.
Suddenly, the front door chimes of the shelter chimed three sharp, rhythmic times.
A code.
Matteo’s private frequency crackled on the counter's satellite radio:
"Dominic."
"Don Carmine just called a full assembly of the High Commission at the Drake Hotel."
May you like
"They have your mother on the stage."
"And they gave you until sunrise to surrender Julian's drive."
