Chapter 98

Dominic POV

Dominic’s boots barely made a sound on the polished hardwood as he eased Aurora into the hotel bed. She was practically a ragdoll in his arms, like all the anger and fire she’d hurled at him earlier had burned through every last ounce of energy she had left.

She didn’t stir as he tugged the blankets up around her shoulders, tucking them around her frame until she let out a soft sigh of content. Her face, softened with sleep, was still slightly streaked with the faint marks of tears. The same ones she’d shed as she screamed at him, her voice cracking from weeks of pent-up rage and heartbreak.

He could still hear her now, even in the quiet of their room, you gave me no choice, Dominic. You sold Gianna. You sold her just like my father sold me.

The words had gutted him at the time. Now, in the stillness of this dimly lit room, all he felt was sorrow.

It wasn’t her fault to think such horrible things about him. To believe he was capable of doing something that heinous to her despite ripping open his own chest and handing her his heart just a few weeks ago.

How could it be? He’d given her plenty of evidence to back up the claims. Months of emotional torture in order to further his own agenda, using her to get him what he wanted and then planning on discarding her just as cruelly afterwards.

Not only had Alek gotten to her first—filling her head with venom, weaving lies so perfectly laced with truth that even Dominic himself might have believed them in her place—he barely had to work to make any of the lies believable.

To anyone else besides Aurora, Dominic would’ve been just as cutthroat, just as ruthless, in playing the game that was this life in order to get ahead.

Alek didn’t need to be a master manipulator. He was charming enough to make an enemy sit down for dinner and cunning enough to slip a dagger between their ribs before dessert without them ever noticing until they were gasping their last breath.

He knew how to play the game, and well. And that was what made him so dangerous in the first place.

Dominic clenched his jaw as he stared down at Aurora’s sleeping form.

While he would’ve loved to dig deeper into what exactly had gone on while Aurora was with Alek, they didn’t have the luxury of dwelling on any of that. All they could do now was move forward and make sure Alek Volkov was erased from the board permanently.

He glanced down at her hand resting limply atop the blanket. Her ring finger was bare.

Carefully, he stood and moved quietly over to the dresser across the way. Opening up the top drawer, he pulled the engagement ring from one of his pants pockets that he’d stuffed it in before leaving for the airport.

He hadn’t let it out of his sight since he’d remembered it was there while going through TSA and had kept it in the hopes of returning it to its rightful owner. The gem caught the faint glow from the bedside lamp as he held it between his thumb and forefinger, rotating it slightly.

Settling back down beside her on the bed, he lifted her hand up from the bed and cradled it gently in his own.

“This is where it belongs,” he murmured, gently slipping it back onto her finger.

It slid into place as if it had never left.

Dominic lingered for a moment longer, memorizing her face in sleep and the way her brow furrowed faintly as if even her dreams weren’t quite peaceful.

“You deserved better than the hell I dragged you into,” he whispered. “But I’ll make it right. You won’t regret marrying me.”

With one last look, he rose and quietly slipped out of the room.

The living room was dim when he reached it, the only light coming from a single lamp in the corner. Romero and the twins sat scattered across the couches and dining area, weapons laid out on the coffee table between them.

Their conversation stopped the moment Dominic stepped in.

“Did she talk?” Marco asked.

Romero said nothing, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed. His posture wasn’t relaxed, though it never was, but there was a subtle tension there that told Dominic he was anxiously awaiting to hear the next thing out of his mouth.

Dominic took a seat across from them, resting his forearms on his knees. “She told me what happened before she and Gianna took off for Mexico and the reason behind their sudden disappearance.”

“And?” Luca prompted.

“That day Alek arrived in the States and stopped to pay the girls a visit at the motel, he apparently told them that I had agreed to exchange Gianna’s hand as payment for his Bratva taking out my father. Alek was convincing enough that it scared them into feeling the need to run in order to escape him stealing Gianna and taking her back to Russia.”

That drew twin looks of surprise. Even Romero’s brows twitched faintly.

Luca let out a low whistle. “Well… fuck.”

Marco shook his head, muttering something under his breath in Italian. “No wonder they had no mercy on us. They drugged us to make sure we could not inform Alek. Or at least they must have believed we would do so.”

“Exactly.” Dominic nodded with a sigh.

He moved over to the small kitchenette and fished a bottle of beer from the mini fridge. Popping it and tossing the cap, he downed a quarter of it before walking back over to them and settled down on one of the couches.

Romero, though, remained silent for a long moment before speaking. “That is concerning that Alek was able to think that far ahead. It wouldn’t surprise me if he predicted they would run and waited to see where they went in order to follow them. How else would he have known to come to Mexico and snatch them the second they were out of our eyesight?”

Dominic’s eyes snapped to his second-in-command. “That’s true, I hadn’t thought of that. If that’s the case, Alek is much more dangerous than any of us have previously pegged him for. We already know he’s capable of some heinous things but this entire charade is on an entirely new level.”

Romero nodded slowly, but his expression didn’t ease. “Not to mention him trying to squeeze you for more control over our own syndicate. What’s to say that wasn’t also part of the plan? Baiting the girls into running, letting them do so and picking them up as soon as they stopped looking over their shoulder. All the while the plan was forming to use them as a pressure point against you to gain more control over the Guerrero syndicate and the city.”

“I am concerned he is going to try and infiltrate the Carusos next,” Dominic replied, downing another large swig. “What’s stopping him from coming at us from another angle?”

“True,” Romero replied. “What do we do?”

“Were we not already planning to take out the Caruso family?” Marco asked.

“We are but that’s going to take time. Years, even.” Romero nodded to Dominic. “We need total control over our own syndicate. Wipe out the old loyalists of Leonardo’s first.”

“Ah. I see.”

“How are we going to go about doing that?” Luca asked. “We now are worrying about Alek and his Bratva… On top of cleaning house with our own.”

Marco smirked. “We will be busy the next few months, eh?”

Dominic sat back, running a hand down his face. “Yes. But we also need to be cautious. I’ve already chased off Matteo once before. He’s been suspicious of me ever since Theo’s death and it’s made cleaning house more difficult than we originally planned. We need to be diligent with not alerting anyone else of our moves.”

Romero nodded tightly. “Then what’s the plan for Alek? He clearly needs to go. Now.”

“I agree. We strike now,” Dominic said firmly, standing up from the couch. “Before he has a chance to vanish. We infiltrate the mansion, take out Alek and his guards, and extract Gianna before returning home.”

“Oh, I’m ready.” Luca grinned, rubbing his hands together.

For the next hour, they went over every detail—entry points, guard rotations, potential escape routes. Marco pulled up blueprints of the mansion on his tablet once more to mark where they would strike first while Romero jotted down logistics for transport once the deed was finally done.

When the plans were solid enough to act on, Dominic rose from his seat.

“Romero, keep coordinating with our contacts that Mikhail is sending us. Marco, Luca, you’re with me. We’ll do recon on the mansion and get a read on security patterns. I don’t want any surprises when we do show up.”

The twins nodded in unison, already standing. As he grabbed his jacket and headed for the door, his thoughts flicked back to the woman sleeping just down the hall.

He didn’t know if she’d ever fully forgive him like she promised she would once this was all over, or if he deserved it, but he did know one thing: Alek Volkov had taken enough from them.

Soon it would be the beginning of his end.