Chapter 7 - The Inheritance of Blood
The silence in the bedroom was absolute.
Dominic stood up slowly, his broad frame casting a long, dark shadow across the floor. "Roberto Vance tried to kill his own daughter?"
"He didn't try to kill me," Claire—Juliana—corrected, her voice trembling slightly as the memories continued to settle into place like heavy iron gears locking together. "He tried to fake my death so he could use my disappearance to start a war with you and take control of the Atlantic shipping routes."
She looked down at her hands—hands that had wiped down tables, washed dishes, and scrubbed floors for two years in a desperate attempt to stay invisible.
"I found out three days before the crash," she whispered, staring into the flickering fireplace. "I overheard him talking to his lieutenants in Milan. He was going to kidnap Sophia, kill you, and frame the Rossi family for negligence. I couldn't let him take Sophia. So I took her passport... I took a car... and I tried to reach you."
Dominic’s breath hitched. "You were coming to me?"
"I was trying to get to your stronghold in Turin," she wept softly. "But my father's men intercepted me on the pass. They rammed my car off the cliff. I survived the fall... a local doctor pulled me from the wreck before it caught fire. He gave me a head injury that wiped out five years of my life... and a set of forged papers his son had created for a runaway girl."
She looked up at Dominic, her green eyes burning with six years of suppressed agony.
"I didn't run away from you, Dominic," she said quietly. "I was running to save our daughter. And when I woke up in that clinic in Switzerland with no name and no memory, the only thing left in my mind was a voice telling me to go to America and stay hidden."
Dominic stared at her.
The cold, ruthless crime lord who had spent six years building an empire of blood and fear suddenly looked like a man who had been dropped to his knees before a holy altar.
He took three slow steps toward the bed, fell to his knees beside the mattress, and took her trembling hands in his large, warm palms.
"Juliana..." he choked out, pressing her knuckles against his forehead, his shoulders shaking with silent, deep-seated sobs. "My God... Juliana..."
Claire—Juliana—reached out with her right hand, her fingers weaving gently through his dark, silvered hair, feeling the heat of his skin, the familiar, solid weight of the man she had once believed was her captor, but who had spent six years mourning her loss.
"I remembered," she whispered softly into the quiet room. "I'm home, Dominic."
The moment was shattered by the sharp sound of a heavy horn blowing outside the estate gates.
Marco stepped back to the window, pulling the heavy velvet curtain aside an inch.
"They're here, boss," Marco said, his voice grim. "Eight SUVs at the main gate. Don Roberto is demanding to speak with you."
Dominic stood up slowly.
The grief, the tears, the vulnerability—all of it dissolved in a fraction of a second, replaced by a dark, terrifying malice that made the air in the room feel fifty degrees colder.
He reached into his waistband, pulled out a custom silver-plated semi-automatic pistol, checked the magazine with a crisp clack, and slid it back into his holster.
"Stay here with Sophia," Dominic said, looking down at Juliana with an expression of fierce, absolute devotion. "I have a six-year-old debt to settle with your father."
"Dominic, wait," Juliana called out, reaching for his sleeve. "He has thirty men. You can't just walk out there!"
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Dominic smiled—a sharp, terrifying line that showed his teeth.
"This is my estate, mia cara," Dominic whispered, leaning down to press a hard, fierce kiss against her lips—the first kiss they had shared in six years, tasting of salt, liquor, and fire. "And no one threatens my wife twice."
