Chapter 9 - The Final Gambit
The victory in the boardroom was total, but the dying thralls of a wounded monster are always the most dangerous.
By four o'clock that afternoon, the financial news networks were melting down. Dominic Rinaldi’s face was plastered across every television screen in the country: *TITAN SURVIVES ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT; BOARD PURGED IN MULTI-MILLION-DOLLAR TREASON PLOT; MOB WIDOW ARRESTED.*
Inside the sixty-fourth floor executive suite, the atmosphere was chaotic. Federal agents in windbreakers were carrying out boxes of Arthur Vance’s files, forensic accountants were tearing through the company’s servers, and a dozen lawyers were drafting press releases.
I stood near the panoramic glass window of Dominic’s private office, watching the afternoon sun cast long, golden shadows across the Hudson River.
I was exhausted. Bone-deep, soul-crushing exhaustion that made my limbs feel heavy as wet sand. In twenty-four hours, I had gone from scraping breadcrumbs off a petrified oak table to bringing down an international syndicate.
A pair of warm, strong hands settled gently onto my shoulders.
I didn't flinch. I leaned back against the solid, comforting breadth of Dominic’s chest, letting out a long, shuddering sigh.
"Your mother has been settled into the VIP wing at Presbyterian," Dominic murmured into my ear, his thumbs lightly massaging the tight knots at the base of my neck. "The chief of neuro-oncology evaluated her an hour ago. He believes the new targeted immunotherapy will put her cancer into complete remission within six months."
A tear slipped from my eye, hot and silent, tracking down my cheek.
"And Julian?" I whispered.
"Julian is currently sitting in a private library at the safehouse, reading a first-edition Latin translation of Tacitus that my staff couriered over from the Morgan Library," Dominic replied, a faint smile in his voice. "He asked if he could stay another week because the chef makes excellent pasta."
I let out a wet, breathless laugh, wiping the tear away.
"You didn't have to do all that, Dominic."
Dominic turned me around in his arms, his hands resting on my hips, his gaze searching my face with an intensity that took my breath away.
"I would have moved the earth to keep you safe, Mara," he said softly. "You saved my life twice. You saved my family’s name. There is nothing in this world I own that doesn't belong to you if you ask for it."
Before I could answer, the heavy blast-resistant glass behind us shivered with a deafening, concussive *CRACK*.
A spiderweb of white fractures bloomed across the outer pane of the reinforced window, centered around a high-caliber ballistic impact.
"SNIPER!" Gabe roared from the doorway, drawing his weapon. "GET DOWN!"
Dominic didn't think. He didn't hesitate.
He threw his entire body over mine, his weight driving us both hard onto the thick wool rug beneath the desk, completely shielding me with his broad back as a second and third shot cracked against the reinforced glass with the sound of sledgehammers striking steel.
The smart-glass instantly polarized into pitch black, cutting off the shooter's line of sight from the neighboring rooftop.
"Boss! Are you hit?" Gabe yelled, scrambling across the floor, his tactical pistol raised toward the doorway.
"I'm fine!" Dominic barked, his face inches from mine, his arms pinned around my head like iron bands. "Where did the fire come from?"
"The ventilation tower on the construction crane across 42nd Street!" Gabe answered, listening to his earpiece. "It’s Falco’s primary hitman—the one they call *Il Corvo*. He knew the feds were closing in! He’s using a Barrett .50 caliber!"
"The helipad," Dominic gritted out, his jaw tight. "The Sikorsky is fueled on the roof. If he penetrates the perimeter, he’s going to hit the fuel tanks to create a diversion and escape down the external maintenance elevator!"
"Dominic, no!" I gasped, clutching his lapels. "Stay down! The glass is holding!"
"The glass won't hold against armor-piercing incendiary rounds, Mara!" Dominic said, his hazel eyes blazing with fierce, protective fury. "We have to move to the hardened stairwell now!"
He hauled me to my feet, keeping his body between me and the blacked-out windows.
Together with Gabe and two armed marshals, we moved rapidly down the reinforced private corridor leading to the rooftop access stairs. The alarm sirens were howling now—a high-pitched, pulsing wail that filled the concrete stairwell with deafening panic.
We burst onto the rooftop helipad.
The wind eighty stories up was howling, whipping my hair across my face in a wild frenzy. The twin turbines of the Sikorsky helicopter were already whining, the rotors slowly beginning to turn, slicing through the cold evening air.
And standing on the edge of the helipad, dressed in tactical black, holding a smoking assault rifle, was a man with a scarred, weathered face.
*Il Corvo.*
He had breached the roof through the external window-washing cradle.
When he saw us emerge from the stairwell, a feral, dying grin crossed his face. He raised the rifle directly toward Dominic.
"Rinaldi!" the hitman roared above the scream of the helicopter blades. *"I saluti di Matteo Falco!"*
He squeezed the trigger.
Everything slowed down to a crawl.
Dominic didn't dive for cover. He spun, his body moving with terrifying, selfless speed, throwing himself directly into the path of the gunfire to shield me from the spray of lead.
*NO!* my mind screamed.
I didn't let him die for me.
I hooked my foot behind Dominic’s ankle, twisting with all my strength, dragging him down with me onto the non-skid metal deck of the helipad just as a burst of automatic fire tore through the air where his chest had been half a second before.
The rounds slammed into the tail boom of the helicopter in a shower of sparks and shredded aluminum.
Gabe fired three times from behind us.
The heavy .45-caliber rounds caught the hitman in the chest, driving him backward over the safety netting. *Il Corvo* let out a single, strangled cry as his body tumbled over the edge, plummeting eighty stories into the concrete canyon of Manhattan below.
Silence descended upon the rooftop.
The only sound was the dying whine of the helicopter’s throttled engine and the roar of the wind off the river.
I was lying on the cold metal deck, tangled in Dominic’s arms, our chests heaving in unison, our breath mingling in the frigid air.
Dominic slowly pushed himself up on his forearms, looking down at me.
His face was streaked with soot, a scratch bleeding near his left temple, his hair wild and disheveled. He looked down at me with wide, disbelieving, utterly consumed eyes.
"You tripped me," he whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of shock, fury, and awe. "I was trying to shield you, and you tackled me."
"You're a brilliant CEO, Dominic," I gasped, my chest heaving, tears of adrenaline and pure relief spilling over my lashes, "but you have terrible tactical instincts. You don't stand in front of a rifle."
Dominic stared at me.
Then, right there on the wind-swept, blood-stained metal deck of the helipad, eighty stories above the city, Dominic Rinaldi threw his head back and laughed.
It was a rich, beautiful, uninhibited sound—the sound of a man who had been dead inside for ten years finally feeling the air rush back into his lungs.
He looked down at me, his laughter fading, replaced by an expression of such fierce, overwhelming devotion that the breath left my body completely.
"I love you, Mara Bennett," he whispered.
He didn't wait for my answer.
He leaned down, cupped the back of my neck with his hand, and crushed his mouth against mine.
The kiss was wild, fierce, tasting of copper, rain, and absolute survival. I wound my arms around his neck, pulling him down, surrendering to the fire that had been building between us since that first drop of water fell onto the petrified oak table.
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The war was over. And we were alive.
***
