Chapter 3 - Blood Ties and Whispered Debts
Dominic’s eyes narrowed, the mafia don returning to his posture despite the wreckage in his heart. “Frankie was working for you? Frankie ‘The Hook’ was your runner?”
“Frankie was the only one who figured it out,” Sadi said, her fingers curling tighter around the grip of the Smith & Wesson. “Eighteen months ago, he went down to Florida to handle an arms shipment for you. He stopped at a diner in Tampa. He saw me clearing plates behind the counter. He didn't pull a gun. He didn't call you. You know why, Dom?”
Dominic remained silent, his jaw clenched tight enough to splinter teeth.
“Because Frankie’s sister died the same way,” Sadi murmured. “Caught in the crossfire of your father’s war twenty years ago. Frankie understood what it meant to walk out of the furnace. He swore he’d keep my secret. And when I needed help, when I realized that running wasn't enough anymore, Frankie was the only man in your entire wretched organization with a shred of decency left.”
“He stole two hundred and fifty grand from my payroll, Sadi!” Dominic growled, taking half a step forward before remembering the gun. “My captains were screaming for his head! If I let men steal without consequence, the whole family tears itself apart!”
“Damn your family!” Sadi snapped, her voice rising with sudden, terrifying fury. She stood up from the bed, the oversized sweater hanging off her emaciated frame like a shroud. “Damn your payroll! Damn your territory! I didn't take your money to buy diamonds, Dominic. Look at me! Look at this room! Do you think I'm living in luxury?”
“Then what was the money for?” Dominic demanded, his hands outspread. “If you wanted to vanish, two hundred and fifty grand buys a new face and a passport to South America! Why are you holed up in a five-dollar motel in the worst district of the city you supposedly ran away from?”
Sadi took a ragged breath. Her hand holding the gun began to tremble, not with fear, but with an exhaustion so deep it seemed carved into her bones. She turned slightly toward the bathroom door, which stood ajar, revealing a cracked mirror and a shower curtain stained with mildew.
“Because they found her, Dom.”
Dominic froze. The air in the room suddenly grew sub-zero. “Found who?”
“Mia.”
The name fell between them like a live grenade.
Dominic stared at her, uncomprehending. “Who the hell is Mia?”
Sadi looked at him, and for the first time in three years, the icy armor shattered. Her eyes flooded with tears that she refused to let fall. Her lower lip quivered with a mother’s sheer, desperate panic.
“When my car hit the river, Dominic... I wasn't alone in that water.”
Dominic stopped breathing. The neon sign outside gave a loud, electrical *POP*, plunging the room into darkness for three long heartbeats before humming back to life in a violent, bloody crimson.
“What are you saying?” Dominic’s voice was barely a rasp.
“I was eight weeks pregnant the night the Morettis ran me off the road,” she said, her voice shaking with an unbearable weight. “I didn't tell you because you were in the middle of planning the dock war. You were obsessed. You were screaming on the phone all night, pacing the house with a shotgun. I was going to tell you that Sunday. But on Friday night, the car went off the bridge.”
Dominic felt his entire world invert. His heart hammered against his ribs like a caged beast. “You... you had a child? *My* child?”
“A girl,” Sadi whispered. “Mia. She’s two years and four months old. She has your dark eyes, Dom. Your stubborn, stupid chin. I had her in a charity clinic in Georgia under a fake name. For two years, I hid her in a quiet farmhouse near the border. I thought we were safe. I thought the ghost of Dominic Russo would never touch her.”
She walked toward him, the revolver dropping entirely to her side. She stood right in front of him, close enough that he could feel the cold, ragged heat of her breath, close enough to smell the cheap tobacco and the faint trace of lavender soap he remembered from another lifetime.
“Then four days ago, a black SUV pulled up to the farmhouse,” Sadi said, her voice breaking into a jagged sob. “Men in tactical gear kicked in the front door. They didn't come to kill me. They took Mia. And they left a note on the kitchen counter.”
Dominic reached out, his hand instinctively gripping her frail shoulder. She didn't pull away this time; she collapsed into his touch, her forehead pressing against the lapel of his sodden suit.
“What did the note say, Sadi?” Dominic whispered, a terrifying, abyssal rage beginning to stir in the depths of his chest, replacing the grief, replacing the shock. “Who took our daughter?”
Sadi looked up, her tear-stained eyes burning with raw hatred.
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“The note had your family crest on it, Dominic. It was stamped with the seal of the Russo underboss. Paulie took her.”
***
