Chapter 2 - The Shattered Glass
The deafening crack of gunfire turned the busy morning street into a warzone of screams and shattering safety glass. Shards of the clinic’s heavy storefront exploded outward like crystalline rain, showering the concrete pavement. Claire screamed, her hands flying over her ears as instinct took over, curling her knees to her chest against the icy brick pillar.
Dominic didn't flinch. He didn't drop to the floor to save himself. Instead, he wrapped his massive body completely around hers, turning his back to the street to act as a human wall of muscle and bone. His arms locked around her shoulders, his face buried into her neck as the sharp staccato of automatic fire tore chunks of masonry from the pillar inches above their heads. Dust and pulverized mortar drifted over them like gray snow.
“Stay down, don't move!” Dominic growled into her ear, his voice deadly calm despite the chaos.
Down the avenue, tires screeched as two dark sedans that had been idling discreetly across the intersection swung violently into action. Dominic’s personal security team—men Claire hadn’t even noticed—returned fire with surgical, disciplined precision. The black SUV took multiple hits to its engine block, steam hissing violently from the grille, before it reversed wildly, crushed a fire hydrant, and sped off toward the highway, leaving a trail of radiator fluid and shattered windshield behind.
Silence descended over the sidewalk, thick, suffocating, and punctuated only by the distant, wailing sirens of Chicago police cruisers.
Claire was trembling so violently her teeth clicked together. “Dominic… Dominic, they were shooting… someone was shooting at us…”
“I know, sweetheart. It’s over. You’re alright,” Dominic murmured, his voice tight. He pushed back slightly, his hands frantically inspecting her arms, her head, her torso. “Did you take any glass? Are you hit? Look at me, Claire, are you hurt?”
“I’m fine! I’m fine, but you—” Claire’s eyes widened in horror as she looked at his back. The crisp white dress shirt beneath his unbuttoned suit was rapidly blooming with an ominous, expanding circle of crimson right beneath his left shoulder blade. “Dominic! You’re bleeding! You’ve been shot!”
Dominic glanced over his shoulder dismissively, as if swatting away a fly. “It’s a graze. Ricochet off the brickwork. It’s nothing.”
“That is not nothing!” she gasped, her hands shaking as she tried to press the fabric of his coat against the wound to stem the blood. “You’re bleeding through your clothes!”
A sleek black town car pulled abruptly to the curb, its doors flying open before the vehicle had even come to a complete halt. A tall, impeccably groomed man in his late forties with cold gray eyes and an earpiece stepped out, a sidearm discreetly tucked into his tailored jacket.
“Boss!” the man barked, rushing toward them. “We intercepted two of the shooters’ support vehicles, but the primary target slipped past. The area is compromised. CPD will be here in less than two minutes. We have to move right now.”
Dominic stood up, pulling Claire smoothly to her feet and keeping her tucked securely against his uninjured side. “Marcus, get the perimeter secure. Call Dr. Henderson and tell him to meet us at the penthouse. Not the hospital—I don't need reporters sniffing around a gunshot wound.”
“Wait, no!” Claire protested, struggling against Dominic’s iron grip. “I can’t get in that car with you! Look at what just happened! People are shooting at you in broad daylight! If I go with you, I’m putting a target on my back!”
Dominic turned to her, his jaw set like granite, though his pale skin betrayed the sudden loss of blood. “Claire, look behind you.”
She turned. The Lakeshore Women’s Center was devastated. The waiting room where she had been sitting just ten minutes earlier was perforated with bullet holes. The receptionist she had spoken to was crouched behind a overturned desk, weeping hysterically into a landline phone. If Dominic hadn’t run through those doors and dragged her outside to talk, Claire would have been sitting directly in the line of that merciless spray of lead.
The realization hit her like an icy plunge into Lake Michigan.
“They weren't trying to hit me,” Dominic said, his dark eyes burning into hers with chilling certainty. “They tracked your appointment. They knew you were pregnant, Claire. They were trying to hit you.”
Claire’s breath hitched in her throat. The paper folder in her purse seemed to burn. Her hand dropped once more to her stomach, no longer out of shame or uncertainty, but out of a ferocious, primal wave of maternal instinct she hadn't known she possessed. Someone had targeted her baby.
“The Detroit syndicate didn't sign a truce,” Claire whispered, her voice hollow with realization. “You lied to me.”
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“I didn't lie about the truce,” Dominic answered, grimacing slightly as he ushered her toward the open door of the town car. “I lied about who was behind it. It wasn't just Detroit. It's someone in my own family, Claire. Someone who wants my empire and knows that the only thing in this world that could ever bring Dominic Vale to his knees is the woman carrying his blood.”
Before she could process the sheer weight of his words, Dominic guided her into the leather interior of the luxury car, sliding in beside her as Marcus slammed the heavy, bulletproof door shut. The car lurched forward, accelerating seamlessly into the downtown traffic just as three police cruisers screamed past in the opposite direction.
