Chapter 4 - The Truth on the Persian RugI stood behind his desk, holding the file against my chest, tears of wild, disbelieving panic burning behind my eyelids.
"You knew me..." I choked out, my voice trembling with a mixture of heartbreak and rage. "You knew who I was before that night at the hotel! You paid my mother's medical bills in Cleveland! Why, Dominic?! Why was I on your desk?!"
Dominic took three slow, heavy steps into the room, closing the mahogany doors behind him, his dark posture bowed with an agonizing, profound weight.
"Because your father wasn't just an ordinary worker who died in a factory accident fifteen years ago, Sienna," Dominic revealed softly, every word dropped into the quiet study like a heavy block of cold iron.
I went dead silent. "My... my father...?"
"His name was Thomas Vance," Dominic continued, his storm-gray eyes locking onto mine with an unshakeable, raw truth. "He was my father's most trusted security lieutenant. Fifteen years ago, when Victor Costa attempted to assassinate my father at our docks... Thomas Vance threw himself over my father, taking four bullets to his chest."
Tears spilled over my lashes, cutting clean tracks down my cheeks as my knees buckled beneath me.
Dominic moved with lightning speed, catching my body before I hit the floorboards, gathering me gently into his broad, strong arms, lifting me up and sitting with me on the leather sofa near the hearth.
"Your father saved my father's life, Sienna," Dominic wept softly into my dark hair, holding me close against his beating chest. "And before Thomas died in that hospital... my father swore a sacred, binding oath that the Rossi family would forever protect his wife and his daughter."
I buried my face in Dominic’s neck, my small hands clutching his dark shirt as the realization washed over my soul.
"When your mother fell ill three years ago," Dominic whispered gently into my ear, "I honored my father's oath. I paid the medical bills. I kept you safe from afar. But I swore I would never force myself into your life unless you needed me."
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He pulled back slightly, his calloused hands softly, reverently framing my face, looking into my eyes with an absolute, unbroken devotion.
"And then you walked into the Aster Crown Hotel," Dominic whispered, tears shining in his eyes. "And you threw yourself over my mother... taking seven bullets, just like your father took four bullets for mine. You were always my queen, Sienna. Long before I ever put that gold ring on your finger."
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