Chapter 5 - Fire on the Water
Julian Vance took an immediate step back, his eyes darting toward the ballroom entrance where private security personnel were beginning to turn their heads.
“Dominic!” Vance hissed. “Let him go! Not here!”
Dominic didn’t look at Vance. His gray eyes remained fixed on Richard, whose face was beaded with cold sweat as he knelt on the floor, his wrist trapped in Dominic’s unbreakable grip.
“You came to my city thinking you could use a woman’s pain as leverage,” Dominic whispered to Richard. “You thought because you carried a badge and an expensive suit, you were dangerous. You aren't dangerous, Hall. You’re vermin. And you just gave me every justification I needed to crush you.”
Dominic released the wrist with a sharp shove. Richard collapsed sideways onto the floor, clutching his sprained arm against his chest, his breathing ragged and humiliated.
The ballroom was dead silent. Every conversation had died.
Dominic didn’t offer an apology to the room. He didn’t look at the shocked patrons. He simply extended his arm to Harper. “Let’s take some air.”
Harper slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow, her fingers steady now. The fear that had defined her existence for twenty-four months was gone, burnt to ash by the humiliation plastered across Richard’s face.
They stepped through the tall glass doors leading out onto the Bellevue’s expansive stone terrace. The night air was freezing, carrying the sharp scent of the Delaware River and oncoming rain.
The moment the heavy glass doors closed behind them, cutting off the ballroom’s light, Dominic pulled his radio from his inner pocket.
“Lucas. What’s the status?”
Static hissed, followed by Lucas’s urgent voice. “Dominic, move! Vance’s security wasn't watching the room—they were setting up a crossfire on the north parking structure! They cut the power to the terrace lights three seconds ago!”
The heavy cast-iron lanterns lining the terrace flickered and died.
Total darkness swallowed the roof.
“Get down!” Dominic shoved Harper behind a massive stone planter as the first suppressed rifle shot shattered the masonry above their heads.
Stone dust exploded into the air, raining down over Harper’s hair and dress.
Another round struck the glass doors behind them, blowing the thick plate glass inward and sending screams echoing from the ballroom. Panic erupted inside the hotel as patrons trampled over each other toward the main exits.
“How many?” Harper shouted over the rising chaos, crouching low behind the planter, her heart hammering against her ribs.
“Three on the opposite roof, two closing on the service stairs,” Dominic said, pulling his semi-automatic weapon from beneath his tuxedo jacket. He checked the magazine with a single thumb flick. “Vance knew he was finished the moment you spoke. He’s burning the entire board.”
A second bullet chipped the edge of their stone cover, inches from Dominic’s shoulder.
Through the darkness, Harper saw the emergency exit door at the end of the terrace kick open. Two men in tactical gear emerged, night-vision goggles glowing an eerie green, submachine guns raised.
Dominic leaned out and fired twice. One man went down instantly with a bullet to the chest. The second dove behind an outdoor granite bar, spraying a hail of automatic fire that ripped through the stone planters, showering them with dirt and shattered brick.
They were pinned.
If the shooters on the opposite roof shifted twenty feet to the east, they would have a clean angle straight over their cover.
Harper looked around frantically in the dark. Her eyes caught the brass utility panel on the hotel wall beside the terrace bar, where the main gas line for the outdoor decorative fire pits was housed. Beside it ran the heavy industrial electrical conduit for the rooftop lighting.
“Dominic!” Harper grabbed his arm. “The gas line! The fire pit conduit!”
Dominic looked at the line, then at her. He understood in an instant.
“Can you reach the release valve behind that column?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“On my mark. Three, two, one—go!”
Dominic stood up, completely exposing himself to the shooter behind the bar, and fired a rapid, rhythmic volley of suppressive shots that forced the operative to keep his head down.
Harper dropped to her hands and knees, ignoring the pain as broken glass tore through the silk of her gown and bit into her knees. She crawled fiercely across the wet stone, reaching the iron box behind the column. She threw open the latch and pulled the red main emergency lever downward with all her weight.
The hiss of high-pressure natural gas flooded the terrace air, thick and suffocating.
Dominic aimed his weapon directly at the exposed junction box above the line and pulled the trigger.
A bright, blinding spark erupted from the bullet’s impact.
*BOOM.*
A concussive wall of flame roared across the terrace, lighting up the Philadelphia skyline in a blinding flash of orange and gold. The shockwave threw the surviving operative backward over the stone railing, sending him plummeting forty storeys into the alley below. The heat wave shattered the rifle scopes of the snipers on the opposite building, blinding their thermal optics with a wall of white-hot thermal noise.
Dominic grabbed Harper by the waist, lifting her off the ground as the flames curled against the dark sky, and pulled her toward the interior service elevator.
The elevator doors opened immediately—Lucas stood inside, rifle raised, breathing heavily.
“Clear!” Lucas barked. “The police are four minutes out. Vance is fleeing via the underground garage.”
Dominic stepped inside, pulling Harper into the safety of the elevator carriage. His tuxedo was scorched, soot smeared across his jaw, but his eyes were blazing with an adrenaline-fueled intensity she had never seen before.
“Block the garage exits,” Dominic ordered, his voice vibrating with absolute fury. “No one leaves this block.”
Lucas hit the button for the underground concourse, the elevator dropping at high speed.
Harper collapsed against the mirrored wall of the carriage, her chest heaving, her hands covered in soot and small cuts. She looked down at herself—the thousand-dollar dress was ruined, torn and blackened by fire.
And yet, for the first time in her life, she didn't feel broken. She felt alive.
Dominic knelt before her, just as he had on the floor of the Blackwood dining room four days ago. But this time, he didn't keep his distance. He took both of her trembling hands into his, his thumbs gently wiping away the soot from her knuckles.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, his voice rough, stripped bare of all his aristocratic detachment.
“No,” Harper whispered, meeting his gaze. “Are you?”
“Never better,” Dominic said, the faintest ghost of a smile touching his lips.
The elevator chimed, grinding to a halt at the lowest level of the parking garage.
Lucas raised his weapon as the doors slid open.
The subterranean garage was a war zone. Two black SUVs had collided near the ramp, tires spinning, headlights illuminating clouds of burnt rubber and exhaust.
Beside the lead SUV, Julian Vance was on his knees, surrounded by four of Dominic’s tactical security operators, their rifle barrels pressed against the back of his neck.
And huddled in the back seat of the second vehicle, his hands shaking violently as he tried to open a jammed door, was Richard Hall.
Dominic stood up, releasing Harper’s hands, and stepped out onto the concrete floor.
“Pull him out,” Dominic commanded.
Two guards ripped open the vehicle door, dragging Richard out by his collar and throwing him onto the oily pavement at Dominic’s feet. Richard looked up, bleeding from a cut on his forehead, his expensive suit ruined, his eyes wide with unadulterated terror.
“Harper!” Richard cried out, spotting her as she stepped out of the elevator beside Dominic. “Harper, please! You know me! Tell him! Tell him he can’t do this—I’m an officer of the court! I have immunity!”
Harper walked toward him slowly, her footsteps echoing sharply in the cavernous garage. She stopped three feet away, looking down at the man who had haunted her every waking moment for years.
“You have nothing, Richard,” Harper said calmly. “Except what’s coming to you.”
Dominic looked toward Lucas. “Take Vance to the holding facility at the shipyard. The maritime commission has already received copies of his offshore wire transfers—he’ll spend the rest of his life in federal prison.”
“And Hall?” Lucas asked, nodding toward Richard.
Dominic looked down at Richard, his expression turning to ice.
“Mr. Hall is going back to Baltimore,” Dominic said quietly.
Richard blinked, disbelief and sudden hope flaring across his terrified face. “What?”
“You’re going back,” Dominic continued, his voice dripping with lethal promise. “Accompanied by a complete dossier of your financial ties to Julian Vance, your involvement in the attempted murder at Blackwood, and affidavits from three different medical examiners regarding the injuries Miss Bennett sustained under your roof. You will be arrested on the courthouse steps tomorrow morning by federal marshals.”
Richard’s face crumbled into absolute despair. His career, his reputation, his freedom—everything he had ever cared about—was turning to dust before his eyes.
Dominic turned his back on Richard, completely dismissing his existence, and walked back toward Harper.
“Come,” Dominic said gently, offering his hand. “Let’s go home.”
Harper looked at his hand—broad, strong, scarred, yet offering a safety she had never known in her entire life. She placed her fingers into his, feeling the warmth and strength of his grip close around hers.
As they walked toward the waiting private vehicle, Lucas’s radio crackled once more.
“Dominic,” Lucas said, stepping away from the subdued prisoners, his face pale beneath the fluorescent lights. “We just finished decrypting Walter Pierce’s personal phone. There’s a problem.”
Dominic stopped, turning his head. “What is it?”
Lucas held up a printout of the final encrypted text message sent to Walter’s phone thirty minutes before the shooting at Blackwood.
“Vance didn’t hire the second shooter,” Lucas said, the tension returning to his voice with suffocating weight. “The second rifle belonged to the Castiglione family from New York. And the text says Walter was never supposed to target you, Dominic.”
Dominic’s eyes widened a fraction. “What?”
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Lucas looked directly at Harper, his expression grim.
“The target wasn't you, Dominic,” Lucas said quietly. “The contract was on Harper.”