Chapter 6 - The Bloodline’s Price
Z
By 10:00 AM, the sun had finally broken through the grey clouds over Long Island Sound, casting a brilliant, golden light across the blue water.
I stood on the private dock behind the safehouse in Stamford, Connecticut, listening to the gentle lap of waves against the wooden pilings. Behind me, the white two-story farmhouse sat peacefully amidst a grove of oak trees, completely isolated from the noise and corruption of New York City.
The back door opened, and Elena walked down the grassy slope toward the water. She was wearing a simple cream-colored sweater and jeans, her hair falling loose over her shoulders. She looked lighter, as if the suffocating weight of the last twenty-four hours had finally slid off her back.
"She's sleeping again," Elena said softly, coming to stand beside me at the edge of the dock. "Dr. Miriam checked her over before we left. She said Sofia is completely healthy. Just tired."
"Good," I said, keeping my eyes on the horizon.
"Marco told me what happened at the meeting," she continued.
I frowned slightly. "Marco talks too much."
"He cares about you, Dominic," she said gently. "They all do. Even if they're terrified of you."
I let out a soft, humorless laugh. "Fear is the only currency that doesn't depreciate in my line of work, Elena."
"It doesn't have to be," she replied quietly.
I turned to look at her. The wind blew a strand of dark hair across her face, and she tucked it behind her ear.
"Adrian is on a plane to Europe," I told her. "Vincent Colombo won't ever bother you or your family again. I've set up a trust fund in Sofia’s name. It's completely clean—tied to legitimate real estate holdings in New England. She will have enough to go to whatever school she wants, live wherever she wants, without ever having to hear my name."
Elena looked at me, her brown eyes filled with an emotion I couldn't quite decipher. "And what about us?"
"Us?" I repeated.
"Sofia and me," she said, stepping closer. "Are you sending us away?"
"You're safe here," I said, gesturing toward the farmhouse. "The property is in your name. Nobody in the city knows about this place. You can live a normal life here, Elena. You can finish your nursing classes. Sofia can go to a normal school."
"And you?" she asked. "Will you come back here?"
I looked down at my hands—hands that had signed orders that destroyed lives, hands that carried the blood of a thirty-year criminal legacy. "I belong in the library with the empty chairs, Elena. I can't bring that darkness into this house."
"Dominic," she said, her voice firm as she reached out and laid her hand over mine, her warm fingers wrapping around my cold skin. "When those men took us, I wasn't afraid that they were going to hurt me. I was afraid because I thought I would never see you again."
Her words hung in the crisp morning air, striking me harder than any threat Vincent Colombo had ever uttered.
"I saw the doll inside your coat," she whispered, her eyes shining with tears. "A man who carries a child's wet toy next to his heart while fighting off a city full of enemies isn't a monster. You're just a man who forgot that he's allowed to be human."
Before I could answer, the screen door of the farmhouse slammed open.
Sofia came running down the wooden steps, her little bare feet slapping against the grass. She was wearing her bright yellow sweater, her hair sticking up in messy morning tufts, holding Miss Rose tightly in her right hand.
"Dominic!" she shouted, her small voice ringing out across the quiet water.
She didn't stop until she slammed into my legs, wrapping her tiny arms around my knee with all the force her three-year-old body could muster.
I froze for a moment, then slowly dropped to one knee on the damp wood of the dock. Sofia immediately reached up and put her hands on both sides of my face, her sticky fingers pressing into my cheeks.
"Miss Rose was hungry," she declared solemnly. "She wants strawberries."
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A knot in my chest that had been tight for twenty years suddenly snapped open. I looked up at Elena, who was smiling through her tears, and then back down at the little girl holding her wet cloth doll.
"Well," I said, my voice rough with an emotion I hadn't felt in a lifetime. "Then we had better go find some strawberries."
