Chapter 2 - The Race Through the Midnight Storm
Dominic made what should have been a forty-minute drive from the loop to the North Side in twenty-six terrifying minutes.
For the first time in his adult life, traffic laws, red lights, and civil ordinances seemed utterly ridiculous. Rain streaked violently across the windshield of his bulletproof black sedan as he cut aggressively through the slick Chicago streets, his mind warring against invasive images he desperately wanted to purge.
Hannah alone in a cold hospital room. Hannah screaming in pain. Hannah holding another man’s child.
He hated that final thought with every fiber of his being. And he hated himself even more for feeling that surge of jealous rage.
Eight months earlier, Hannah had been the single exception to every rule Dominic lived by. She was the only person on earth who could walk into his fortress-like estate without being searched by armed guards. She owned a quirky little independent neighborhood bookstore called Blue Door Books up in Lincoln Square. She wore oversized, faded vintage sweaters, drank terrible gas-station coffee that tasted like burnt rubber, and had once casually informed Dominic that his twelve-hundred-dollar Italian leather shoes looked like something “a depressed funeral director with emotional problems” would purchase.
He had laughed out loud—a rare, genuine sound that had caused his elite security team to nearly faint in shock.
Hannah had never treated him like a mafia king. She treated him like an exasperating, overly serious man who needed to eat more vegetables.
That was precisely why he had fallen hopelessly in love with her. But he had never told her the three words she deserved to hear. In Dominic’s violent underworld, love was dangerous information. Information quickly became lethal leverage. And leverage got people buried in unmarked graves.
So, instead of emotional vulnerability, he had tried to protect her his way: he had given her secure apartments, round-the-clock covert protection, digital access, expensive dinners, and private weekend getaways near Lake Geneva. He had given her everything except the actual emotional validation she desperately needed.
Then she had vanished into thin air, leaving him with an empty loft and a heartbreak he had spent eight months drowning in alcohol and syndicate business. He had assumed fear had finally outweighed her affection.
Now, she was in a hospital bed bringing a child into the world, and he was barreling through a midnight tempest to reach her side.
When he finally screeched to a halt at Lakeshore Community Hospital, he didn't bother parking in a designated stall. He simply abandoned his black sedan directly under the emergency entrance awning, leaving the engine running and the door wide open.
A startled security guard rushed out from the automatic doors, shouting angrily. “Sir! You can’t leave your vehicle idling right there! Move it immediately or it gets towed!”
Dominic didn't even slow down his stride. He threw a heavy gold-plated signet ring onto the hood of the car—a subtle, terrifying token recognized by every corrupt cop and street boss in the tri-state area.
“Tow it,” Dominic muttered darkly, pushing past the sliding glass doors into the sterile lobby.
At the maternity reception desk, a young, exhausted night-shift nurse looked up from her computer monitor, blinking sleepily behind her glasses. “Can I help you, sir? Visiting hours ended hours ago—”
“Hannah Reed,” Dominic interrupted, his voice dropping into a commanding, low timbre that made the nurse instantly sit up straight. “What room is she in?”
May you like
The nurse’s fingers flew across her keyboard, her eyes widening as she pulled up the digital chart. “Room... room 312. But are you family? Are you the father—”
She didn't finish her sentence. Dominic was already turning away, his long legs eating up the corridor as he surged toward the emergency stairwell, taking the steps two at a time in a desperate race against time.
