Chapter 4 - The Sixty Seconds
"Eleanor," Dominic stated lethally, his voice a vibrating rumble of absolute destruction. "You dared to touch my daughter. You dared to threaten my grandchild."
"Your... your daughter?" my mother stammered, physically shaking now as two armed guards grabbed her by the arms. "I didn't know! I swear to God, I didn't know!"
"It wouldn't have mattered if she were a library clerk," Dominic whispered, stepping closer to her, his sheer presence sucking the oxygen out of the room. "But she is a Vance. And as of five minutes ago, your family's trust fund has been liquidated. Your properties have been seized by my holding companies. You are entirely, completely bankrupt."
My mother shrieked as the guards began dragging her and the fake doctor out of the bedroom, her desperate cries echoing down the hall.
Then, Dominic turned his predatory gaze to me.
I stood paralyzed, the weight of my own guilt crushing my lungs.
"And you," Dominic said softly, the disappointment in his voice cutting deeper than a knife. "My daughter gave up her crown, her security, and her empire to live a normal life with you. She trusted you to protect her. And what did you do when you walked through that door, Adam?"
I couldn't speak.
"I saw the security footage from your hallway," Dominic continued mercilessly. "I know exactly how long you stood in that doorway before you rushed to her side. Sixty seconds. You saw her bleeding on the floor, and for one full minute, you let your mother's poison make you doubt her."
He reached down, gently lifting Lily into his arms. She buried her face in his shoulder, exhausted and trembling, but she didn't look back at me. Not even once.
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"A man who hesitates when his wife is bleeding does not deserve her," the most powerful man in Chicago decreed.
Dominic carried my wife and my unborn child out of the bedroom, stepping over the shattered glass of our wedding photo. The tactical team vanished behind them like ghosts, leaving me standing alone in the pitch-black apartment, surrounded by the ruins of a life I had destroyed with a single minute of doubt.
