Chapter 8 - The Gun Beneath Her Jaw
The gun was pressed beneath Hannah Cole’s jaw when Dominic Moretti finally understood why he had spent twelve years making sure no one sat beside him.
Across the darkened theater box, Dominic stood perfectly still.
Below them, nearly two thousand people were applauding an orchestra that had no idea a kidnapping was happening thirty feet above their heads.
The man holding Hannah tightened his arm around her throat.
“Tell your people to back away, Moretti.”
Dominic didn’t look at the gun.
He looked at Hannah.
Six weeks earlier, he hadn’t known her name.
Now there was fear in his eyes, and everyone in the room knew that was more dangerous than anger.
“Let her go,” he said.
The gunman smiled.
“You don’t give orders tonight.”
Dominic slowly spread his empty hands.
“Then make a trade.”
Hannah’s breath caught.
“Dominic, don’t.”
He ignored her.
“Take me instead.”
The gunman laughed, but Dominic didn’t.
He had purchased three seats in that same private box for years because he could not tolerate strangers beside him.
Tonight, he would have given away the theater, his fortune, his name, and his life for the woman sitting in the chair he had once paid to keep empty.
“You think I’m an idiot, Dominic?” Rossi sneered, his spit hitting the collar of Hannah’s emerald dress. “I take you, your snipers blow my head off before I reach the lobby. But this little bird? She’s my golden ticket out of the country. You’re going to order your men to stand down, clear the rear service exit, and wire fifty million to my offshore account in the Caymans. If a single soul follows my van, her pretty neck gets snapped like a twig.”
Hannah tried to speak, but the steel pressed harder against her bone, forcing her chin up toward the gilded ceiling. Tears of pain and fury spilled over her eyelashes. She looked at Dominic, trying to communicate with her eyes: Do not give him what he wants. Do not let him destroy you again.
Dominic didn't look at Rossi. He kept his gaze pinned entirely on Hannah. In the dim reflection of the chandelier light, the terror in Dominic’s face transformed into something terrifyingly absolute—a calm, mathematical precision that signaled a man who had decided that death was acceptable, so long as it claimed his enemy first.
“You made one mistake, Victor,” Dominic spoke softly, his voice cutting clean through the thunderous piano chords echoing from below.
“I didn't make any mistakes!” Rossi barked, stepping toward the curtain and dragging Hannah with him.
“You brought a gun into my theater,” Dominic whispered. “And you assumed I was the only predator in the box.”
From behind the heavy velvet drapes of the side alcove—the tiny access corridor used only by stagehands—a shadow detached itself from the wall.
It was Luca.
Blood stained the shoulder of his suit, but his eyes were wide and lucid. In his right hand was a heavy brass theatrical weight, salvaged from the rigging lines.
Before Rossi could register the draft of air behind him, Hannah slammed the sharp stiletto heel of her shoe directly down onto Rossi’s instep with every ounce of strength remaining in her body.
May you like
Rossi shrieked in agony, his grip on her throat loosening for a fraction of a second.
It was the only second Dominic needed.
