Chapter 3 - The Gilded Fortress
The return to Chicago was not a return to her old apartment.
Dominic took her to a sprawling estate on the outskirts of the city,
a fortress of limestone and iron gates hidden behind miles of private woods.
"This was my mother's,"
Dominic said as he led her through the grand foyer.
"The Ducas don't know it exists."
"You'll be safe here until the war is over."
Meline looked at the armed guards standing at every entrance,
their faces masked in professional indifference.
She felt like a prisoner,
even if the bars were made of gold.
"Safe from who,
Dominic?"
she asked,
turning to face him in the library.
"From Seraphina?"
"From her father?"
Dominic walked to a safe hidden behind a painting and pulled out a velvet box.
He didn't give it to her;
he placed it on the table between them.
Inside was a ring,
but it wasn't the diamond he had shown Seraphina.
It was a deep,
blood-red ruby surrounded by black diamonds.
"I bought this for you the day before you ran,"
he said.
"Seraphina’s ring was glass and marketing."
"This is blood and soul."
He explained the truth then,
the intricate web of betrayal he had been untangling.
The Duca family had been funneling drugs through his ports without his permission.
They had threatened to start a war that would burn Chicago to the ground.
He had agreed to the engagement to buy time to find their warehouses and eliminate their enforcers.
"I was going to send you to Switzerland,"
he said,
his voice thick with regret.
"I had a house ready,
doctors waiting."
"I just couldn't tell you because I knew the Ducas were bugging my office."
Meline sat on the velvet sofa,
her mind reeling.
"You should have trusted me,"
she said softly.
"I thought I was protecting you,"
he replied,
kneeling at her feet.
"I realized too late that protecting someone doesn't mean keeping them in the dark."
"It means giving them the light to fight beside you."
For the next few weeks,
the estate became a strange sort of paradise.
Dominic spent every evening with her,
reading to her belly,
bringing her the strange foods she craved at three in the morning.
He watched her grow,
his hand never far from her skin.
But the air was still heavy with the scent of gunpowder.
He was a man at war,
spending his days planning the downfall of a mafia dynasty and his nights humming lullabies to a child he hadn't met yet.
"When this is over,"
Meline asked him one night,
"who will you be?"
Dominic looked at his hands,
the hands that had done terrible things.
"I will be whatever you and this baby need me to be,"
May you like
he said.
"Even if I have to burn the Valente name to the ground to do it."
