Chapter 2 - The Midnight Dash Through the Storm
The black luxury sedan tore through the rain-soaked streets of Chicago like a missile fired from a cannon.
The normal forty-minute drive from downtown to Lakeshore Community Hospital was compressed into twenty-six terrifying minutes. For once in his life, traffic lights, speed limits, and municipal laws seemed utterly ridiculous. Dominic drove with one hand gripping the leather steering wheel with white-knuckled intensity, while his other hand kept the phone pressed firmly to his ear, listening to the muffled sounds of Hannah’s breathing, her soft moans of pain, and the distant clatter of hospital machinery in the background.
Every time she gasped, a cold sweat broke out across the back of Dominic’s neck.
He hated the images flashing unbidden through his mind. He hated the thought of Hannah lying in a sterile hospital bed, terrified and abandoned. Most of all, he hated the corrosive, burning jealousy that clawed at his chest every time his traitorous brain whispered the question: Whose child is this?
Eight months ago, Hannah Reed had been the only human being on the face of the earth who could walk past the armed security gates of Dominic’s sprawling estate without being searched, interrogated, or vetted.
She wasn’t part of the underworld. She didn't wear designer labels or attend high-society galas. She owned a tiny, drafty independent bookstore called Blue Door Books tucked away in a quiet corner of Lincoln Square. She wore oversized, cable-knit sweaters that smelled faintly of old paper and vanilla, drank terrible gas-station coffee, and had once looked Dominic Vale dead in the eye during their second date and informed him that his twelve-hundred-dollar Italian leather shoes looked suspiciously like something “a depressed funeral director with severe emotional problems” would wear.
Dominic had thrown his head back and laughed out loud—a genuine, booming laugh that startled his own bodyguards so badly they nearly drew their weapons.
Hannah never treated him like a king, a crime boss, or a monster.
That was precisely why he had fallen helplessly, hopelessly in love with her.
But in Dominic’s dark, paranoid world, love was treated as dangerous information. Information inevitably became leverage, and leverage got people put into shallow graves in the Indiana swamps. Fearing that enemies would eventually use Hannah to destroy him, Dominic had tried to protect her the only way he knew how: by surrounding her with invisible cages. He had secretly purchased luxury apartments for her, assigned plainclothes enforcers to shadow her bookstore, monitored her credit cards, and showered her with expensive dinners and private weekend getaways near Lake Geneva.
He had given her everything except the one thing she actually needed from him.
He had never once said the three words that mattered. He had never told her he loved her out loud, terrified that uttering it would serve as a death warrant.
So, overwhelmed by the golden handcuffs and the suffocating shadow of his dangerous life, Hannah had simply vanished into thin air.
He had assumed fear had finally outweighed her affection. He had spent eight months telling himself it was for the best.
Now, barreling through a torrential downpour at ninety miles an hour, he realized he had been lying to himself every single second of it.
When the black sedan finally screeched to a halt under the glowing white canopy of the Lakeshore Community Hospital emergency entrance, Dominic didn't bother parking in a designated spot. He simply slammed the transmission into park, cut the engine, and threw open the door, stepping out into the pouring rain.
A young security guard in a fluorescent vest rushed forward, blowing his whistle. “Sir! You can’t leave your car blocking the ambulance bay! Move it right now or—!”
Dominic didn't even slow down. He didn't look at the guard, nor did he break his stride.
“Tow it,” Dominic muttered coldly over his shoulder, flashing a heavy, diamond-encrusted gold signet ring on his right hand as he pushed through automatic glass doors into the brightly lit lobby.
The security guard froze, caught a glimpse of the cold, lethal authority radiating from Dominic’s tall, imposing frame, and wisely swallowed the rest of his sentence, stepping backward into the shadows.
Dominic strode across the polished linoleum floor of the maternity ward like an invading general marching into enemy territory. At the central nurses' station, a young, exhausted night-shift nurse looked up from her computer terminal, blinking behind wire-rimmed glasses.
“Sir visiting hours ended hours ago, and—excuse me, you can't go back there!” she stammered as Dominic vaulted past the half-door of the counter.
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“Hannah Reed,” Dominic said, his voice dropping into that terrifying, quiet register that made her freeze in place. “What room?”
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