“She’s in the kitchen,” Marco said. “Vitals stable. Baby’s heartbeat strong.”

Dominic didn’t realize how tightly he’d been holding himself together until he heard that last part.

He entered the kitchen quietly.

Isabella sat on a stool at the marble island, wrapped in one of his white robes because the agency uniform had gone into the trash. Her hair was down now, falling in tired waves over her shoulders. A mug of chamomile tea sat between both hands. She looked younger without the maid’s cap and somehow even more exhausted.

The bruises on her throat were livid beneath the warm lights.

He wanted Arthur dead all over again.

She looked up when he entered.

For half a second, she rose automatically, old fear rising before thought could stop it.

“You don’t have to stand for me,” he said.

She froze, then slowly sat again. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I know.”

That tiny mercy in his answer seemed to embarrass her more than anger would have. She stared into the tea. “The doctor was kind.”

“He works for me,” Dominic said. “He knows what kind of care I expect.”

“You say that like there’s a list.”

“There is.”

A weak smile touched her mouth and disappeared.

He stayed on the opposite side of the island, giving her room. “Harrison says the baby is stressed, but not in immediate danger. You’re dehydrated. Your blood pressure is too high. You haven’t been sleeping.”

She looked down.

“You haven’t been eating enough either.”

“I’ve been eating.”

“Not enough.”

Her fingers tightened around the mug. “Arthur had opinions about what I should weigh.”

Dominic stared at her for a long second.

He had been furious before.

Now he felt something colder, far more dangerous. Not rage. Judgment.

A man who starved a pregnant woman in order to control her body deserved a kind of ending Dominic normally reserved for traitors.

“I’m sorry,” she said suddenly.

His brows drew together. “For what?”

“For bringing this into your life.”

He gave one short, incredulous shake of the head. “Izzy.”

“I mean it. You built whatever this is.” She gestured vaguely toward the windows, the city, the polished steel and marble and security layered invisibly around them. “You have your world. I walked into it bleeding and made my mess your problem.”

Dominic leaned both hands on the counter and looked at her fully.

“You were never a problem.”

She swallowed.

He continued, more quietly, “You were the only good thing I ever walked away from on purpose.”

The words landed between them with all ten missing years attached.

She blinked quickly and looked down before he could read too much in her face.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“Now you stay here.”

“Arthur will look for me.”

“He can look.”

“He’ll tear through every place he thinks I might go.”

“Then he’ll waste a lot of time.”

She shook her head, panic creeping back in. “You don’t know him when he’s desperate.”

Dominic held her gaze. “You don’t know me when I am.”

Silence stretched.

He saw the moment it hit her—that the boy from Bensonhurst was gone, that the man in front of her now was someone newspapers would never name correctly, someone police watched without touching, someone who could lock down a hospital floor with a single phone call if he chose.

And yet, for the first time in a long time, she didn’t look frightened by that.

She looked relieved.

“Rest tonight,” he said. “By tomorrow, Arthur Pendleton will no longer be your problem.”

Her voice turned thin. “What does that mean?”

It meant Leo was bringing Arthur to a warehouse in Red Hook.

It meant Sylvio Dante was already waiting there with ledgers, forged clean transfer documents, and the kind of terror that convinced men to sign their names with steady hands while they were falling apart inside.

It meant Dominic was about to decide whether Arthur’s punishment would be legal, extralegal, or biblical.

What he said was, “It means he doesn’t get to hurt you again.”

She knew enough not to ask more.

That scared him too.

Dominic left the penthouse twenty minutes later and drove to Brooklyn through rain that made the city look blurred and dishonest.

The warehouse in Red Hook had once stored imported marble. Now it stored things far more useful: contraband shipments, discreet meetings, consequences.

Arthur Pendleton was tied to a steel chair in the center of the floor.

He was handsome in the way magazine ads made men handsome—clean jaw, expensive haircut, old-money features. Even terrified, he looked like he belonged on a golf course more than in a warehouse full of shadows.

It disgusted Dominic on sight.

Arthur jerked against the restraints when Dominic stepped under the hanging light. “Mr. Castellano? Sir, please—there’s been a misunderstanding.”

Dominic said nothing.

Leo stood a few feet back, arms folded. Sylvio was farther behind him, sweating through a dress shirt that probably cost more than a teacher’s monthly rent in Queens.

Arthur licked dry lips. “I was meeting one of your people. I just need time. I can fix this.”

Dominic stopped in front of him. “You owe my family eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

Arthur nodded frantically. “Yes. Yes, but I can get it. The market—”

“Do not insult me with another lie.”

Arthur flinched.

“We know about the Volkov games. We know about the escorts. We know about the drugs. We know you used your wife’s property as leverage.”

Arthur went white.

Dominic crouched slightly, not out of kindness, but so the man would have no choice but to meet his eyes.

“You told her you were day trading,” Dominic said. “You told her the market was bad.”

Arthur’s mouth opened. Closed.

Then something revoltingly calculating entered his expression.

Desperate men sometimes turned honest.

Real cowards turned creative.

“Look,” Arthur whispered. “I can’t cover the whole debt in cash. But I have something else.”

Dominic waited.

“My wife.”

The silence after that was so complete the drip of rainwater from an overhead beam sounded loud.

Arthur rushed on, mistaking stillness for interest. “She’s high-risk. Placenta previa. Blood pressure problems. Six months ago I took out a major life insurance policy. Five million. Comprehensive coverage.” His voice dropped to an eager hiss. “If something happened—an accident, a fall, complications—the trust pays out clean. We all win.”

No one in the warehouse moved.

Even Leo looked sick.

Arthur kept talking because he was too stupid to stop. “I’ve already been putting pressure on her. Stress, you know? Her vitals are a mess. It wouldn’t take much. Break-in. Robbery gone wrong. One of your guys stages it right, nobody asks questions.”

Dominic stood absolutely motionless.

In his head, he saw Isabella in the penthouse kitchen wearing his robe, trying to hide bruises that Arthur had left on her throat.

He saw twelve-year-old Isabella on a Bensonhurst fire escape, handing him the bigger half of a cherry popsicle because she always did that when she knew he was pretending not to be hungry.