Chapter 4 - The Poison in the Household
The silence inside the SUV was heavier than the rain beating against the armored roof.
I sat there, frozen on the floorboards, holding my sleeping babies while the man who had torn my world apart wept at my feet.
Nine months of pure, agonizing hatred—nine months of sitting alone in a cheap one-bedroom apartment in Queens, crying myself to sleep while my belly grew, believing the man I loved had thrown me away like trash—collapsed under the weight of a single photograph.
He hadn't stopped loving me.
He had destroyed our life to keep me breathing.
“The letter...” I whispered, my voice shaking uncontrollably as tears spilled over my eyelashes. “Dominic... the letter I wrote you.”
Dominic lifted his head, his brow furrowed in deep, agonizing confusion. “What letter, Elena? I swear to you on my mother’s grave... I never received a letter from you. After the divorce papers were finalized, I was told you moved out of state. I had my men monitor your bank accounts quietly from a distance to make sure you were cared for, but you never touched the settlement money!”
“Because I didn't want your money!” I shouted, a sudden flash of anger cutting through my grief. “I wanted my husband! Two weeks after you left, I started throwing up every morning. I took three tests in that tiny bathroom, Dominic! They all said positive!”
Dominic closed his eyes, his jaw grinding as if he were in physical pain.
“I was terrified,” I continued, my voice cracking with the memory of that nightmare. “I wrote a four-page letter. I explained that I was pregnant. I drove to the Tribeca building myself. Your personal security guard, Marcus, was standing in the lobby. I begged him, Dominic. I cried in front of him! I handed him the sealed envelope and begged him to give it to you directly!”
Dominic went completely still.
The grief on his face instantly vanished, replaced by an expression so dark, so horrifyingly lethal, that the temperature in the vehicle seemed to drop by twenty degrees.
“Marcus...” Dominic repeated quietly.
“Yes!” I said. “And when you didn't call me back, I went to your office building on Wall Street. The front desk guards told me you had placed a permanent ban on my entry. They said if I came back, they would have me arrested for harassment!”
Dominic stood up slowly.
His broad shoulders expanded as he filled the space of the SUV. He reached into his coat, pulled out his encrypted satellite phone, and dialed a number on speed dial.
He set the phone to speaker.
It rang twice before a smooth, aged voice answered. “Boss? Is the situation at JFK contained? We received word of an incident near Terminal 4.”
It was Silvio—Dominic’s consigliere, his father’s oldest friend, and the man who had managed the Ferraro family’s internal affairs for thirty years.
“Silvio,” Dominic said, his voice deceptively calm, entirely devoid of emotion. “Where is Marcus right now?”
“Marcus is posted at the downtown estate, boss,” Silvio replied smoothly over the speaker. “Why? Is there a problem?”
“I need you to bring Marcus to the Westchester safehouse,” Dominic ordered flatly. “Right now. Do not tell him why. Do not bring anyone else.”
A brief, barely noticeable pause hung on the line before Silvio answered. “Of course, Dominic. We will be there in thirty minutes. Is Mrs. Ferraro secure?”
“She is,” Dominic said. Then he added three cold words before ending the call: “And so are my children.”
He clicked the phone off and tossed it onto the leather seat.
He looked down at me, his eyes burning with a terrifying, absolute clarity.
“Marcus didn't give me that letter, Elena,” Dominic said, his voice dropping into a register of iron and ice. “Because Marcus wasn't working for me. He was taking orders from someone inside my own house.”
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He dropped back down to his knees, gently placing his large, warm hands over mine as I held our twins.
“Someone wanted me alone,” Dominic whispered, looking into my eyes with a fierce, possessive devotion that made my soul shiver. “Someone wanted me bitter, ruthless, and without an heir. And tonight, my love... I am going to find out who.”
