Chapter 28: Domenico - Marrying the Mafia Daddy

The first gunshot cracks through the parish hall, and I know what it is before the sound has finished echoing off the walls. My head snaps toward the side door.

Kira.

The coffee cup slips from my hand and shatters against the floor as I shove past the woman I’ve been talking to. She cries out, but I’m already moving through the packed room, forcing people out of my way as every fucking instinct I have screams that something is wrong.

Gio is moving with me almost immediately, and across the hall, Paolo turns toward the door. He’s closer than I am, but there are too many people between us and the exit, too many bodies that don’t understand quickly enough why they need to fucking move.

Then the second gunshot goes off outside, turning my blood to ice. “Move!” I roar, and this time people scatter.

Paolo reaches the door first and yanks it open, with Gio and me only seconds behind him. Cold air rushes into the hall as we spill outside.

The churchyard is empty except for Vinny. He’s sprawled on the frosted grass, completely still. Blood has soaked through his suit and spread into the grass beneath him, dark against the white frost.

For one fucking second, I think he’s dead.

“Vinny.” I’m beside him in three strides, dropping to one knee. “Vinny!” I shake him when he doesn’t immediately react.

Slowly, he peels his eyes open. “H-Harry.” Pain skitters across his features as he coughs and clears his throat. “T-took her. S-sedan. Brown, m-maybe dark g-green. Headed east on…” His breath hitches. A fresh pulse of blood wells between his fingers, and his jaw clenches hard enough that I can hear his teeth grinding. “… east. J-just left.”

Behind me, Gio’s already on the phone. His voice is low and clipped, calling contacts to get a hold of every traffic camera within five miles of Saint Benedict’s. Paolo stands over us, his face tight, his eyes doing that thing where they’re trying to be cold and failing.

“Get him to the hospital,” I tell two of the men who’ve followed us outside. “Now. Don’t wait for an ambulance.”

They move without question. One strips off his jacket, presses it against the worst of the bleeding, while the other helps him to his feet. Vinny sways, his knees buckling, and the taller one catches him under the arms.

“F-find her,” Vinny says, and then the pain takes him. His eyes roll back, his body goes slack, and they half-carry, half-drag him toward the cars parked along the side of the church.

I stand up. The cold air feels like nothing against my skin. My hands are steady. My breathing is even. Anyone looking at me would see a man in control of the situation, and they’d be wrong.

Inside, something is coming apart. Not panic—panic is useless, and I don’t do useless. This is colder. Sharper.

Harry has my wife.

The man who sold his daughter once already, who signed papers that put his wife in experimental trials and watched her die a slow and gruesome death while cashing the checks.

Harry, who has nothing left to lose, because I made sure of it. Fuck, I know exactly what that makes him capable of, and I don’t like it. Not one fucking bit. I’ll fucking level Boston if that’s what it takes to find him and get my wife back.

“I want that sedan found in the next thirty minutes, or heads start rolling,” I bark.

“Already on it.” Gio’s phone is pressed to his ear, his other hand typing on a tablet one of the men handed him. “Sedan left Saint Benedict’s eastbound on Main, took the on-ramp to the expressway. Cameras at the interchange caught it heading north. Plate’s partially obscured, but we’re running what we’ve got.”

As my eyes drift to Gio’s phone again, I pull my own out and open the app to track Kira. But even as I do so, I know it’ll be useless. I saw her bag inside. She never brought the goddamn thing outside, and I didn’t push for it.

Motherfucker!

Paolo steps forward. “I’m coming with you.”

“No.”

“Screw you,” my son seethes, and the vitriol in his words takes me aback. “I talked with her just before anything happened. Maybe I distracted Vinny, or… I don’t fucking know. But I’m not goddamn staying.”

Fuck, this isn’t the time to discuss or assign blame. “Fine.” I turn to face him fully. “But you follow orders. Every one of them.”

He nods, and that’s the end of it.

Gio barks orders to the men, and while I go to get the car, he sprints inside. Probably to make sure Carly’s okay. I get it, I really fucking do. But if he’s not back before I bring the car around, I’ll leave his ass.

Reaching the car, Paolo jumps into the back seat, slamming the door shut as I peel away from the parking area and toward the side entrance. Gio’s already there, one arm around his wife as he tells her something.

I’m just about to blare the horn when he kisses her and pushes her toward two of our men. Then he runs to the car and slides into the front passenger seat.

Gio has the tablet balanced on his knees, his fingers flying across the screen. “Got a partial on the plate,” Gio says as we pull onto Main. “Massachusetts registration, last three digits seven-one-four. Running it against DMV records for sedans matching the color and model.”

The expressway stretches ahead of us, gray and endless. Rush hour hasn’t started yet, which means traffic is light, which means Harry could be anywhere by now. My hands are loose on the steering wheel.

Four minutes in, Gio’s phone rings. He listens for ten seconds, says, “Send it to me,” and hangs up.

“Traffic cam at the Route Two interchange caught the sedan exiting westbound. Plate matches our partial. The vehicle continued on Route Two for approximately eight miles before taking an exit onto a county road. Cameras thin out after that.”

“Private property,” I say. It’s not a question.

“Most likely. Rural, wooded. Lots of places to hide a car if you know what you’re doing.”

“Harry doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s desperate and stupid.”

“Desperate men do stupid things,” Gio says quietly. “Stupid things get people killed.”

In the back seat, Paolo’s been quiet. Now his phone chimes with a notification, and he leans forward between the front seats, his screen lit with something that makes the blood in my veins go cold.

“I just pulled Harry’s recent communications. Text messages, mostly encrypted, but the encryption is shit. He’s been talking to someone for the past forty-eight hours. Someone with money.”

The screen tilts toward me. I take my eyes off the road for half a second, long enough to read the fragment visible on Paolo’s display.

Ready to move. Twenty-five thousand upfront, seventy-five on delivery. She’s worth every penny…

The words land like a fist to the gut. I knew it. Of course I fucking knew it. Harry Adams, with nothing left to lose and a daughter he’s already sold once, doing the only thing a man like him knows how to do.

He’s not running with Kira. He’s delivering her.

“Gio.” My voice is so quiet Paolo has to lean closer to hear it. “When we find him, there is no arrest. No second chances. No conversation. Harry dies the second my wife is safe. That clear?”

“Crystal.”

The road unwinds ahead of us, narrow and tree-lined, frost clinging to the bare branches overhead. Somewhere up ahead, my wife’s in a car with a man who’s already decided what she’s worth, and the distance between us feels like something I could measure in heartbeats.

I press the accelerator harder. The car responds, engine growling beneath us.

The property sits half a mile off the county road, down a gravel drive lined with pines so thick they block what little daylight is left. Two stories, weathered clapboard, a porch that sags at one corner.

No neighbors for at least a quarter mile in any direction. Perfect place to hide a car, or a person, if you don’t want anyone hearing the screams.

Harry’s sedan is parked behind the house, partially concealed under a tarp that does nothing to hide the distinctive rust along the rear quarter panel. I spot it from the treeline twenty yards out, and something cold and patient settles behind my sternum.

Gio and Paolo stand on either side of me, both of them throwing around ideas I don’t like. Each of theirs involve waiting for more backup, which isn’t fucking happening.

“We go now,” I bark, ending what they apparently perceive to be a motherfucking brainstorm session. “Got the comms?”

Nodding, Gio pulls out the comms units our men usually use on jobs—small earpieces with built-in mics. We each take one and place it in our ears.

“Backup’s only a few minutes out,” Gio argues.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I need to get my wife now,” I growl. “Not in a few fucking minutes.”

“Come on,” Paolo says. “We have enough men to get the show on the road—”

“And if the buyer shows up with his own security?” Gio asks.

Okay, he has a point there. Fuck.

“We split up. I’ll take the front, Paolo the back, and you, Gio, keep an eye on the road and stay close. Once backup arrives, you follow me in.”

Giving no one else time to argue or delay me, I run toward the house. Paolo’s hot on my heels, and when I turn left, he sprints right, toward the building’s rear.

Luckily, the door is unlocked, and I push it open with the barrel of my gun leading the way. The front room is empty, furniture covered in sheets, dust thick enough to write in.

A hallway stretches toward the back of the house, and I’m halfway down it when the first shot cracks from somewhere upstairs. The bullet punches into the wall six inches from my head, plaster dust raining down on my shoulder, and I drop to one knee behind the partial cover of a doorframe.

The fire is returned from somewhere outside—my men, engaging whoever’s on the second floor. And then the house erupts.

Gunfire from everywhere at once. Upstairs, downstairs, outside where Paolo should be circling the rear. The walls are thin enough that each shot sounds like it’s happening in the same room, and I push forward because standing still gets you killed.

A man appears at the end of the hallway, armed and panicked, raising his weapon too slowly. I put two rounds in his chest and step over him without breaking stride.

So much for wondering whether the buyer brought security. Harry sure as fuck didn’t suddenly grow an army of his own.

More shots from outside.

Closer now, rhythmic, the controlled fire of someone who knows what they’re doing. Then a burst—three shots in quick succession—and Gio’s voice in my ear, tight with something I haven’t heard from him in years.

“Paolo’s hit. Rear of the property, east side. Multiple rounds.”

My stride doesn’t falter. Can’t falter. Kira is in this house somewhere, and turning back means leaving her with Harry longer.

“How bad?”

“Don’t know yet. Men moving to extract.”

“Get him out. Now.”

“Working on it.”

I reach the kitchen at the back of the house. Also empty, though a door stands open to the yard, cold air pouring in, and beyond it I can hear shouting and more gunfire.

Make your next read a love story.

Search Lokepub on Google for romance novels.

Then I hear a whimper.

Kira.

The sound’s choked and desperate, coming from a room off the kitchen that might have been a pantry once. The door is closed. Locked, from the sound of it, when I try the handle.

I kick it. Once, twice, the wood splinters around the latch, and the door flies inward.

And there she is, my beautiful wife.

She’s on her feet, but barely. Blood tracks from her hairline down the left side of her face, dried to a rusty brown along her temple, with fresh blood still seeping from the cut near her forehead. Her eyes find mine, wide and terrified, and the relief that floods them almost knocks me off my feet.

Harry stands behind her, one arm locked around her waist, the other pressing a pistol into her side hard enough that I can see her flinch with each shift of his weight. His face is a wreck—bloodshot eyes, skin gone sallow from stress and whatever he’s been drinking.

“You.” The word comes out mangled, spit flying from his lips. “After all these years where I’ve worked for you… and then you… you took everything. Every fucking penny. NovaGen. The accounts. Everything I built—”

“You built nothing,” I interrupt. My voice is so quietly lethal the gunfire from outside nearly drowns it. “And you were never loyal to anyone but yourself, Harry. You sold your wife and daughter. You’re a middleman with a gun, and the gun’s the only interesting thing about you.”

His grip tightens, causing Kira to gasp, her body arching against his arm, and the sound cuts through me like a blade.

“She’s mine.” Harry’s voice cracks on the word. “My daughter. My blood. You think marrying her changes that? I raised her and put a roof over her head. She owes me everything. Fucking everything. You might have gotten her virginity, but she can still make me money on her back.”

Fuck me, he’s truly deranged.

The gun presses harder into Kira’s side. Her eyes are on mine, and I see it there—not just fear, but something harder. Something calculating. Her fingers are splayed against Harry’s forearm, not pushing, just resting, and the position is deliberate. She’s waiting for something.

I keep my eyes on hers. Not on the gun. Not on Harry’s face. Just Kira, bleeding and terrified, and still somehow the strongest person in the room.

“You want money?” I ask. My hand is steady on my own weapon, aimed at the center of Harry’s chest. “I’ll give you money. Name a number. Double it. Triple it. Let her go, and you walk out of here richer than you’ve ever been.”

He laughs. “Too late for that.” The gun shifts, angling upward toward Kira’s ribs.

My world narrows to the space between Harry’s finger and the trigger. To the gun pressed against my wife’s body. To the blood on her face, and the calculation in her eyes, and the absolute, bone-deep certainty that I will burn this entire fucking country to the ground before I let him take her from me.

I keep talking because talking keeps his finger off the trigger. Doesn’t matter what I say. The words are noise, empty and warm, filling the space between us while my eyes stay locked on Kira’s.

“Harry. Listen to me. You walk out of here with cash, no questions asked. More than NovaGen ever paid you. Enough to start over somewhere new. Mexico. Costa Rica. Anywhere you want.”

“Is that fear I hear in your voice, Domenico?” Harry asks, his beady eyes filled with malicious glee.

“Would you feel better if it were?”

Harry shrugs and opens his mouth to speak, but before he can utter a word, Kira hisses, “Don’t you dare give him anything.” Her tone is colder than I’ve heard before. “Don’t do it, Domenico.”

My eyes widen as Harry tightens his finger on the trigger.

“Do you hear me?” she demands. “Promise me you won’t give this piece of shit anything.”

“Kira—”

“Promise me!” she screams.

I want to tell her to shut the fuck up when she keeps pushing her dad, who’s growing redder by the second.

Dropping his arm, he grabs her hair and throws her to the side. “You fucking useless cunt…”

As soon as he isn’t clutching Kira like a human shield, I pull the trigger.

Pop!

The shot catches him square in the chest with a wet, meaty sound that echoes in the small room. Harry’s eyes go wide. His mouth opens, but whatever he was going to say dies with him. He drops hard, his body hitting the floorboards with a finality that feels like punctuation.

I’m across the room before his fingers have stopped twitching.

Kira stumbles to her feet and into me, her body colliding with mine so hard I have to brace against the wall to keep us both upright.

“D-Domenico,” she stutters. Her burst of bravado seems to leave her as fast as Harry’s life is draining out of him. Her entire body’s trembling like a branch in a storm. “I-I…”

“Shh,” I murmur. “I got you, baby. And you did so good. You were so brave.” I kiss her face after each word: lips, nose, cheeks, forehead, and…

“Ouch!” she cries when I touch the cut on her face.

My hands find her face, her arms, her ribs where the gun was pressed—checking for entry wounds, for blood I didn’t see, for anything that means she’s hurt worse than she looks.

“Hey. Hey, look at me.” My thumb brushes the blood from her temple, sticky and half-dried. “You’re okay. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

She’s shaking. Full-body tremors she tries to hide by pressing closer, her face buried against my chest, her fingers clutching the fabric of my jacket like she’s afraid I’ll disappear if she lets go.

“Oh, God… Vinny.” Her words are muffled against my shirt. “Is he… please tell me he’s alive.”

“He is, baby.” I cup the back of her head. “He’s at the hospital.”

She nods against my chest. Once, twice, the motion jerky with leftover adrenaline.

Even though there’s nothing I want more than to give my wife time to calm down, we have to go. I need to know my son’s okay, and we need to get the fuck out of here.

“Can you walk?” I ask, but at the same time as the question leaves me, her knees buckle. I quickly scoop her up, carrying her bridal-style out of the house.

Outside, the shooting has stopped. My men move through the property with the efficiency of people who’ve done this before, securing weapons, checking rooms, dragging the dead into one place so someone else can deal with them later.

The buyer and one of his men lie near the rear porch, at least that’s who I’m assuming they are. Or were. They’re dressed in suits instead of the clothes of the other men. Stepping over them, I move toward my car that’s now parked right in front of the door, and Gio’s already running toward us.

“We need to go,” he urges.

I carefully get into the back seat without disturbing Kira more than I need to. Paolo’s already there, half lying across the seat while one of my men keeps both hands pressed against a blood-soaked dressing at his abdomen.

His eyes flutter open when I slam the car door shut, and Gio immediately takes off like a bat out of hell. “W-we did i-it,” he wheezes, his voice weak.

“We did,” I confirm.

Kira lifts her head, and her mouth opens, but no words come out. Her head slumps back against my shoulder, and she loses consciousness.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck!

Kira comes around several minutes into the drive, confused and nauseous, but Paolo doesn’t move again before we reach the hospital.

The emergency department is chaos. Doctors, nurses, and the bustle of a place where bad things happen every day and nobody has time to be gentle about it.

Paolo’s immediately wheeled away so they can prep him for surgery. I’m not allowed to follow, which is for the best since I still have Kira in my arms. When they try to take her from me, I bare my teeth and tell them to show me where to go.

My wife is still pale and disoriented as I lay her down on the treatment bay the nurse tells me to use. She blinks slowly while a nurse cleans the wound.

“The cut’s superficial, but because you lost consciousness, we’ll want a CT to rule out any intracranial bleeding,” the nurse says.

“No,” Kira murmurs, shaking her head. “No, no, no. There’s nothing wrong with me. Nuh-uhh. No intracranial bleeding. No brain injury. I’m fine.”

I wish I knew what I could say to put her at ease. But honestly, after what her mom suffered through, I fully get that she keeps chanting ‘No, no, no’ over and over.

I stay with her until they take Kira for the CT, where I’m not allowed to follow, anyway. The second the doors close behind her, I spot Gio farther down the hall. He lifts a hand, waving me over.

A doctor in dark blue scrubs stands beside him, and one look at his expression has my stomach tightening.

“Paolo?” I demand before either of them can speak.

“Your son is still in surgery,” the doctor says. “He’s lost a significant amount of blood. We’re controlling the bleeding, but his antibody profile is making replacement difficult. We have compatible units for now, and the blood bank is searching for more, but if he continues losing blood, our supply could become a problem.”

Fuck.

I know exactly how much of a problem this could become. Why the hell didn’t I think of it sooner?

“How long do you have?” I ask, already knowing what I need to do.

“That depends on the bleeding and how much more he needs. Right now, he’s stable enough for us to keep working. But if you or any other relatives have previously been identified as compatible donors, that would—”

“I’m not a match,” I say. “But someone else is.”

My phone is in my hand before I finish speaking. I scroll through contacts until I find the number I need and hit call. It rings twice.

“Domenico?” The woman’s voice is calm. Calm. “What can I do for you?”

“Paolo’s been shot.” There’s no time for subtlety, so I don’t soften it. “And he’s lost a lot of blood. They’re struggling to find enough compatible blood, and they asked about known donors.”

There’s silence on the line, but I can still hear her breathing. “I’m on my way. Text me where you are.”

“How long?” I growl, needing a goddamn number. Something I can hold on to while my son fights for his life.

“The jet can be in the air within twenty minutes. I’ll call you when we land.”

And this is exactly why I always make sure one of my jets is in Chicago so she can use it for emergencies.

“Domenico?”

“I’m still here.”

“Look out for our son.”