Chapter 3: What She Kept to Protect Him
Dominic put his hand flat against the door before she could close it.
"I'm not leaving."
Sophia looked at his hand.
Then at his face.
She made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh.
"You never did know how to take no for an answer."
"Tell me who fired you."
She stepped back.
Not an invitation — just surrender to the inevitable.
He walked in.
The apartment was small and clean and careful.
Everything in it had been chosen to last.
A secondhand couch with a folded blanket over one arm.
Crayons sorted by colour in a mug on the kitchen table.
A child's drawing taped to the refrigerator — a woman with yellow hair holding hands with a smaller figure, and above them, in unsteady letters: *Me and Mama.*
Dominic stood in the middle of it and felt something shift in his chest that he had no name for.
"Lily," Sophia called toward the hallway.
"Go wash your hands and pick a book.
I'll be right there."
A pause.
Then small footsteps.
Then a door closing.
Sophia turned to face him.
She crossed her arms, not defensively — more like she was holding herself together.
"How much did she tell you?"
"Enough.
The landlord.
The cereal.
The chicken you gave her and pretended you weren't hungry."
Her jaw tightened.
"She talks too much."
"She was scared for you."
"She's five.
She shouldn't have to be scared for anyone."
"No," Dominic said.
"She shouldn't."
The word landed between them.
Sophia looked away first.
"It was Vincent," she said.
Dominic went very still.
Vincent Moretti.
His cousin.
The man who had run Moretti Holdings' HR division for eleven years.
The man Dominic had trusted with payroll, personnel, and every quiet internal matter that couldn't go through official channels.
"Vincent called the Manhattan office directly," Sophia continued.
"Told them I'd violated a confidentiality clause.
Said I'd been sharing internal financial data with outside parties." She said it flatly, like she'd rehearsed the words until they stopped hurting.
"It wasn't true.
But the termination letter cited the clause.
It was clean.
Legal.
Untraceable back to him unless you knew exactly where to look."
"How long have you known it was him?"
"Since about three weeks after it happened.
A woman in payroll — Elena — she called me.
Off the record.
She said Vincent had come in personally to authorize the termination.
She said he seemed—" Sophia paused.
"She said he seemed pleased."
Dominic's expression didn't change.
That was the most dangerous sign.
"Why didn't you come to me?"
Sophia looked at him then.
Really looked at him.
"Because the last time I was connected to you, Dominic, your enemies started watching my building.
Because six years ago you told me I was entertainment and walked away, and two days later a man I'd never seen before sat outside this street in a car for four hours." Her voice stayed level.
"I wasn't going to put Lily in the middle of that.
I wasn't going to put myself in the middle of that again."
"Sophia—"
"I handled it.
I was handling it."
"By eating cereal for dinner."
"By not getting my daughter kjlled." The word came out before she could stop it.
She pressed her lips together.
"I know what your world costs, Dominic.
I paid for it once already.
I wasn't going to pay again."
The apartment was very quiet.
Dominic looked at the drawing on the refrigerator.
The two figures holding hands.
The unsteady letters.
"She has the crease," he said quietly.
"Between her eyebrows.
My father had it."
Sophia said nothing.
"Is she mine?"
The silence lasted exactly four seconds.
He counted.
"Yes," Sophia said.
He turned to look at her.
She met his eyes without flinching, the way she always had, the way that had made him fall in love with her before he understood what was happening.
"I found out two weeks after you ended things," she said.
"I didn't tell you because you had made yourself very clear.
And because I knew that if you found out, you'd either pull us into your world or push us further out of it.
Either way, Lily would spend her life being a secret or a target." She lifted her chin.
"I chose neither."
"You chose alone."
"I chose safe."
From down the hallway came a small voice.
"Mama?
I picked *The Velveteen Rabbit.* Can we read it tonight?"
Sophia's face changed completely.
Soft in a way it hadn't been since she opened the door.
"Yes, baby.
Give me a minute."
She looked back at Dominic.
The softness was gone.
"You need to go."
"Vincent knew about her," Dominic said.
"That's why he fired you.
Not to punish you.
To send me a message."
Sophia's arms tightened across her chest.
"I know," she said, very quietly.
"Which means he's known about Lily for longer than tonight."
Her face told him she had already understood this.
Had been living with it.
Had been lying awake with it every night while Lily slept down the hall.
"Go home, Dominic."
He picked up his coat from the chair where he'd set it.
"Lock the deadbolt," he said.
"Both of them.
Don't answer the door for anyone until you hear from me."
"I'm not one of your people."
"No." He looked at her one more time.
"You're more important than that."
He left before she could answer.
In the black SUV outside, he called his chief of security before the door had fully closed.
"Find Vincent," he said.
May you like
"Tonight.
Don't tell him why."
