Chapter 5 - The War for Leo
The hospital board didn't go down without a fight. They used their influence, their money, their connections in the mayor’s office, and their reputation to smear Dominic and, by extension, Claire.
The city was turned against them. Stories appeared in the papers about “mafia intimidation,” about “coerced medical reports,” about a “nurse who was an accomplice to kidnapping.”
The state police raided the estate. The mansion was surrounded.
Dominic, knowing this was coming, had planned for it. He whisked Claire and Leo away to a safe house in the deep woods of Wisconsin, a place known only to his most loyal men.
They lived like ghosts, tucked away from the world.
Claire became Leo’s world, his doctor, his mother, his protector. And she became Dominic’s world, his anchor, his conscience.
In the quiet of the woods, they finally had time to be human. They played, they talked, they fell in love—not the violent love of the city, but the slow, deep love of two people who had found each other in the wreckage.
But the world outside hadn't forgotten them.
The investigation turned into a manhunt. The board of directors at St. Anne’s, backed by powerful interests who feared what would happen if Dominic Moretti ever got his hands on the truth, began to hunt them down.
They sent mercenaries. They sent bounty hunters.
One night, the woods came alive with the sound of gunfire.
Dominic stood at the door of the safe house, his rifle in his hand. “Go to the cellar,” he told Claire. “Take Leo and don't come out until I call your name.”
“Dominic, no!”
“I am a Moretti,” he said, his voice hard. “I fight. That is all I have ever known. But you—you are the future. You are the reason we have a chance at a different life. Don't waste it.”
He walked out into the night, into the hail of bullets, a man alone against an army.
Claire ran to the cellar, holding Leo tight. She waited.
Hours passed. The gunfire stopped, replaced by an eerie, deafening silence.
She crawled out of the cellar, her heart in her throat, her hands covered in dust.
She stepped onto the porch.
Dominic was sitting on the steps, his chest bleeding, his face pale, his rifle lying on the ground beside him.
But he was alive.
She ran to him, falling to her knees, checking his wounds. “Dominic!”
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He looked at her, his eyes dim but focused. “They’re all gone, Claire. Every last one of them.”
He fell into her arms, and for the first time in his life, the feared boss of Chicago didn't reach for a gun. He reached for her.
