Chapter 6 - Shadows on Park Avenue
The next two weeks brought a fragile, cautious rhythm to their lives.
Dominic did not force his way into their home. Instead, he arrived every morning at 7:45 AM, standing on the sidewalk with three warm cups from the local bakery—hot chocolate with extra marshmallows for the kids, black coffee for Natalie. He walked them to school, trailing three paces behind, learning the names of Oliver’s favorite dinosaurs and listening to Mia explain why her shoes were faster than her brother’s because they had glitter on the heels.
For the first time in his thirty-eight years, Dominic Moretti was not thinking about stock margins, quarterly yields, or hostile takeovers. He was thinking about whether Oliver would remember to wear his mittens and whether Mia’s scraped knee needed a bandage with cartoon frogs.
But peace in Dominic’s world was always bought with blood, and the debts of his past were not so easily cleared.
On a chilly Tuesday afternoon, Natalie was reviewing vendor contracts at the Collins Events downtown office when her phone buzzed with an unknown private number.
She picked it up. “Natalie Collins.”
“You think you won, don't you?”
The voice was raspy, trembling with manic venom. Isabella.
Natalie sat up straight, her pulse spiking. “Isabella? You’re violating your bail conditions right now. The FBI is monitoring your movements.”
“The FBI doesn't know where I am,” Isabella hissed with a wild, wet laugh. “They think I'm at my sister’s estate in New Jersey. But I’m watching your little Brooklyn sanctuary right now, Natalie. It’s so quaint. The little red bricks. The little preschool down the street.”
Natalie’s blood turned to absolute ice. She stood up so fast her office chair slammed into the drywall behind her. “If you touch my children, I will hunt you down myself.”
“You took everything from me!” Isabella screamed, her voice distorting through the speaker. “Eight years! I gave him eight years of my life! I cleaned his messes! I kept him sane! And he threw me away like garbage the second you showed up with your bastard brats! If I can't have the Moretti name, neither will you!”
The line went dead.
Natalie didn't hesitate. She dialed Dominic’s private line. It connected on the first ring.
“Dominic!” she cried, panic stripping all composure from her voice. “Isabella is in Brooklyn! She’s at the school!”
“I'm already moving,” Dominic’s voice came back, cold, lethal, and vibrating with an adrenaline she had never heard in him before. “Marcus’s surveillance team picked up an unregistered sedan two blocks from the school five minutes ago. I’m four blocks away. Stay where you are!”
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“No! I'm coming to my children!”
Natalie grabbed her purse and ran out of the office, sprinting toward the subway stairs as rain began to pound against the concrete pavement once more.
