Chapter 2 - The Sterling-Gray Eyes
The sterile ICU room dropped into a suffocating, breathless void where only the hum of the infusion pump remained.
I stared at the bleeding crime lord before me, my mind racing through six years of bitter resentment, lonely nights, and tears wept into baby blankets.
He hadn't abandoned me because I was disposable.
He had thrown himself into hell to keep the flames away from my door.
Yet, looking at his bruised, scarred face, the secret burning inside my heart demanded to be heard.
“You thought you were protecting me, Dominic,” I whispered, my voice trembling with an emotion so deep it threatened to break my spine.
“You thought you were walking away from a simple girlfriend who could easily move on and forget your touch.”
Dominic reached out, his warm, rough fingers gently brushing against the hem of my scrub sleeve.
“I never expected you to forget me, Sarah; I prayed every single night that you would hate me enough to live a peaceful, beautiful life.”
I let out a sharp, broken laugh that was half sob, pulling my arm away from his reach.
“Peaceful?” I choked out, fresh tears burning behind my eyelids.
“Two days after you disappeared into the night, I stood in my bathroom holding a positive pregnancy test with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.”
The cardiac monitor beside the bed instantly shrieked an erratic alarm as Dominic’s heart rate spiked to one hundred and forty beats per minute.
Dominic lunged forward against his restraints, gasping in agony as the surgical incisions across his ribs tore against the compression wraps.
“What did you say…?” Dominic breathed, his face draining of every remaining drop of color.
“You were pregnant…?”
“I had our baby alone in a public county hospital while working eighty hours a week as a surgical intern, Dominic,” I said, looking him dead in his sterling-gray eyes.
“Her name is Lily.”
“She is six years old.”
“She has your sharp jaw, your stubborn chin, and your exact, terrifying sterling-gray eyes.”
Dominic sat completely paralyzed, his mouth parted, tears welling in the eyes of the man who had ordered the destruction of cartels without blinking.
The undisputed king of the Eastern Seaboard looked down at his trembling, blood-stained hands, his entire reality crumbling into dust.
“A daughter…” Dominic whispered, his voice cracking into a broken, ragged sob that shook his massive frame.
“I have a daughter…”
“She sleeps five miles from this hospital, Dominic,” I said, stepping back toward the door.
“She thinks her father is an honorable naval captain who was lost at sea during a storm.”
“And I will die before I let your blood-soaked underworld touch her innocent life.”
Dominic reached toward me, his voice thick with desperate, raw supplication.
“Sarah, please… don't take her away from me… let me see her once… just once!”
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Before I could answer, the red emergency alarm on the ward corridor outside began shrieking in rapid, terrifying bursts.
The harsh sound of suppressed automatic gunfire echoed through the heavy glass partition, shattering the quiet night.
