Chapter 6 - The Columbia Ambush
The aftermath of the Oak Room confrontation was handled with the terrifying efficiency that characterized the Russo machine. By five o'clock in the morning, the Plaza Hotel was clean, the bodies were gone, Julian Vance had been escorted to a private holding facility in New Jersey to “renegotiate his pension,” and Lorenzo Moretti was on a private medical flight back to Genoa with a shattered arm and a five-hundred-million-dollar legal lien hanging over his family’s empire.
Yet, despite the victory, I refused to stay at the Russo penthouse.
“I have a lecture at nine, Mr. Russo,” I told Dominic as we stood by the black Town Car outside my cramped, fifth-floor walk-up apartment near Morningside Heights. “And I have two chapters of my dissertation due to my academic committee on Friday.”
Dominic stood on the rain-slicked sidewalk, looking up at the peeling brick facade of my building with disdain. “You just dismantled a multi-million-dollar syndicate operation, Miss Miller. You have five hundred thousand dollars in escrow. You don't need to grade undergraduate essays for twenty dollars an hour.”
“I do need to,” I said, meeting his gaze firmly. “Because that money is for my mother’s life. It isn't for mine. My life is built on my mind, Mr. Russo. If I abandon my work to become a permanent fixer for your family, then I’m no better than Julian Vance. I’m just another servant with a fancier title.”
Dominic stared at me in the dim streetlamp light, the rain misting against his dark coat. A slow, genuine smile—the first one I had ever seen on his face—curved his lips.
“You’re stubborn, Dr. Miller,” he murmured.
“I’m surviving, Mr. Russo,” I corrected him. “Just like you.”
He stepped closer, reaching out to gently touch the collar of my worn wool coat. “Marco will be stationed two blocks away. If you see a shadow you don't like, you press the emergency button on the phone I gave you.”
“I can handle the library, Dominic,” I said, using his first name for the first time.
He paused, his cold eyes lingering on my lips for a suspended, electric heartbeat. “Nobody is safe in Manhattan right now, Casey. Moretti lost his fleet, but a wounded animal is the most dangerous kind.”
Six hours later, I was sitting deep inside the labyrinthine stacks of Butler Library at Columbia University.
The scent of decaying leather bindings, aged paper, and floor wax was my sanctuary. Here, the world made sense. Words were static. Truths were preserved in Latin, German, and French, immune to the violence of men with guns.
My phone vibrated against the wooden study carrel.
A text message from the Cleveland Clinic: *“Patient Margaret Miller successfully admitted to the surgical wing. Vitals stable. Pre-operative dialysis scheduled for 14:00. Donor kidney match confirmed via regional priority network.”*
Tears of pure, overwhelming gratitude filled my eyes. Dominic had kept his word to the exact letter. My mother was going to live.
I let out a shaky breath, leaned back in my wooden chair, and closed my eyes for the first time in what felt like a hundred years.
Then, the floorboards behind me creaked.
It wasn't the slow, meandering footstep of an undergraduate searching for literature texts. It was the deliberate, weighted stride of someone moving with purpose.
I opened my eyes and looked at the reflection in the dark windowpane opposite my desk.
Two men in heavy leather jackets were moving down the narrow aisle between the twelfth-century history stacks. One of them had his hand inside his pocket, his gaze locked onto the back of my head.
My heart plummeted into my stomach.
I reached slowly for the encrypted phone Dominic had given me, but before my fingers could graze the glass screen, a heavy hand clamped down over my mouth from behind, wrenching my head back against the chair.
“Don’t make a sound, little scholar,” a raspy voice whispered in broken English, smelling of cheap cigarettes and garlic. “Moretti wants his contracts rewritten. And you’re going to hold the pen.”
Panic exploded in my chest.
I didn't scream. I didn't flail wildly. In seven years of surviving the worst shifts in Manhattan restaurants and the aggressive advances of drunken brokers, I had learned how to fight dirty.
I grabbed the heavy, hard-bound volume of the *Corpus Juris Civilis* resting on my desk—four pounds of brass-cornered legal history—and slammed it backward with all my strength into my captor’s face.
The heavy brass corner shattered the man’s nose with a sickening *crunch*.
He let out a muffled howl of agony, stumbling backward, blood spraying across the leather bindings of fourteenth-century German treaties.
The second man lunged forward, drawing a snub-nosed revolver with a black suppressor. “Grab her!” he hissed.
I ducked beneath his reach, throwing myself over the wooden study carrel, knocking stacks of heavy folios onto the floor to block the narrow aisle. “Help!” I shouted, my voice echoing through the vaulted library. “Fire!”
The second man vaulted over the fallen books with terrifying agility, his hand closing around the fabric of my sweater, throwing me roughly against the steel shelving unit. Books rained down around us like falling bricks. He raised the gun, pressing the cold steel barrel directly against my temple.
“Move again, and I’ll paint this library with your brains,” he snarled.
*Click.*
The sound was tiny, precise, and came from three inches behind the gunman’s ear.
“You’re in the silent study section,” Dominic Russo’s voice purred from the shadows of the stacks. “Show some respect for the dead.”
Before the gunman could turn, a sharp, metallic *crack* sounded as Dominic drove the butt of a customized Colt .45 into the man’s temple. The attacker crumpled to the floor like an empty sack of flour, unconscious before he hit the marble.
The first man, clutching his shattered, bloody nose, scrambled backward on his hands and knees, terror warping his face as he looked up at the towering silhouette of Dominic Russo.
Marco stepped out from behind a row of philosophy texts, his gun already raised. He put one silenced round through the kneecap of the man on the floor. The sound was muffled by a heavy wool overcoat, resulting in a wet, choked thud followed by a whimper of pure agony.
“Clean this up, Marco,” Dominic said, not even looking down at the bleeding men.
He walked over to where I was sitting against the steel shelves, breathing in ragged, violent gasps, my hands trembling uncontrollably.
Dominic knelt down in front of me, his expensive tailored trousers resting in the pool of scattered, hundred-year-old pages. His large, calloused hands gently took my face, tilting my chin up until my eyes met his.
His face was an unreadable storm of dark, terrifying fury—not directed at me, but at the fact that anyone had dared to lay hands on what he considered his.
“Did they hurt you?” he whispered, his thumbs gently wiping away the cold sweat from my brow.
“I... I broke his nose with Roman law,” I gasped, a half-hysterical laugh tearing from my throat despite the terror.
Dominic looked down at the blood-spattered *Corpus Juris Civilis*, then back at me. A slow, ferocious pride flared in his cold eyes.
“A woman of culture,” he said softly.
He slid his arms beneath my knees and back, lifting me effortlessly from the floor as if I weighed nothing at all. He held me against his chest, my face pressed into the expensive cashmere of his coat, the steady, rhythmic beat of his heart thumping beneath my ear.
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“The university is no longer safe for you, Casey,” Dominic said as he carried me toward the private service exit where his armored motorcade was waiting. “From now on, you stay with me.”
***
