Chapter 8: The Slap and the Silence
The door clicked shut behind them with a sound like a lock turning on a cage.
Emma stood in the entryway of Dominic's penthouse, her heels sinking into the plush cream carpet, her hand still wrapped around the strap of her purse. The place was all sharp angles and cold marble, glass walls reflecting the city lights like scattered diamonds. Beautiful. Sterile. A showroom, not a home.
Dominic walked past her without a word.
She watched him cross to the wet bar in the corner of the living room—a sleek black cabinet stocked with crystal decanters and bottles she couldn't name. He poured himself three fingers of something amber and didn't offer her anything. Not water. Not a seat. Not a single word.
The silence stretched.
Emma counted her heartbeats. One.Two. Three. She could feel the bruise forming on her wrist where he'd grabbed her in the car, the skin tender and hot beneath her bracelet. She should have kept her mouth shut. She should have nodded and smiled and played the part of the grateful bride-to-be.
But she was so tired of playing.
"You want to tell me what that was?"
Dominic's voice came from behind her, low and controlled. She turned.
He stood by the bar, his glass in hand, his tie loosened, his sleeves rolled to his elbows. The pose was casual. The look in his eyes was not.
"I don't know what you mean."
"Don't." He set the glass down with a crack. "Don't play dumb with me. You know exactly what I mean."
Emma's fingers tightened on her purse strap. "I really don't."
"The dinner." Dominic crossed the room toward her, his footsteps silent on the carpet. "The way you looked at him. The way you let him talk to me like that. Like I was nothing. Like you were his and not mine."
"I wasn't looking at him."
"Bullshit."
"I was staring at my plate," Emma said. Her voice came out calm.Steady. She didn't know where the steadiness came from—some deep well inside her that her father had never managed to drain. "I was trying not to throw up while your cousin talked about keeping me pregnant like I'm a broodmare. I wasn't flirting with anyone."
Dominic stopped inches from her face.
He was taller than her by half a foot, broader in the shoulders, and he used every inch of that advantage now, leaning into her space until she could smell the whiskey on his breath and the cologne on his collar. His eyes were dark, flat, unreadable.
"You think I'm stupid?"
"No."
"You think I didn't see the way he looked at you? The way he jumped to your defense like some kind of—" He stopped himself, his jaw working. "He's never done that. Not for anyone. Not for me. And then you show up, this little nobody from a bookstore, and suddenly he's ready to burn the whole table down for you."
Emma's throat tightened. "That's not—"
"Don't tell me what it's not." His hand shot out, fast enough that she flinched, but he only grabbed her chin, tilting her face up to his. His fingers dug into her jaw. "You're mine now. You understand? Mine. Not his. Not anyone's. Mine."
She didn't answer.
She couldn't.
His grip tightened. "Say it."
"I'm yours."
The words tasted like ash.
Dominic held her gaze for a long moment, searching for something—defiance, maybe, or the lie he was sure lived behind her eyes. She gave him nothing. Just her steady stare and the soft, measured breath of a woman who had learned long ago that showing fear only made the monsters hungrier.
He let go.
"You embarrassed me tonight," he said, turning away. "In front of my father. In front of Marco. In front of everyone. And I won't forget it."
Emma rubbed her jaw. The skin was tender. She could already feel the bruise blooming beneath her fingers.
"I didn't do anything."
"You existed." Dominic picked up his glass and took a long swallow. "That was enough."
She should have stayed quiet. She should have retreated to the guest room, locked the door, and waited for morning. But something in her—that stubborn, stupid thing that had kept her alive through twenty-three years of her father's chaos—refused to let it go.
"He spoke to me first," she said. "At the dinner. He was the one who—"
The slap came out of nowhere.
One second she was standing in the middle of the living room, her chin lifted, her voice steady. The next, her head snapped sideways and her body followed, stumbling into the wall. Her shoulder hit the marble with a dull, sickening thud. Her purse fell. Her vision blurred.
She tasted blood.
Dominic stood over her, his hand still raised, his expression blank. Not angry. Not sorry. Just empty. Like he'd swatted a fly and was already forgetting it had ever existed.
"You don't get to talk about him," he said. "Not in my house. Not ever."
Emma pressed her hand to her cheek. The skin was hot, pulsing, already swelling. She could feel the shape of his fingers in the sting—four distinct points of impact, a map of his violence written on her face.
"You hit me."
"You made me."
"I didn't—"
"You're going to learn." Dominic turned away from her, crossing to his armchair by the window. He sat down, picked up his phone, and began scrolling through something—emails, maybe. Or stock prices. Something that mattered more to him than the woman he'd just struck. "You're going to learn how to behave. How to be a wife. How to keep your mouth shut and your eyes down and your legs open when I want them. And if you don't—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
He didn't have to.
Emma pushed herself off the wall. Her legs were shaking. Her shoulder ached. Her cheek was on fire. But she didn't cry. She wouldn't give him that. Not now. Not ever.
She walked to the guest room—the one he'd pointed out earlier, down the hall, past the bathroom, the one with the deadbolt and the plain white sheets. She didn't look back. She didn't say a word.
She closed the door behind her.
The lock clicked.
Then she was alone.
Emma stood in the center of the room for a long time, her hands hanging at her sides, her breath coming in shallow, uneven gasps. The guest room was small and bare—a bed, a dresser, a window overlooking the city. No personal touches. No warmth. Just like everything else in Dominic's life.
She walked to the window.
The city sprawled below her, a galaxy of lights and shadows, millions of people living their lives without knowing she existed. She pressed her palm against the glass, feeling the cold seep through her skin, and tried to remember what it felt like to be safe.
She couldn't.
Her phone buzzed.
Emma pulled it from her pocket, her fingers clumsy, her heart still hammering against her ribs. The screen glowed in the dark room, and for a moment she thought it was Dominic—a text telling her to come back, apologize, get on her knees.
It wasn't.
Unknown number.
Is dinner over yet? —C
She stared at the words for a long moment.
Craig.
Somehow, impossibly, it was Craig.
She should have deleted it. She should have blocked the number, turned off the phone, pretended she'd never seen it. That would have been smart. That would have been safe.
But she was so tired of being smart.
Her thumbs hovered over the keyboard.
Before she could think better of it, she typed: How did you get this number?
The reply came almost instantly.
Marco. Don't be mad.
I'm not mad.
You should be. I'm an asshole.
She almost smiled. Almost.
What do you want, Craig?
A pause. Then:
To know if you're okay.
Emma looked at her reflection in the window—the swelling on her cheek, the bruise on her wrist, the blood on her lip that she hadn't wiped away yet. A stranger stared back at her. A woman she didn't recognize.
She typed: I'm fine.
Fuck that. You're not fine. I saw his face when you left. What did he do?
Nothing.
Emma.
She closed her eyes.
Nothing I can't handle.
The typing bubbles appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. She waited, her heart pounding, her cheek throbbing, the silence of the penthouse pressing in around her like a fist.
Then:
I'm outside.
Her breath caught.
What?
I'm parked down the street. I followed you home. I wanted to make sure you got here in one piece.
Craig, you can't be here.
I know. I don't care. Is he hurting you?
She didn't answer.
Emma?
The tears came then—hot and sudden, spilling down her cheeks before she could stop them. She pressed her fist to her mouth, biting down on her knuckles, trying to keep quiet. Dominic was still in the living room. If he heard her crying, he'd come. He'd knock. He'd demand to know why she was upset, and when she told him, he'd hit her again.
She couldn't risk it.
She typed with shaking fingers: You should go.
Not without you.
You can't help me, Craig. Not tonight. Not like this.
Watch me.
She could picture him—sitting in his car, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, his jaw set, his eyes fixed on the building where she was trapped. She could picture him storming the lobby, breaking down the door, dragging her out of here.
It would be so easy to let him.
But it would be a disaster. Salvatore's men were everywhere. Marco.Dominic. The whole Moretti machine, grinding its gears, waiting for her to make a wrong move. If Craig came for her now, they'd kill him. Or worse, they'd kill her.
Please, she typed. Don't do anything stupid.
Too late for that.
It's not. It's not too late. Go home, Craig. Please.
A long pause.
Then:
Did he hit you?
Emma stared at the question. Her cheek burned. Her shoulder ached. The bruise on her wrist pulsed with every heartbeat.
She typed: Yes.
She hit send before she could stop herself.
The reply came immediately.
I'm going to kill him.
No.
I'm serious. I'm going to walk up there and put a bullet between his eyes.
Craig, stop. Listen to me. If you do that, they'll kill you. And then I'll be alone. I'll have no one. Do you understand?
Silence.
Emma?
I'm here.
Promise me you won't do anything. Promise me.
Another pause. Longer this time.
I promise.
She didn't believe him. But she wanted to.
Go home, she typed. Please. I'll figure something out.
You have a phone now. You can call me. Anytime. Day or night. I don't care what time it is. You call me, and I'll be there.
Okay.
I mean it, Emma.
I know.
Good. Get some sleep. Put ice on your face. And lock the door.
She almost laughed.
I already did.
That's my girl.
The words hit her somewhere soft and vulnerable, a place she'd thought her father had burned out of her years ago. She didn't know how to respond. She didn't know what to feel.
So she just typed: Goodnight, Craig.
Goodnight, Emma Rose.
She stared at her full name on the screen. She'd never told him that. She'd never told anyone that. It was a secret she kept locked away, a gift her mother had given her before she'd died, a name that belonged to someone who didn't exist anymore.
But Craig knew.
She didn't know how. She didn't know why. She only knew that somehow, impossibly, he'd found the pieces of her she'd hidden from the world and held them up to the light like something precious.
Emma set the phone on the nightstand.
She stripped off her dress—the black one, the one she'd worn to dinner, the one that still smelled like the closet and his hands and the lie she'd told. She tossed it into the corner, where it crumpled against the wall like a fallen flag.
Then she walked to the bathroom.
The face in the mirror was worse than she'd expected. Her cheek was swollen, red, already darkening around the edges of where Dominic's palm had connected. A thin line of blood had dried on her lip. Her eyes were hollow, ringed with smudged mascara, staring at her as if from the bottom of a well.
She ran the cold water.
She held a washcloth to her face until the fabric went warm against her skin. Then she did it again. And again. As if she could wash away the last four hours. As if she could scrub herself clean of the closet and the closet and the slap and the words that would live in her head until the day she died.
She couldn't.
But she tried.
When she finally crawled into bed, the sheets were cold and stiff, and the city lights bled through the blinds in thin slats of silver. She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, her phone clutched in her hand like a weapon.
She didn't sleep.
She lay there for hours, her mind spinning, her body aching, and she thought about Craig—the way he'd said her name, the way he'd promised to come if she called, the way his voice had cracked when he asked if she was okay.
She thought about Dominic—the way he'd hit her without flinching, the way he'd turned his back, the way he'd dismissed her like she was nothing.
She thought about her father—the way he'd always done the same.
And she thought about the future—the wedding, the marriage, the children she'd never wanted, the life she'd never chosen, the cage she was about to lock herself into forever.
At some point—maybe two in the morning, maybe three—her phone buzzed again.
She looked at the screen.
I'm still outside. I'm not leaving until I know you're safe.
Emma closed her eyes.
She didn't reply.
But she didn't turn off the phone either.
She just lay there, in the dark, holding onto the words like a lifeline.
And somewhere below her, in the cold city night, Craig Moretti sat in his car and watched the window of a room where a woman he barely knew was trying to survive the night.
He didn't sleep either.