Chapter 2 - The Question No One Dared Ask
“They aren’t broken,” Dominic said.
Leo tilted his head. “Then why don’t they work?”
The question settled over the empty ballroom.
Nora’s hand tightened around her son’s shoulder. “Leo, that’s enough.”
“No,” Dominic said again, quieter this time. “It’s all right.”
For four months, people had spoken around him.
Doctors said things like recovery goals and adaptation periods. His men said the boss is still the boss. Enemies said nothing at all, which was worse, because Dominic knew exactly what silence meant in his world.
Weakness.
A chair meant weakness.
And weakness meant someone would eventually come for what had been his.
But Leo did not see a fallen king or a wounded mafia boss. He saw a man whose legs did not move.
“A bad man shot me,” Dominic said.
Leo’s wide eyes grew serious. “Did it hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Did you get him?”
Nora shut her eyes.
“Leo Bennett,” she muttered.
Dominic surprised himself by smiling.
“No,” he said. “Not yet.”
Leo considered that answer with the solemn concentration of a child trying to understand adult cruelty.
“My dad got hurt once,” he said. “At work. A big shelf fell down.”
Nora went still.
Leo’s voice softened. “He didn’t come home after.”
Dominic’s expression changed.
He looked at Nora again—not at her apron, not at the cheap sneakers, not at the exhausted way she held herself together. He looked at the grief that flashed through her face and disappeared before it could become visible.
“I’m sorry,” Dominic said.
Nora’s jaw tightened. “Don’t be. You didn’t know him.”
“No,” Dominic replied. “But I know what it is to lose someone before you’re ready.”
Her eyes snapped to his.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Then Tony’s phone buzzed.
The sound was small, but it cut through the ballroom like a gunshot.
Tony checked the screen. His face changed.
Dominic saw it immediately.
“What?”
Tony hesitated.
“Carmine’s people are moving.”
“Where?”
“East Side. The docks. Two of our clubs. The social hall in Queens.”
Dominic’s hands clenched against the wheels of his chair.
Carmine Russo was his cousin. They had grown up in the same neighborhood, eaten at the same Sunday table, buried the same uncle. Carmine had always smiled too much and spoken too softly.
The kind of man who offered you wine while deciding where to put the knife.
“Who else?” Dominic asked.
Tony looked at the phone again.
“Rinaldi. The DeLucas. Half the guys from Brooklyn.”
“Half?”
“The other half aren’t answering.”
Dominic looked over the five hundred empty chairs.
“They answered,” he said coldly. “Just not with words.”
Nora lifted the pink cake box from the table.
“Well,” she said, “this clearly seems like a bad time for dessert.”
“Leave the cake,” Dominic said.
She looked at him. “It’s paid for.”
“Leave it anyway.”
Nora stared.
Then, against every instinct she had, she put the cake box back down.
“Fine,” she said. “Happy birthday.”
She turned toward the doors with Leo beside her.
Tony stepped in front of them.
“Wait.”
Nora’s expression hardened instantly. “We delivered the cake. We got paid. We are leaving.”
“Outside isn’t safe.”
“Outside is never safe,” Nora snapped. “It’s New York, it’s February, and I have a six-year-old who needs dinner.”
Tony glanced toward Dominic.
Dominic hated that the decision landed with him.
He hated that Nora and her son had walked into his war because the guards he paid had abandoned their posts. He hated that they had seen him like this—not feared, not untouchable, not in command.
Just a man in a chair with an empty room and a birthday cake.
“You can leave through the kitchen,” Dominic said. “Tony will take you to the back garage.”
Nora shook her head. “We know the way out.”
“Mrs. Bennett—”
“Nora.”
“Nora,” Dominic corrected. “Tonight, you don’t.”
The lights flickered.
Every muscle in Tony’s body tightened.
Then the ballroom went dark.
Leo cried out. Nora pulled him close.
In the blackness, a sharp crack split the air.
Glass shattered high above them.
Tony’s gun was up before the second sound came.
“Down!” he shouted.
Another shot tore through the ballroom.
A crystal chandelier exploded.
Nora screamed and covered Leo with her body as shards rained down over the marble floor.
Dominic wheeled forward instinctively, but Tony shoved him behind the dais.
“Sniper,” Tony said. “East window. We need to move.”
“Get them out,” Dominic ordered.
Tony looked toward Nora and Leo.
“They’re trapped.”
A bullet hit the head table, spraying champagne and white frosting across the floor.
Leo began to sob.
Dominic’s chest tightened.
The boy had asked him an honest question. The mother had checked a hundred-dollar bill because she could not afford to be cheated. Neither of them belonged in this place.
Yet now they were on the floor of a ballroom, hiding from bullets meant for him.
“Tony,” Dominic said, his voice low and lethal, “get them out.”
Tony fired twice toward the windows, then rushed forward.
“Mrs. Bennett, when I say move, you move.”
Nora looked at the gun in his hand, then at Dominic.
“This is because of you,” she said.
Dominic did not flinch.
“Yes.”
The honesty struck her quiet.
Tony shouted, “Now!”
They ran.
Nora grabbed Leo’s hand, but he slipped on the wet marble. Dominic lunged forward in his wheelchair and caught the boy by the sleeve just before he fell into the open aisle.
For an instant, Leo stared at him.
Then Dominic pushed him toward Nora.
“Go.”
They reached the service door as another bullet slammed into the wall behind them.
Tony shoved it open.
The kitchen beyond was dark, silent, and littered with abandoned trays. Cooks, waiters, dishwashers—everyone had fled.
Everyone except Dominic, Tony, Nora, and Leo.
“That’s the garage?” Nora asked.
Tony nodded. “Straight through the corridor. Don’t stop.”
They moved quickly through the kitchen.
Dominic wheeled behind them, faster than a man in his condition should have been able to move. His shoulders burned. His palms were already blistering against the metal rims.
Then they heard footsteps ahead.
Not one person.
Several.
Tony raised his hand.
“Back.”
Too late.
Three men emerged from the corridor wearing dark coats and carrying silenced pistols.
Nora froze.
Leo pressed his face into her side.
The tallest man smiled at Dominic.
“Happy birthday, cousin.”
Dominic’s eyes turned to ice.
“Carmine.”
Carmine Russo stepped out from behind the men, immaculate in a charcoal overcoat, snow dusting his shoulders. He was younger than Dominic by five years, but he carried himself like a man who had spent his life waiting for this exact night.
“I sent invitations,” Carmine said. “I assumed you would understand the message.”
Dominic’s voice was quiet. “You sent men to shoot at civilians.”
“I sent men to make sure you stayed inside.”
Nora stared at Carmine. “We’re not part of this.”
Carmine looked at her as if he had only just noticed she existed.
“No,” he said. “But you are now.”
Dominic’s hand moved toward the gun hidden beneath his wheelchair seat.
Tony stepped forward.
“Let them go.”
Carmine smiled.
“Tony Mancini. Still standing beside a man who can’t.”
The insult hung in the air.
Dominic’s face did not change.
But Leo did something no one expected.
He stepped out from behind Nora.
“You shouldn’t say that,” he said.
Carmine blinked.
Leo pointed at Dominic’s wheelchair.
“He can still sit up straight. You’re the one being mean.”
For one beat, the kitchen went silent.
Then Carmine laughed.
It was not a warm laugh.
It was the laugh of a man deciding whether something was funny enough to forgive.
Dominic’s fingers closed around the gun beneath his seat.
And in that moment, he understood something with brutal clarity.
Carmine had not come only to take his empire.
He had come to prove that Dominic Russo was already dead.
Dominic looked at Nora, at Leo, at Tony.
Then he raised his gun.
May you like
“No,” he said. “I’m just getting started.”
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