Chapter 2 - The Ghost of Bellamy House
The corridor outside the washroom was quiet, lined with deep burgundy wallpaper and framed black-and-white photographs of maritime Boston. But between Dominic and Elena, the air crackled with a lethal pressure that could have shattered glass.
"Mommy, who is the big man?" Julian, the boy in the ivory sweater, asked from behind her skirt. He leaned out, peering up at Dominic with frank curiosity. "He has the same face as Leo."
Elena’s knuckles turned bone-white where she gripped the strap of her bag. Her skin had lost every ounce of color, leaving her face stark against her dark hair.
"Boys, into the lounge. Right now," she commanded, her voice pitched low, carrying an urgent maternal authority that brook no disobedience. "Go sit at table twelve. The bread basket is there. Do not speak to anyone until I come over. Go."
The four boys looked between their mother and the tall stranger. Leo hesitated for half a second, his dark eyes lingering on Dominic’s ink-covered neck with a strange, searching recognition, before turning on his heel and leading his brothers past their mother into the dining room.
The heavy door swung shut. Elena and Dominic stood alone in the narrow, carpeted hallway.
"Four, Elena?" Dominic’s voice was barely louder than a breath, but it reverberated through the hall with terrifying clarity. He took two deliberate steps toward her.
Elena flinched, stepping backward until her shoulder blades hit the wood-paneled wall. "Dominic. Back away from me."
"Four boys?" Dominic demanded. His controlled facade—the cool, unreadable executive armor he had worn for thirty-seven years—fractured down the center. He reached out, his large hand planting flat against the wall beside her ear, effectively boxing her in. His scent hadn't changed: cedarwood, expensive tobacco, and rain. It crashed into Elena’s senses like a wave of pure nostalgia and panic. "They are six years old. You vanished six years ago."
"It’s none of your business," she whispered, her chin lifting with that stubborn, defiant tilt he remembered with agonizing sharpness. "They have nothing to do with you."
"Don't lie to me!" Dominic snapped, his voice dropping into a harsh, vibrating growl that made a passing waiter freeze at the far end of the corridor before Dominic cast a sideways glance that sent the man scurrying back toward the kitchen. Dominic turned his fury back upon her. "One look at Leo. One look at his hands, the way he tilts his head, the way Julian scowls—they are Morettis, Elena! You walked out of my bed pregnant with four sons, and you never told me?"
"You didn't want them!" Elena fired back, her hazel eyes suddenly filling with unshed tears that she furiously blinked away. "Don't stand there playing the righteous father, Dominic. You chose your life. You chose your bloodline, your board seats, and your mother’s empire. Don't pretend you had room in your curated, murderous world for four babies!"
Dominic’s jaw clenched so hard a muscle twitched violently along his cheek. "I tore this coast apart looking for you! I had private investigators combing every port from Maine to Miami! I didn't want them? I didn't even *know*! Why did you run?"
"Why did I run?" Elena laughed, a bitter, fragile sound that broke in the middle. "Ask your mother, Dominic. Ask Victoria why I ran."
Dominic’s body went rigid. The hallway seemed to drop ten degrees. "What does my mother have to do with this?"
Elena stared at him, searching his dark eyes for any sign of deceit, any flicker of mockery. What she found instead was a genuine, terrifying confusion that made her stomach drop.
"She came to my apartment the night before I left," Elena said quietly, her voice trembling now. "She brought three men. She sat on my sofa and laid out an ultrasound report from my first doctor’s appointment. She told me that if I stayed, she would take the children the moment they were born. She said a North End baker’s daughter was an unacceptable incubator for the Moretti heirs. She told me that if I tried to fight her in court, she would have my father’s business audited into bankruptcy, have my brother’s parole revoked, and ensure I was declared clinically unfit to keep my own babies."
Every drop of air left Dominic’s lungs.
"She showed me the bank transfers," Elena continued, tears finally spilling down her cheeks. "She said you were already negotiating the merger with the Barrett family. She said you knew about the pregnancy and that you had signed off on the buyout. She handed me a plane ticket and a cashier’s check for two million dollars. I burned the check in the kitchen sink, Dominic. I took my savings, caught a bus to New Hampshire, and I raised my boys alone."
Dominic felt as if the floor beneath his feet had given way. The photographs in Victoria’s library. The plane to Milan. The casual remark: *She took the payout, Dominic.*
It had all been fabricated. A calculated, surgical strike executed by his own mother to clear the board for the Barrett merger.
Dominic stepped back, his hand falling from the wall. His fingers closed instinctively over the velvet box in his breast pocket.
Inside that box was a diamond meant to bind him to Sloane Barrett, an heiress whose father controlled thirty percent of the shipping lanes in Boston Harbor. The engagement party was scheduled for seven-thirty.
His watch read seven-fifteen.
"Dominic," Elena whispered, seeing the raw devastation flickering behind his eyes. "Please. Just let us go. We don't want your money. We don't want your name. We have a quiet life in Salem. I manage a catering kitchen. The boys are happy. If your family finds out they exist—"
"My family will not touch them," Dominic interrupted. His voice was no longer furious; it was cold, quiet, and possessed of a terrible, lethal resolve.
His smartphone buzzed against his hip. He pulled it out.
The screen displayed an incoming call: *Victoria Moretti.*
Dominic stared at the glowing letters for three long seconds. Then, without breaking eye contact with Elena, he swiped red and declined the call.
"Dominic, you have an engagement party," Elena said, her eyes dropping to the bulge of the velvet ring box in his tailored jacket. "Everyone knows. It’s on the front page of the *Boston Globe* business section."
"There is no engagement," Dominic said.
"Don't be insane. The Barretts will ruin you. Your mother will—"
"I don't care about the Barretts," Dominic said, taking a step toward her once more, his hand reaching out, his fingers catching her chin and gently lifting her face. The heat of her skin against his fingers sent an electric shock straight through his heart, awakening feelings he had spent six years trying to assassinate. "And my mother will answer to me before the night is over."
He pulled a platinum card from his wallet, scribbled a private number on the back with a silver pen, and pressed it into her palm.
"Where are you staying tonight?" he asked.
"The Bostonian Hotel," she admitted reluctantly. "We were invited to a wedding tomorrow for one of my cousins."
"Stay in the room," Dominic commanded softly. "Order room service for the boys. Lock the door. Do not speak to anyone. My head of security, Marcus, will be stationed outside your door in twenty minutes."
"Dominic, no, don't drag us into this—"
"You have been in it since the day you met me, Elena," he whispered, his thumb lightly brushing across her lower lip, feeling her breath hitch. "And I have lost six years of my sons’ lives. I will not lose another hour."
May you like
He turned on his heel, his cream suit cutting a sharp silhouette through the hallway, and walked toward the revolving glass doors of Bellamy House into the freezing autumn air.
***
