Chapter 1 - The Shadows of TribecaThe heavy mahogany door of my private penthouse in Tribeca clicked shut, locking out the howling, freezing February wind of Manhattan.
Inside, the warm, ambient golden lighting illuminated a quiet sanctuary of Italian leather, dark timber, and floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking the glittering lights of the Hudson River.
Four tiny pairs of worn, damp sneakers sat in a neat row near the marble threshold.
Milo, Mason, Max, and Micah—six-year-old quadruplets wearing matching navy sweaters—were sitting on the expansive plush velvet sofa in the center of the living room. They were holding steaming mugs of hot chocolate that my personal chef had prepared ten minutes ago, their small legs dangling off the edge, their gray-blue eyes wide with a mixture of awe and exhaustion.
Standing near the panoramic window, her server's apron folded neatly over her arm, was Mara Bennett.
She looked impossibly thin, her cheekbones sharp, her dark hair pulled back into a simple knot, wearing a plain gray sweater that hung loosely over her frail frame. Yet her green eyes held the same fierce, unyielding light that had stolen my heart six years ago when she was a twenty-two-year-old music student in the East Village.
My hands trembled inside the pockets of my charcoal wool coat.
In my right pocket rested a three-carat pear-shaped diamond engagement ring—the ring meant for Brielle Cartwright. In my left pocket rested a satellite phone that was vibrating continuously with frantic, furious calls from my mother, Eleanor Moretti, and three senior captains of the Moretti crime syndicate.
I didn't answer the phone. I didn't reach for the ring.
I took off my coat, dropped it over the back of a chair, and walked slowly toward the sofa.
Milo—the eldest quadruplet by three minutes—set his mug down on the glass coffee table, pushed his dark hair back with his right hand, and touched the nape of his neck.
Beside him, Mason, Max, and Micah mirrored the exact same movement in unison.
My breath caught violently in my throat. The physical proof was absolute, indisputable, and overwhelming. These four boys weren't just Mara's children. They were my sons. My blood. The heirs to the Moretti empire that my mother had spent six years telling me would never exist because I was supposedly infertile following a gunshot wound in my youth.
"Dominic," Mara's voice cut through the silence—a quiet, raspy whisper that carried six years of unhealed grief. "You gave us a warm room for the night. Thank you. We will leave for the bus station at sunrise."
I stopped three feet away from her.
"You aren't going to a bus station, Mara," I said, my baritone dropping into a quiet, razor-sharp register that made the air in the room go cold. "You are never sleeping in a storage room, a motel, or a bus station ever again."
Mara let out a bitter, humorless laugh, her green eyes flashing with sudden, defensive anger. "Do not speak to me like that! You have no right to command me, Dominic! You chose your mother's empire! You sent your chief security officer to my apartment six years ago with a signed check for fifty thousand dollars and a legal threat telling me to terminate my pregnancy and leave New York!"
The room went dead silent.
The air in my lungs turned to liquid ice.
"What did you just say?" I rasped out, my voice barely above a whisper, though every muscle in my broad frame locked into stone.
"Your chief security officer," Mara repeated, her voice cracking into sharp, emotional pieces. "Leo Vance. He came to my studio three days after you went to Italy for corporate meetings. He handed me a cashier's check signed by your legal trust. He told me that a mob boss's son didn't need a poor waitress's bastard child."
She stepped closer, pointing a trembling finger at my chest.
"I threw his check in his face, Dominic!" she wept softly, keeping her voice low so the boys wouldn't hear. "I took two duffel bags, caught a night bus to Pennsylvania, and raised our four sons alone on a waitress's wage for six years! I worked three jobs! I starved so they could eat! And every single night, I told them that their father was dead because it was easier than telling them he paid fifty thousand dollars to erase them!"
A dark, blinding, and catastrophic realization tore through my soul like a roaring fire.
Six years ago, when I returned from my three-week business trip in Rome, my mother, Eleanor, had met me at the airport with tears in her eyes. She had handed me a forged bank transfer receipt showing that Mara Bennett had accepted two million dollars from the Moretti private account to pack her bags and disappear to Europe.
My mother had told me Mara was a gold-digger who had aborted our child.
My mother had lied. Leo Vance had lied.
They hadn't just separated us. They had attempted to murder my unborn quadruplets through forced intimidation, stolen six years of my sons' lives, and left the woman I loved to starve in the freezing streets of New York.
My hands clenched into heavy, bone-crushing fists at my sides.
"Leo Vance..." I murmured, my voice dropping into a register so terrifying, so ancient in its fury, that Mara instinctively took a half-step back.
"Dominic...?" she whispered, her anger faltering as she saw the dark, lethal storm raging behind my gray-blue eyes.
"Leo Vance didn't come to your apartment on my orders, Mara," I swore softly, looking straight into her eyes with a raw, agonizing devotion. "I never signed a check. I never authorized a threat. And I spent six years believing you took two million dollars to abandon me."
Mara went completely, terrifyingly still. Her green eyes widened into vast, horror-stricken circles of pure shock. "What...?"
Before she could speak, my satellite phone rang again.
I pulled it from my pocket, looking at the glowing caller ID: ELEANOR MORETTI.
I tapped the screen, set the phone on speaker, and placed it flat on the glass coffee table between us.
"Dominic!" my mother's sharp, aristocratic voice boomed through the high-definition speakers. "Where the hell are you?! Brielle and her father have been waiting at the St. Regis for forty minutes! The Cartwright family is furious! Get your suit on and get over here right now!"
I leaned down over the table, my voice smooth, cold, and carrying an absolute, terrifying weight.
"The engagement is canceled, Mother," I stated cleanly.
Silence dropped over the line for two agonizing seconds.
"Have you lost your mind?!" Eleanor shrieked. "The Cartwright alliance secures our docks in Brooklyn! You cannot cancel this proposal!"
"I can," I replied softly. "Because six years ago, you paid Leo Vance to threaten Mara Bennett. You forged a two-million-dollar wire transfer. And you hid my four sons from me."
A choked, horrified gasp echoed through the phone speaker.
"Dominic... I... I don't know what you're talking about—"
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"I am standing in my living room, Mother," I interrupted, every word dropped like an iron hammer onto marble. "Looking at four six-year-old boys who carry my face, my eyes, and my blood. You have one hour to clear your belongings from the Moretti estate in Long Island. If you are still on my property at midnight... my men will throw you into the street."
I ended the call, crushed the satellite phone inside my palm until the glass screen shattered into a hundred glittering shards, and tossed it into the fireplace.
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