Lahat ng Kabanata ng Dominated By Him: Kabanata 141 - Kabanata 150

Vito POVTony came in without knocking, which meant the news wasn't good.He set a folder on the desk and stood back. That was his way — put the information down, give me a second before I had to respond to it."Dr. Rosenberg," he said. "He was in Maine. A fishing village called Crayne's Point, about three hours north of Boston. Our contact picked up his vehicle registration at a gas station on Route 1."I turned back to the window.The east garden was laid out below me — the stone path, the boxwood hedges, the bench near the fountain. Maria was down there now, standing near the greenhouse door with her phone pressed to her ear, gesturing at one of the groundskeepers with the particular authority of someone who had decided that authority was hers to exercise. The groundskeeper was nodding. He shouldn't have been nodding."She's redirected the florist order again," Tony said, following my gaze. He didn't have to explain which she."I noticed.""She also asked Mrs. Benedetti to have you

Sophia POVI eventually left the fishing village and came to Denniston, New Hampshire.The diner opened at six.I was there by five-forty-five, turning on the coffee machine and wiping down the counter the way Ruth had shown me on my first day — left to right, overlap on the seams, don't skip the edges. Ruth ran the place the way Edith had run the clinic, which was to say she ran it herself and expected everyone around her to keep up without being told twice.She'd hired me after a three-minute conversation in the parking lot. I'd said I needed work and I was good with people and I didn't need much. She'd said the pay was eleven dollars an hour and I'd start tomorrow. That was it.My name here was Anna. Anna Webb. I'd picked it because it was plain enough to disappear into and short enough that I wouldn't pause when someone called it.Three weeks in, I almost believed it.The men came in at eleven-fifteen.There were two of them. I noticed them before the bell above the door had finis

Sophia POVThe morning light in the motel was thin and grey, filtering through curtains that smelled of decades of stale cigarettes and cheap detergent. I woke up not to the sound of birds, but to the hum of a dated television I’d left on the night before. I was in a small town on the edge of the desert, a place where no one asked for your name as long as you had cash.I pushed myself up against the headboard, my back aching. My hand went instinctively to my stomach. The baby was quiet this morning, a small weight that reminded me why I was running, why I was hiding in a place where the wallpaper was peeling and the lock on the door felt too flimsy to stop a stiff breeze.I reached for the remote, my fingers trembling slightly. On the screen, a local news anchor was speaking with a forced, professional intensity. Then, the headline scrolled across the bottom of the screen in bold red letters: ROMANO FAMILY INFIGHTING REACHES BREAKING POINT; GUNSHOTS REPORTED AT COUNCIL MEETING.My hea

Lucy POVThe road stretched out like a long, grey ribbon under the harsh glare of the midday sun. I kept my hands steady on the wheel of the Peterbilt, the familiar vibration of the engine humming through my boots. Usually, I liked the solitude of the long haul. Out here, between the state lines, nobody cared who you were or where you were going. But today, the silence in the cab was heavy, broken only by the ragged breathing of the woman in the passenger seat.I didn't want to get involved. That was my first rule: Mind your own business, and you’ll live to see the next sunset. In this line of work, especially the "off-the-books" cargo I sometimes moved, curiosity was a death sentence. But when I’d seen her standing in the middle of the highway, eyes wide with a terror so pure it looked like glass, something in me snapped.She was a mess. Her knees were shredded, blood matting the fabric of her leggings, and her face was smeared with dirt and dried tears. But it was the way she held h

Sophia POVThe screen of my phone stayed dark, but the words Lucy had sent were burned into the back of my eyelids. Enzo Romano’s son was shot. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the flash of a muzzle, the spray of blood, and Vito’s face—that cold, arrogant, beautiful face—turning pale as life drained away from him.I stood up from the creaky bed and started pacing the small guest room. Five steps to the window, five steps back to the door. The floorboards groaned under my feet, a rhythmic protest that matched the throbbing in my head."I shouldn't care," I whispered to the empty, peeling walls. My voice sounded hollow, like it belonged to someone else. "I should be relieved. If he’s gone, the contract is gone. The fear is gone. I’m free."I stopped at the window and stared out at the dark silhouette of the trees. Free. That was what I wanted, wasn't it? I had jumped out of a motel window, scraped my knees raw, and risked my life and the life of my unborn baby just to get away from th