Dominic’s POV
I took the encrypted phone from Gemma’s trembling hands and switched it to speaker without hesitation. The tension in our secure safe house was suffocating as we waited for the voice that had been haunting my woman for months.
"Well, well, well, Gemma baby! Woohoo! Guess who’s calling?" A disturbing laugh crackled through the speaker, the kind that made my trigger finger itch. "Sweet little Gemma, won’t you talk to your old friend? Getting all emotional on ?"
Gemma’s face drained of color, but she managed to keep her voice steady despite the fear I could see in her dark eyes. "How did you get this number, Nick?"
"Oh, princess, don’t you know?" Another sick laugh followed, making my blood pressure spike dangerously. "That pretty little friend of yours Lila was kind enough to share it with today."
"Was it you? You sick bastard!" Gemma’s composure finally cracked, fury replacing fear as her hands clenched into fists.
"Guilty as charged, sweetheart. I had one of my boys pay her a visit today." His voice was dripping with the kind of twisted satisfaction that made want to put a bullet between his eyes. "Too bad my guy couldn’t finish the job like I told him to. Lila got lucky this ti."
Watching Gemma struggle not to completely break down made rage burn through my veins like acid. She whispered, "You’re nothing but a psychotic animal, Nick."
"Psychotic about you, baby girl! This little incident today was just a friendly reminder that there’s nowhere you can hide from . You belong to , Gemma! And I’m gonna drag you back to where you belong, even if I have to go through your rich mafia boyfriend."
"You’re completely insane!" Gemma’s control was slipping fast, tears starting to stream down her cheeks.
"Crazy in love with you, princess! Today’s little knife party was just a warm-up. Next ti that interfering bitch dies for real. But if you want to keep your precious mommy, your little girlfriends, and your mafia boyfriend breathing, you’ll co crawling back to where you belong."
My hands were already moving toward the gun holstered under my jacket. This street rat had just threatened my family, and in our world, that was a death sentence.
"You’ll never touch any of them, and I will never co back to you. You’ll never put your filthy hands on again." Gemma’s tears were flowing freely now, but her voice carried the kind of steel that made fall in love with her in the first place.
"We’ll see about that, princess. We’ll see real soon." The line went dead with an ominous click.
The mont the connection ended, Gemma collapsed into heart-wrenching sobs. I pulled her against my chest imdiately, wrapping my arms around her shaking form as she buried her face in my shirt. My hand moved in slow circles across her back while my mind was already calculating exactly how I was going to make Nick suffer before I put him in the ground.
When her crying finally subsided to quiet sniffles, I pressed my lips to the top of her head. "Songbird, let get you that chamomile tea. Amber will keep you company."
"You don’t have to take care of like this, Dominic," she protested weakly, though she made no move to leave my arms.
"Yes, I absolutely do. Hot tea and those butter cookies you love are the only things that calm you down when you get worked up like this." My attempt to lighten the mood earned a small, watery smile that made my chest tighten.
Amber was already padding over to the edge of our bed, pressing his massive head against her leg with that uncanny ability he had to sense when she needed comfort. That dog was better therapy than half the shrinks in the city.
The next morning, after dropping Gemma off at the family’s legitimate front office where she worked, I promised to have one of my n deliver her a clean phone by lunch. I kept her compromised device with as I drove straight to the precinct to et with Detective Daniel, one of our most reliable assets in the police departnt. He was going to lose his mind when he found out Nick was behind the attack on Lila.
"Dominic, here this early? That’s not like you." Daniel’s surprise was obvious as I walked into his cluttered office in the back of the building.
"Morning, Daniel. I would’ve called ahead, but you had your phone turned off all last night." I studied his exhausted face, noting the stress lines around his eyes. "What was that about anyway?"
He ran a hand through his disheveled dark hair and rubbed his stubbled jaw. "The clusterfuck that’s about to explode in my face. Christ, Dominic, why does everything in this city have to get so goddamn complicated?"
"Well, they’re about to get a hell of a lot more complicated with the information I brought you."
He looked up at with a deep scowl. "Just go ahead and drive the knife in deeper, why don’t you?"
"Funny you should ntion knives, because that’s exactly what I’m here to talk about."
"Did Gemma or any of the security detail rember anything else about the attacker?"
"Gemma got a call from Nick in the middle of the night."
"What does that piece of shit have to do with anything?" Confusion flickered across his weathered face before understanding dawned like a thunderstorm. "Wait a minute. How the hell does he have her new secured number?"
"Because the attack on Lila wasn’t random street violence. Nick orchestrated the whole thing."
Daniel’s fist slamd into his tal desk hard enough to rattle the coffee mug sitting on top, his fury unmistakable and imdiate. I raised my hand to keep him from exploding completely. "There’s more." I quickly recounted every word of Nick’s threatening phone call and slid Gemma’s compromised phone across his desk.
"At least now we have his current number. I can push for a wiretap authorization given the escalation in violence." Daniel sighed heavily, his shoulders sagging under the weight of this new developnt.
"When they told our favorite tech mogul was gracing our humble station house again, I had to see it with my own eyes." Detective Inspector Adler walked in with his characteristic easy swagger. "Dominic, thinking about switching careers and joining the force?"
I managed a genuine smile for the veteran detective. "Even if I wanted to, Adler, I’d make the world’s worst cop."
"Well, considering the amount of trouble you family associates seem to attract, you’d definitely be the biggest target for every criminal organization in the city." Adler’s infectious laugh filled the room, and despite the gravity of our situation, I found myself chuckling along.
Daniel quickly brought Adler up to speed on my visit, and the detective’s expression sharpened imdiately at the ntion of wiretap possibilities.
"A surveillance authorization could be exactly what we need to jumpstart this investigation, which has been moving at a snail’s pace. Your father vanished without a trace, Nick’s been ghost for weeks, and we still haven’t confird whether he was behind those poisoned chocolates that almost killed Gemma." Adler ticked off each point on his fingers thodically.
"So basically, you still don’t know anything concrete." I couldn’t keep the frustration and growing desperation out of my voice, terrified this nightmare might drag on indefinitely.
"It’s not quite that simple, Dominic. We’re not completely incompetent here." Adler’s smile held a hint of sothing mysterious that caught my attention.
"Sorry, Adler, I didn’t an it like that. But it’s incredibly frustrating to be stuck in this dangerous ss for months without making any real progress toward ending it." I tried to explain my mounting sense of helplessness without insulting their professional capabilities.
"I understand your frustration completely, Dominic. And you’re not wrong about our lack of visible progress. But I was actually just coming to brief Daniel on so fresh intelligence we received overnight. Lucky for us that you’re here, because we might need your particular expertise to make sense of it." Adler settled into the chair beside , his expression turning deadly serious.
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