Chapter 3 - BLOOD ON THE SATIN
Madame Yvette had hit the floor with the agility of someone who had survived the Cold War in Berlin, crawling swiftly behind the heavy oak barres toward the rear fire exit.
Lily was tucked beneath my chest, completely enveloped by my coat. Her hands were clenched into my dress shirt, her little heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped sparrow. She didn't scream. That was the most terrifying part. She was trembling violently, her eyes wide, staring up at me in absolute, paralyzing shock.
"Dominic?" she whimpered, the bravado completely stripped away. "Is it thunder?"
"Just noise, princess," I whispered, my voice rock-steady even as the adrenaline burned through my veins like pure gasoline. "Look at me. Look only at me."
She locked her eyes onto mine.
Marco was already on his stomach, his Glock 19 out, scanning the roofline of the industrial warehouse across the street. "Sniper. High angle, three hundred yards. Suppressed .308. He's repositioning!"
"He's not alone," I growled, hearing the screech of heavy tires on the pavement below the studio. "They didn't come to assassinate. They came to snatch her. Marco, seal the freight elevator."
"On it!" Marco crawled rapidly toward the wall console, hitting the emergency lockout switch. The heavy steel fire doors slammed shut across the corridor with a deafening hydraulic hiss.
I reached behind my back, drawing the custom Sig Sauer P226 concealed beneath my tailored jacket.
Lily saw the steel. Her breath hitched. "Are you a policeman?"
"Something like that," I said gently, tucking a loose curl behind her ear. "Listen to me, Lily. You told Madame Yvette you were brave today, right?"
She nodded once, a terrified, jerky motion.
"I need you to be the bravest swan in New York. You stay behind this piano. Do not move. Do not peek. Even if you hear loud noises, you keep your head down and count the butterflies on your chair. Can you do that for me?"
"One... two... three..." she began whispering immediately, her eyes screwed shut, her tiny fingers digging into the carpet.
"Good girl."
The stairwell door exploded inward with a concussive blast of breaching charges. Wood splintered into shards. Through the smoke, four men in tactical black, wearing balaclavas and holding submachine guns, burst into the dance studio.
They weren't common street thugs. The way they cleared the threshold—muzzles up, sweeping sectors, disciplined spacing—screamed Eastern European mercenaries. Viktor Vance’s private payroll.
"Clear the room! Grab the girl, kill the rest!" one shouted in a thick Slavic accent.
They didn't see me rise.
A man of my size shouldn't be fast. That had always been the fatal mistake of my enemies. They saw a wall; they didn't realize the wall could move like a freight train.
I stepped out from behind the piano. Two rounds from my Sig took the point man through the throat before his boots fully crossed the threshold. He collapsed backward, knocking the second man off balance.
Marco engaged from the far corner, his sidearm barking three times in rapid succession, dropping the third mercenary into the broken plaster.
The fourth man swung his weapon toward Lily’s hiding spot.
*Big mistake.*
I closed the distance in two strides, grabbing the barrel of his carbine with my left hand, wrenching it upward as a burst of automatic fire tore a line of craters through the mirrored ceiling. Glass rained down like a crystalline storm. With my right hand, I drove the butt of my pistol into the side of his skull with enough force to crack bone. He crumpled to the floor, motionless.
The second man was scrambling to his feet, pulling a combat blade from his tactical vest.
I didn't draw my gun. I grabbed him by the throat, hoisting him off the floor until his combat boots kicked uselessly in the air, pressing him against the mirrored wall until the glass splintered behind his spine.
"Who sent you?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
He choked, spitting blood against my cheek. "Vance... Vance says she belongs to the state... not you..."
"Tell Vance," I said, leaning in until my lips brushed his ear, "that Lily Harper belongs to Dominic Moretti. And if he ever looks in her direction again, I won't just kill him. I will wipe his bloodline off the face of this continent."
I snapped his collarbone with a single downward thrust of my fist and threw him into the debris.
The room fell deathly silent, save for the hum of the air vents and the distant wail of police sirens six blocks away.
I stood in the center of the shattered dance studio. The pristine mirrors were destroyed. Plaster dust coated my bespoke suit. Blood—some mine from a shard of flying glass, mostly theirs—stained my white cuffs.
I was the monster the newspapers wrote about. The butcher. The devil of the docks.
Then, a soft rustle came from behind the mahogany piano.
Lily slowly crawled out on her hands and knees, dragging her braced legs behind her through the dust. She stopped three feet away, staring at the carnage, staring at the men groaning on the floor, and then looking up at me.
At the blood dripping from my knuckles.
I froze. My chest seized. I had spent two weeks letting her call me a refrigerator, letting her pin tulle to my waist, pretending I was just a big, clumsy man who could lift her into the light. Now the mask was off. She would scream. She would cry. She would see the beast.
Lily looked at the blood on my hand.
Slowly, painfully, she pulled herself up using the edge of the piano until she was standing on her trembling legs, leaning against the wood for support. She reached into the tiny pocket of her lavender dance skirt.
She pulled out a small, crinkled object.
A neon-pink plastic Band-Aid decorated with smiling glittery unicorns.
She took a shaky step forward, catching herself against the barre, then another step. She reached out with both hands, taking my scarred, bloody right hand into her small, warm palms.
Peeling the paper back with her teeth, she smoothed the unicorn Band-Aid directly over the gash across my knuckles.
"You have a boo-boo," she whispered, her chin trembling, tears finally cutting clean tracks through the dust on her cheeks. "Swans have to fix their dinosaurs."
I dropped to both knees before her. For the first time in twenty-five years, my eyes stung with hot, unbidden moisture. I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her close, letting her bury her face in my shoulder as the police sirens drew closer.
"I’m sorry, princess," I choked out against her hair. "I'm so sorry."
"Did we finish the dance?" she mumbled into my neck, exhaustion finally catching up to her small body.
May you like
"We finished it," I said, holding her tighter. "And nobody is ever going to stop your music again."
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