Chapter 13 - Two Sisters in the Crossfire
The first gunshot shattered the cabin's front window.
Hannah dropped to the floor.
Elena grabbed her arm and pulled her behind the stone fireplace.
Carla rolled from the couch with a cry of pain.
Outside, Dominic's men returned fire.
The quiet woods erupted into flashes, splintering wood, and shouted commands.
"Back door."
Elena pointed toward the kitchen.
Hannah crawled beside her.
"What about Carla?"
"We take her."
Another shot punched through the wall above them.
Carla tried to stand and nearly collapsed.
Hannah got under one arm while Elena took the other.
They staggered toward the rear of the cabin.
The kitchen door opened before they reached it.
Hannah screamed.
Dominic stepped through with a pistol in one hand.
His eyes found Elena.
Everything stopped for half a second.
Eighteen months of grief, rage, guilt, and disbelief moved across his face in silence.
Elena stared back at him.
"You're alive."
Dominic's voice broke.
Elena's mouth trembled.
"So far."
A bullet struck the door frame between them.
Dominic snapped back into motion.
"Reunion later."
He grabbed Carla's other side.
"There's a trail behind the shed."
Elena nodded.
"I know."
They moved through the back yard as Luca's two selected men covered them from the tree line.
Hannah stumbled over a root.
Dominic caught her without letting go of Carla.
"Stay low."
"Working on it."
They reached a narrow path descending toward a creek.
An engine roared somewhere ahead.
Elena froze.
"They have the road too."
Dominic looked toward the ridge.
"Then we don't use the road."
"There's an old maintenance bridge half a mile east."
"Can Carla make it?"
Carla's face was gray.
"I can if everyone stops discussing me like furniture."
Hannah almost laughed from pure nerves.
"I like her."
"She broke me out of a locked clinic."
Elena said it as though that explained everything.
They moved deeper into the woods.
Behind them, the cabin windows suddenly flashed orange.
Hannah turned.
Flames climbed through the roof.
"They set it on fire."
Elena's face tightened.
"They don't want evidence left."
Dominic looked at her.
"What evidence was there?"
"Copies of clinic records."
"Copies only?"
"Yes."
"Where are the originals?"
Elena met his gaze.
"Somewhere Matteo doesn't know."
Dominic almost smiled despite the gunfire behind them.
"Good."
Elena's expression hardened.
"Don't sound proud of me yet."
His smile disappeared.
"Fair."
Hannah looked between them.
"Can the marriage counseling happen after nobody is shooting at us?"
Elena gave her a startled laugh.
It sounded exactly like Hannah's.
Dominic looked at both sisters and seemed briefly disoriented.
"That is going to take getting used to."
They reached the creek ten minutes later.
A rusted metal bridge crossed the water between two steep banks.
One of Dominic's men waited on the far side with a vehicle hidden behind trees.
They were halfway across when a man appeared behind them.
He wore a Vale security jacket.
Hannah recognized him from the medical suite.
"Stop."
He pointed a gun directly at Elena.
Dominic pushed Elena behind him.
"Put it down."
The man laughed.
"Matteo said you'd do that."
"Matteo says many things."
"He said you'd choose her over the business."
Dominic's expression did not change.
"He was right."
The man hesitated.
That tiny pause was enough.
Elena dropped flat.
Dominic fired.
The attacker's weapon spun from his hand.
He fell against the bridge railing clutching his shoulder.
Luca's man rushed forward and restrained him.
Hannah stared at Dominic.
"You shot him."
"In the shoulder."
"That doesn't make it normal."
"Nothing about tonight is normal."
The captured attacker laughed through clenched teeth.
"You think this ends with Matteo?"
Dominic crouched beside him.
"Who else?"
The man smiled.
"Ask your lawyer."
Dominic's face went still.
"Which lawyer?"
"The one who wrote the trust."
Elena stared.
"Adrian Cole."
The attacker laughed again.
"Smart woman."
Dominic stood slowly.
Hannah looked at him.
"Who is Adrian Cole?"
"Family counsel."
"Close to you?"
"For fifteen years."
Elena's face had gone white.
"He visited the clinic once."
Dominic turned to her.
"When?"
"Last year."
"You never mentioned him in the letters."
"I wasn't sure I saw him."
"Why not?"
"I was drugged."
Dominic closed his eyes for one second.
Hannah looked at the prisoner.
"Was Adrian the insider?"
The man smiled.
"You're asking the wrong question."
"What's the right one?"
"Why would a lawyer help kidnap the woman whose trust he drafted?"
Nobody answered.
The attacker leaned back against the bridge.
"Because Matteo wasn't the only one getting rich."
The hidden vehicle carried them to a private urgent-care facility two counties away.
Carla needed surgery for a wound that had reopened during the escape.
The bullet had passed through her shoulder days earlier, but infection had begun setting in.
She was taken into an operating room under an assumed name.
Elena sat in a quiet consultation room with Hannah and Dominic.
For the first time, no one was running.
No one spoke for several minutes.
Dominic looked at Elena as though afraid she might disappear if he blinked.
Elena noticed.
"You can stop staring."
"I can't."
Her eyes filled.
"Dominic."
He stood.
She did too.
They remained several feet apart.
"I thought you were dead."
"I know."
"I should have known."
"How?"
"I should have found you."
"Matteo designed it so you wouldn't."
"That doesn't matter."
"It matters to me."
Dominic shook his head.
"I stopped searching."
Elena's face crumpled.
"Because they gave you a death certificate."
"I stopped."
He said it like a confession.
"You had three babies at home."
"I still stopped."
Elena crossed the room and touched his face.
Dominic closed his eyes.
"I hated you for six months."
He opened them.
"I know."
"Then I realized Matteo wanted me to."
"I know."
"Then I hated myself because I still loved you."
Dominic's breath shook.
"I can live with that."
Elena almost smiled.
"You're not getting forgiveness that easily."
"I wasn't asking for it."
"Good."
He laughed once, and then she was in his arms.
Hannah turned toward the window.
She gave them the privacy of pretending she could not hear either of them crying.
Later, Elena sat beside Hannah while Dominic spoke quietly with security outside.
"He's changed."
Hannah looked at her.
"I've known him three days."
"That's probably enough to develop an opinion."
"I developed one in the first thirty seconds."
Elena smiled.
"He kidnapped you, didn't he?"
"He calls it coming with him."
"That sounds like Dominic."
Hannah's expression softened.
"He loves the girls."
Elena looked down.
"I know."
"They talk now."
Her head snapped up.
"What?"
"Not much, but words."
Elena covered her mouth.
"What words?"
"Mama."
Tears spilled instantly.
"Hannah."
"Dad."
Elena began sobbing.
Hannah pulled her into an embrace.
"You'll hear them yourself."
Elena held her tightly.
"I missed everything."
"You didn't choose to."
"I missed their first birthdays."
"You survived to see the next one."
Elena pulled back.
"How are you so calm?"
"I'm not."
"You look calm."
"I work customer service."
Elena laughed through tears.
Dominic entered.
"Adrian Cole is not answering his phone."
Elena wiped her face.
"Of course not."
"His apartment is empty."
Hannah stood.
"When did he leave?"
"Building camera shows him leaving with luggage six hours ago."
Elena's eyes narrowed.
"Before we called from the cabin."
Dominic nodded.
"He knew we were getting close."
His phone buzzed.
He looked at the screen and became very still.
"What?"
Hannah asked.
Dominic turned the phone around.
It was a photograph of Lily, Grace, and Emma asleep in their beds at the secure townhouse.
The picture had been taken minutes earlier.
A message beneath it read:
YOU FOUND YOUR WIFE.
NOW SEE IF YOU CAN KEEP YOUR DAUGHTERS.
At the urgent-care facility, Elena asked to see Dominic alone for ten minutes.
Hannah waited in the corridor with Carla's surgeon.
Through the glass, she could see husband and wife standing several feet apart.
They did not touch.
Elena spoke first for almost five straight minutes.
Dominic listened.
That alone told Hannah something had changed.
When the door finally opened, Elena looked exhausted but steadier.
Dominic remained inside.
Hannah raised an eyebrow.
"How bad?"
"I told him I hated the old house."
"Reasonable."
"I told him I hate armed men in the kitchen."
"Also reasonable."
"I told him if we survive this, the girls are not growing up believing fear is normal."
"What did he say?"
Elena looked through the glass.
"He said okay."
Hannah blinked.
"Just okay?"
"Then I told him I may never be able to live in his world again."
"And?"
"He said he was starting to hate his world too."
Hannah looked at Dominic through the glass.
He sat alone with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped.
"Do you believe him?"
Elena took a long breath.
"I believe he means it tonight."
"That's not the same as believing he'll change."
"No."
"What would convince you?"
Elena looked toward the operating room where Carla was being treated.
"Choices that cost him something."
Hannah understood.
May you like
Words were free.
The test would come when truth demanded something Dominic valued.
