Chapter 34
Dominic POV
The gunfire tore through the reception hall like thunder.
Dominic didn’t flinch as bullets ripped their way through the glass decorations littering the tables around him, sending glittering shards raining down like deadly confetti. He kept moving forward, through the chaos, his target clear in his mind while he made his way to her.
Aurora.
Through the haze of bodies and blood, he saw her—sitting in the center of the dance floor with her white dress stained red, his father’s body crumpled to the ground close by her and lying lifeless.
She wasn’t screaming.
She simply sat there in shock, staring down at the corpse of the man she’d married only a few hours ago while he gave one final death twitch.
Good.
She wasn't making herself a bigger target. No one was paying her any attention now that the first target had been taken out.
Her friend appeared instantly behind her, grabbing Aurora’s arm to tug her away from the body and yelling something that couldn’t be heard over the chaos erupting around the room. Dominic reached them in a few long strides.
Without hesitation, he wrapped an arm around Aurora’s waist and lifted her clean off her feet. She gave a soft, startled sound, but to her credit she didn’t fight him. She didn’t thrash or sob or demand answers like most people in her situation would when being manhandled off of a battlefield.
She simply clutched the front of his suit jacket tightly, as if some part of her still recognized that he was her safest option and held on for dear life.
Smart girl.
Dominic didn’t look back at the body of the man that was once his father before leaving. He had no intention of mourning the man who’d taken everything from him.
Not tonight. Not ever.
Romero wasn’t far behind him, grabbing Gianna by the wrist and hauling her along, ignoring her protests as they all ducked down one of the side hallways leading out of the main hall.
Getting outside, it was much easier to breathe. With a car already waiting for them, he shoved Aurora inside the back of it and signalled to Romero before climbing into the driver’s seat. Guests from the reception were now starting to pour out of the venue, scrambling to get to their cars before more assassins could follow after them and take them out too.
Dominic threw the car into drive and took off within seconds.
It took longer than he liked to clear the property and get them back onto the main road but in retrospect, that was to be expected. The Russians he'd paid to cause the chaos were doing their job a little too well, peppering the grounds with enough gunfire to make it look like a full-scale gang war had broken out and anyone in their crosshairs was an immediate target.
Good.
The more bodies they had by the end of it on both sides, the more plausible the story would be: an opportunistic bratva looking to expand into new territory and using a wedding convening two major syndicates as their backdrop to do it. No one would be thinking to trace Leonardo’s death back to his own son.
At least, not yet.
By the time Dominic got them to a small motel turned safehouse just outside of the city, his energy was starting to flag. Aurora was sagged back into her seat when he glanced at her in the rearview, staring out the window next to her to watch the road and buildings pass them by.
When he finally pulled up to the location, he parked the car around back and shut off the ignition. For the first time since getting her in the car, Aurora stirred.
“What’s going on?”
He didn’t answer her as he climbed out and came around the side to pop open her door. She didn’t fight him when he grabbed a hold of her arm and helped her out and onto solid ground once again.
What did surprise him was the way her body pitched forward, causing him to slip an arm around her waist to keep her upright just as she fell against his chest.
Her body was trembling so hard he could feel it through his suit. She curled into his chest instinctively, her hands clutching his jacket like a lifeline, silent tears soaking through the expensive fabric of his button-up.
Dominic tightened his arm around her without thinking. Comforting her wasn’t something he had ever planned on doing. It wasn’t something he knew how to do, honestly. But when it came to Aurora everything about her twisted up the carefully ordered wires in his brain.
She made him soft in places he thought had long since hardened into stone. Pieces of him that he believed were lost to time and buried deep inside himself where he could no longer reach.
He hated it almost as much as he craved it.
After a while, she stirred, wiping at her face. Her voice was hoarse when she finally spoke. “Who… who were those men? I didn’t recognize any of them.”
“Local bratva,” he said. “Russian mafia.”
She turned her tear-streaked face up to him, blinking. “What? Why would they…? Does your family have enemies in the Russian sectors?”
“Not usually.”
Her shock almost made him laugh.
He settled for a wry smile instead. “I have friends in many places, Aurora. You’ll find the world isn’t as neatly divided as people like to pretend.”
She stared at him for a long moment, processing that. “You… you called them?”
“You told me,” he said, voice barely above a low whisper, “you wanted me to change the plan. So, that’s what I came up with.”
She made a choked sound—half-sob, half-laugh—and wiped at her cheeks again, smearing makeup in streaks across her skin. Dominic didn’t tell her. Even if she looked like a mess, she was still as beautiful as ever. Tear-stained and makeup streaked cheeks and all.
“I thought you left after the ceremony. When I didn’t see you, I thought you’d abandoned your plan and that I was going to have to…”
She couldn’t finish the sentence but he knew what she meant: I thought you were going to let Leonardo touch me again.
He stiffened slightly, a flash of anger cutting through the fog of adrenaline still hanging over him. “That was never going to happen. I told you it wouldn’t.”
Her eyes watered again, more tears collecting at her lash line.
Did she really believe he was that heartless? Sure, he knew he could be cold at times and even a little sadistic but he’d never turned any of that on her, let alone broken a promise and proved to her that his words meant nothing.
Out of anyone, Aurora was the one person he had made it a point of following through with what he’d told her he would do—even if that meant bloodshed. Not for the simple fact of wanting to earn her trust, but because they’d both fallen into this unique situation that stripped them both of lying to each other.
So far, Dominic had been completely transparent on what he wanted from her and had held her to that standard he set. And while she’d surprised him with her threats to expose him earlier, she hadn’t upset him to the point of allowing himself to break his promise and let his own father try to touch her again.
In all honesty, that thought hadn’t even crossed his mind to begin with.
Dominic gently nudged her chin up with two fingers. “Look at me.”
Her eyes were puffy when she finally lifted them to meet his gaze. Her cheeks were blotchy and there was still blood speckled on her skin and the front of her dress. Funny that, to him, she’d never looked more beautiful smeared in the macabre remnants of his father.
“You’ll be staying here for a while until I have everything with the bratva sorted out. I’ll speak with your father about keeping you here. There’s no sense in bringing you back to your family’s estate at this moment.”
Aurora blinked rapidly. For once, she didn’t argue, she just nodded slowly. “Okay.”
Dominic exhaled and brushed a knuckle along her jaw to wipe away some of the grim smeared on her skin before finally nudging her toward one of the doors. The place looked like it was falling apart but that was the point. On the outside, it looked like any other rundown, shoddy motel, however upon stepping through any one of these doors, the real truth was revealed.
A state-of-the-art militaristic safehouse.
“Romero will be arriving with your friend soon.”
Her head whipped around to look at him. “Gianna? She—you saved her?”
That nearly had Dominic rolling his eyes. “Is she, or is she not, one of the only people at that estate that you care about living or dying?”
“I—yes. I do.”
He shoved her inside. “Then, yes. I did in fact make sure she survived.”
The smile she hit him with was practically beaming. So much so that Dominic nearly stumbled into the room after getting his foot caught on the lip of the doorway stepping up into it. Catching himself at the last moment instinctively, he shook himself out of his thoughts and nodded toward the bathroom.
“Get yourself cleaned up. There are clothes in the dresser. The sizes vary. What doesn’t fit, I’ll send Romero into town to retrieve what you need.”
Her smile softened. “Thank you, Dominic.”
His stomach gave a small squeezed as she turned and disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
Sighing, he pulled the door closed and engaged the alarm system, sealing them both safely inside.
The only silver lining among the mess that had been made of his carefully crafted plan was that Leonardo Guerrero was now dead.
And his empire? It would soon belong to Dominic so long as Aurora quit her meddling.
