Chapter 2 - The Mask Slips
The silence in the Sapphire Room had a physical weight to it. It was the kind of stillness that preceded a storm, the sort of vacuum created when air is sucked out of a room before an explosion.
Vivian Albright stood frozen, her designer dress stained with a pale crescent of spilled champagne, her hand still tingling from the impact against Nora Warren’s cheek. For three long seconds, she looked back and forth between Dominic Kane’s face and the woman kneeling on the marble floor.
“Dominic, darling, what are you doing?” Vivian’s voice fluttered, a high, nervous trill designed to bridge the chasm that had suddenly opened between them. “This—this creature ruined my gown. She’s clumsy, she’s incompetent, and frankly, looking at her uniform makes my skin crawl. Why are you looking at her like that?”
Dominic did not look at Vivian. He did not blink.
The scar running from his left eyebrow into his dark hair seemed to catch the cold blue light from the bar, turning silver. He slowly set his unlit cigar down on the edge of the crystal ashtray. The sound—a faint click of dry tobacco against glass—made three hedge fund managers near the entrance step back involuntarily.
“Vivian,” Dominic said. His voice was not loud. It did not carry the theatrical fury of a man throwing a tantrum. It was quiet, steady, and flat. It was the voice he used when signing a death warrant or liquidating a debtor’s entire estate. “Get out.”
Vivian blinked, her painted lips parting in genuine shock. “Excuse me? Get out? Dominic, I came here tonight to discuss the forty-million-dollar credit line your bankers—!”
“I said get out,” Dominic repeated, raising his eyes to hers for the first time.
The look in his charcoal-gray eyes made Vivian’s breath catch in her throat. There was no anger in them, which was terrifying. Anger could be reasoned with, flattered, or appeased. What she saw in Dominic’s eyes was absolute, vacant space—the cold, black abyss of a man who had just realized someone had stepped on a holy relic.
“You’re throwing me out over a waitress?” Vivian’s voice cracked, pride warring with rising panic. “Over some common trash who can’t even hold a tray?”
Dominic stood up.
He was not an enormous man, but when he rose from the leather booth, he seemed to swallow the light around him. His charcoal suit was tailored to perfection, hiding the thick holster beneath his left arm. He stepped past Vivian without brushing her dress, as if she were nothing more than a bad smell or a smudge on the glass.
He walked past the broken crystal, past the spilled champagne, and stopped two feet away from Nora.
Nora was still on the floor. Her hands were pressed flat against the cold marble, her chest heaving as she fought to keep the tears from spilling over her lashes. Her hair, which had been pinned into the tight, severe bun of a woman trying to make herself invisible, had come completely unspooled, dark tendrils framing her pale, exhausted face.
Dominic knelt.
The entire restaurant watched in stunned disbelief as the most feared man in Chicago—a man who did not kneel for judges, senators, or syndicate heads—lowered himself onto the sticky, champagne-soaked floor.
“Nora,” he said again, his voice softening just enough for only her to hear.
“Don’t,” she whispered, her voice cracking, shaking her head so violently her cheap plastic glasses slid down the bridge of her nose. “Please, Dominic. Don’t look at me. Just... go back to your booth.”
“Look at me,” Dominic commanded gently.
Nora slowly raised her eyes. They were dark, rimmed with red, filled with the bottomless, agonizing grief of a woman who had spent five months carrying a dead man’s child through a city that wanted to crush her.
“You’ve been working here?” Dominic asked, his jaw tightening so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek. “In this rat trap?”
“Rent is high,” she whispered, a bitter, fragile smile touching her lips. “And the people who took everything else didn't leave me a savings account, Dominic. You know that. You paid for the funeral.”
Dominic’s breath hitched. That was all it took.
He reached out, his large, calloused hand gently cupping the side of her face—right where Vivian’s palm had struck. His thumb brushed over the angry red mark blooming against her pale skin.
Across the room, Vivian Albright finally realized she was standing in the middle of a grave she had dug herself.
“Dominic...” Vivian stammered, taking a trembling step backward. “I didn't... I didn't know she was... whoever she is—”
Dominic did not turn around. He lifted his left hand slightly without looking back.
Marcus Reed, the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound enforcer standing by the bar, moved with terrifying speed. Before Vivian could scream, Marcus’s massive hand closed around her expensive diamond-studded arm, lifting her off her feet with effortless cruelty.
“Let me go!” Vivian shrieked, thrashing against his grip as her designer heels clicked uselessly against the floor. “Do you know who my father is? My father is Harrison Albright! He sits on the board of—”
“Your father owns a bankrupt shipping company that won’t survive the week,” Dominic said quietly, still kneeling beside Nora as he helped her up, steadying her trembling weight against his shoulder. He stood, wrapping one arm securely around her waist to protect her swollen belly.
He looked at Vivian over his shoulder, his eyes like chipped flint.
“Marcus, throw her out,” Dominic ordered. “And make sure she hits the pavement on her face. Let her father explain to the creditors why his daughter smells like champagne and gutter water.”
“No! Dominic, please!” Vivian’s screams echoed off the velvet walls as Marcus dragged her toward the heavy mahogany doors, her designer dress tearing against the brass handles.
The Sapphire Room was dead silent. The hedge fund boys kept their eyes glued to their glasses. The movie producer looked at his fingernails.
Dominic looked down at Nora. She was shaking against him, her fingers clutching the lapel of his charcoal suit.
“Can you walk?” he asked, his voice dropping into a register of fierce, unyielding protection.
May you like
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Good.” Dominic swept her up into his arms, ignoring the gasp that slipped past her lips. “Because you are never stepping foot in this hellhole again.”
