Chapter 2 - The Ghost in the Dining Room
The world narrowed until there was nothing left in the universe except the distance between Dominic Moretti and the woman who had ruined him.
Elena froze. The breath caught visibly in her throat, her lips parting in sheer, unadulterated horror. Her hand, which had been reaching out to usher the boys through the door, fell limp against her coat. The color drained from her face so completely that Dominic thought she might collapse onto the black tiles.
“Dominic,” she whispered. It was not a greeting. It was the sound of a woman watching a nightmare walk out of the dark.
“Mama!” The boy in blue—Leo—trotted past Dominic’s leg and caught the hem of her coat. “Julian dropped his bow tie in the water, but I got it out.”
Elena didn’t look down at her son. Her hazel eyes remained locked onto Dominic’s face, dilated with panic. She looked thinner than he remembered, the delicate hollows beneath her cheekbones sharper, but she was still devastatingly beautiful. Time had not diminished her; it had merely carved away her youth and replaced it with a defensive, fierce fragility.
Dominic stood towering in the center of the room. The silence stretched between them, heavy with six years of unasked questions, unhealed wounds, and betrayed trust.
“Elena,” Dominic said. The name tasted like ash on his tongue.
She flinched as though he had struck her. Instantly, her maternal instincts kicked in. She dropped to one knee, wrapping her arms around Leo and pulling Julian, Luca, and the fourth boy—Matteo—behind her back, physically shielding them from his sight. It was an instinctive gesture of total defense.
She was protecting his children from *him*.
The realization hit Dominic like an electric shock. The rage that had slept beneath his ribs for half a decade sparked to life, cold and lethal.
“Mama, who is he?” the smallest boy whispered from behind her shoulder, his wide dark eyes peeking around her wool sleeve. “He has a watch like the one in your sketchbook.”
Elena’s knuckles turned white where she gripped Leo’s shoulder. “Nobody, baby. Just… someone from Boston. Get your coats. We’re leaving.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Dominic commanded.
His voice wasn’t loud, but it possessed the iron authority that had made grown men back down in boardrooms and back alleys alike. The air in the restroom grew suffocatingly dense.
Elena stood up slowly, her chin lifting in that stubborn, defiant angle Dominic remembered with agonizing clarity. “Don’t you dare do this here, Dominic. Not in front of them.”
“In front of them?” Dominic let out a bitter, humorless laugh that held no warmth. He stepped forward. Elena instinctively stepped back into the corridor, her sons trailing behind her like ducklings sensing an apex predator. “You vanish for six years. You let me think you walked away because I wasn't enough. And you return with four boys who carry my blood, my eyes, and my face?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, her voice shaking despite her best efforts to hold it steady. “They aren’t yours.”
Dominic stopped three inches from her face. He was so close he could smell her scent—vanilla, old parchment, and the faint trace of rain. It was the same scent that used to cling to his sheets.
“Don’t lie to me, Elena,” he murmured, his voice dropping into a register that made the hairs on her neck stand up. “I looked in that mirror. That boy touches his neck the way I do when I think. They are six years old. You left Boston seven years and three months ago. You do the math, or should I have my attorneys do it for you?”
“They are my children, Dominic! Only mine!” Elena hissed, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “You have no right to them. You gave up that right the day you stayed with your family.”
Dominic’s jaw clenched so hard a muscle twitched beneath his skin. “I looked for you for two years. I tore up every borough in New York, every town in Rhode Island. I thought someone had hurt you because of me. And all this time, you were hiding my sons?”
Suddenly, Dominic’s phone rang again.
The loud, shrill vibration cut through the corridor like a siren. Dominic pulled the phone from his jacket. The screen lit up in the dim hallway:
*Victoria Moretti.*
And below that, an incoming text from Sloane Barrett: *Dominic, darling? The guests are arriving at the conservatory. My father is asking for you. Where are you?*
Elena looked down at the glowing screen. She saw the name. A dark, hollow understanding washed over her features, replacing the fear with a cold, cutting disgust.
“Look at your phone, Dominic,” Elena whispered softly, tears finally spilling over her dark lashes. “You’re late for your life. You have a society bride waiting. You have an empire to run. You have everything your mother ever wanted for you.”
She gathered the four boys closer, backing down the hallway toward the rear exit of Bellamy House.
“Leave us alone,” she pleaded, her voice breaking. “If you ever loved me, even for a single second, you will turn around, go to your party, and pretend you never used this restroom tonight.”
“Elena, stop,” Dominic ordered, taking a long stride after her.
“Dominic, please!” she cried out, her voice echoing down the corridor. “If your mother finds out they exist, she will take them from me! She swore she would!”
Dominic halted in his tracks as if he had been shot.
The hallway fell into a dead silence. The four boys looked between their weeping mother and the tall, dark man in the suit.
May you like
“What did you say?” Dominic whispered, the cold air leaving his lungs. “What did you just say about my mother?”
***
