Chapter 1 - The Woman Behind The Broken Glass
Beatrice’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 Vale, 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 had 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.
She could spend thirty minutes deciding where to place a flower vase and seemed happier talking to the elderly gardener than attending one of Dominic’s expensive parties.
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 did not look at his men.
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 growl from his throat.
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 another growl from him.
Hold on.
The words repeated like a 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 a fraction of a second, the head of the Gallo family was afraid to open a door.
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.
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 a 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 expression changed.
Nora continued.
“She told Beatrice that she was old, useless, and should have been fired years ago.”
A pause.
“She said she came for you.”
Dominic's voice darkened.
“What did she want?”
Nora turned.
“The question is what did she think she could take.”
Silence.
Dominic looked at her bloody hand.
“Let me see.”
“No.”
“Nora.”
She hid her hand behind her back.
The refusal was so unlike her that he almost laughed.
Except there was nothing funny about the woman standing across from him.
He approached.
She did not step away.
He gently caught her wrist.
She let him.
The cuts were shallow.
No broken bones.
He exhaled.
“You're fine.”
“I told you.”
He released her.
For the first time, Nora's expression softened.
Just slightly.
“I called because you needed to know.”
Dominic stared at her.
“You could have called me sooner.”
“I didn't want to interrupt your meeting.”
“My meeting doesn't matter.”
She looked at him.
“You usually say otherwise.”
Dominic had no answer.
Later that night, while men cleaned the drawing room and Beatrice made tea for everyone, Dominic stood alone in his study.
He opened the security footage.
There was no recording of Vivien entering the house.
No gate opening.
No alarm.
Nothing.
Dominic stared at the screens.
Someone had disabled the system before Vivien arrived.
Someone who knew the house.
Someone who knew the security codes.
He looked toward the door.
Nora had lived under his roof for nearly two years.
She knew the house better than anyone.
The thought should have frightened him.
Instead, something else surfaced.
He remembered the first day she arrived.
She had come with one suitcase.
Quiet.
Polite.
Recommended by Beatrice.
She had said she was looking for work after caring for an elderly woman who had died.
She had never mentioned a family.
Never mentioned a past.
Never talked about where she came from.
Dominic had never cared.
Until tonight.
He went downstairs.
Nora was sitting in the kitchen with an ice pack against her knuckles.
Beatrice was asleep in the adjoining room.
Dominic leaned against the doorway.
“What did Vivien mean when she said she wanted to take back what belonged to her?”
Nora looked up.
“Nothing.”
“That's not true.”
“No.”
Dominic took another step.
“Nora.”
She met his eyes.
“Do you trust me?”
He hesitated.
That hesitation was enough.
Nora smiled sadly.
“I thought so.”
She stood.
Then, as she passed him, she whispered,
“You shouldn't.”
Dominic turned.
“Nora.”
But she had already disappeared up the staircase.
He stood alone in the kitchen.
May you like
And for the first time since she entered his life, Dominic understood one simple truth.
The woman he had thought he was protecting might be the only person in his house who had never needed protection at all.
