Chapter 3 - The Price of Loyalty
The smell of rich black coffee and burning wood woke me.
I opened my eyes to find cold, pale morning light streaming through the high, uncurtained windows of the cabin. The rain had stopped, leaving behind a crisp, freezing silence broken only by the distant rustle of pine trees swaying in the autumn wind.
I was lying on the rug, covered by a heavy plaid blanket that hadn't been there when I went to sleep.
I sat up abruptly, my muscles screaming in protest. Every inch of my body felt bruised, my neck stiff from where Dominic’s fingers had clamped around my throat the night before.
Across the room, sitting in a heavy leather armchair beside a roaring stone fireplace, was Dominic Vale.
He was wearing a clean black henley shirt that pulled tight across his broad chest, and dark trousers. His left ribs were heavily bandaged beneath the shirt, and his bruised face looked harsh in the morning light, but he was sitting upright, holding a steaming mug of coffee in his right hand.
Beside his chair, Atlas lay stretched out on the floor, his massive head resting on Dominic’s boot.
Dominic looked at me as I sat up. His gray eye was cool, sharp, and entirely steady.
“Good morning, Claire,” he said. His voice was still rough, but the lethal authority had returned to it completely.
I rubbed my face with my hands, my hair a tangled mess. “You shouldn't be sitting up. You lost half your blood last night.”
“I’ve had worse,” he said quietly, taking a slow sip of his coffee. “Though I usually have a professional surgeon standing over me, not a diner waitress with a box cutter.”
I narrowed my eyes, kicking the blanket off my legs as I stood up. “A diner waitress who saved your life and your dog’s life, while you tried to choke her to death. You’re welcome, by the way.”
A faint, fleeting shadow of an expression passed across his face—not quite a smile, but something dangerously close to it.
“There is a clean shower down the hall,” he said, gesturing toward the back of the cabin. “You'll find clean clothes in the dresser in the master bedroom. They belong to my sister. They should fit you.”
I looked down at my clothes. My server shirt was stiff with dried blood and grease, my jeans ruined by mud.
“Where are we?” I asked, looking around the cabin.
“A private property,” Dominic replied. “It doesn't exist on county tax records. It’s registered to a holding company based out of Delaware. No one knows about this place except me.”
He set his coffee mug down on the wooden side table beside his chair.
“And my chief of security,” he added softly.
The air in the room instantly grew cold.
I froze. “Your chief of security?”
“Marcus,” Dominic said, his gray eye darkening like a storm gathering over the river. “The man who has lived in my house for twelve years. The man who stood at my father’s funeral and swore an oath to protect my family.”
He leaned back in the chair, his dark brows drawing together.
“Marcus was the only person who knew I was going to the dock warehouse last night without my usual security detail. He told me it was a routine meeting with a union rep from Philadelphia.”
My mind raced, connecting the dots of the nightmare. “And my brother?”
Dominic’s gaze shifted directly to me. “Your brother Caleb has been working as a low-level driver for one of Marcus’s shell companies for six months. He was heavily in debt to a sports book ran by Marcus’s nephew in West Rivergate.”
I felt a sudden, cold nausea rising in my throat. “So Marcus used Caleb’s debt to turn him.”
“Caleb didn't need much turning,” Dominic said, his voice flat, devoid of sympathy. “He was offered eight thousand dollars to leave a side door unlocked at the warehouse and hand over my driver’s route schedule. Your brother took the money, Claire. He took it, bought himself a night at the casino, and left the door open for six armed men to step inside.”
I leaned back against the edge of the sofa, my knees trembling.
Eight thousand dollars.
The exact amount my mother had begged me for on the phone last night.
Caleb hadn't been threatened by terrifying loan sharks. He had been paid off to facilitate an assassination. And when things went wrong, when Dominic escaped into the alley behind my diner, Caleb had panicked, realizing that his own sister was now caught in the middle of a mob war.
“He tried to stop me,” I whispered, staring at the stone fireplace. “He texted me... he told me not to go home. He told me to leave you in the alley.”
“He told you to leave me,” Dominic corrected sharply, “because if Marcus’s men found me alive, Caleb knew I would tear his world apart until I found out who betrayed me. He wasn't trying to save you, Claire. He was trying to save himself from me.”
The words hit me like a physical blow, knocking the breath straight out of my chest.
I stood there in the quiet cabin, surrounded by the smell of cedar and coffee, and felt twenty-seven years of family loyalty crumble into worthless ash at my feet.
All those double shifts. All those unpaid bills. All those nights I had gone to sleep hungry so my mother could pay her mortgage while Caleb drove his fancy truck around town. It had all been a lie. I was nothing to them. I was just the shock absorber, the person meant to take the damage so Caleb could keep playing his stupid, dangerous games.
I looked at Dominic.
“What are you going to do to him?” I asked. My voice didn't shake. It was cold, clear, and quiet.
Dominic leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, his massive hands clasped together. He studied my face intently, his gray eye searching every line of my features.
“In my world,” Dominic said slowly, “traitors don't get second chances. They don't get court dates. They disappear.”
I held his gaze. “And what about the sister who saved your life?”
“The sister who saved my life,” Dominic murmured, his voice dropping into a low, resonant register that echoed in the quiet room, “is currently sitting in a safehouse with a target on her back. Marcus knows your car. He knows your name. By now, his men have already visited your apartment above the laundromat. If you walk out that door, Claire, you die.”
I swallowed hard. “So I’m a prisoner.”
“No,” Dominic said, standing up slowly from his chair, using his stick to brace his injured side, though he didn't utter a sound of pain. He walked over to me, stopping three feet away, towering over me like a mountain of broad shoulders and dark intent.
He held out his right hand toward me.
“You are my guest,” Dominic said. “And if you want revenge on the brother who used you, and the men who tried to kill us both... you stay right here, and you let me give it to you.”
I looked at his heavy, calloused hand.
I looked at Atlas, who stood up and rested his broad head against my knee.
I took a deep breath, reached out, and placed my hand in Dominic Vale’s grip.
His fingers closed around mine—warm, solid, and utterly unyielding.
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“First,” I said, looking into his cold gray eye, “I’m taking a shower.”
A slow, genuine smile touched Dominic’s lips. “The towels are in the closet.”
