Chapter 10 - The ChoiceThe burner phone sat on the bedside table like a ticking clock through the entire, sleepless night.
By 4:00 AM, the weight of the decision had crushed out every remaining shred of fatigue. I sat up in the king-sized bed, clutching the sheet to my chest, staring at the blinking green light of the encrypted device.
If I called Detective Miller, the NYPD and federal marshals would orchestrate a raid, pull me out of the Westchester estate, and place me in a federal holding facility. I would testify against Victor Costa, and theoretically, I would be free.
Theoretically.
A small, cynical voice in the back of my mind whispered what Detective Miller had refused to admit: the police in New York were porous. Costa had informants inside the precinct. If I walked away from Dominic’s protection, I would be stepping into the crosshairs of a war with zero cover, entirely dependent on a legal system that had failed to protect my mother’s clinic in the first place.
And then there was Dominic.
Cold, calculating, manipulative, and terrifyingly obsessive. He had stalked my movements, bought my mother’s medical debts, and trapped me in a shotgun wedding while I was unconscious on an operating table.
Yet... he had stood by my bed every single day. He had ensured my mother’s heart surgery was a success. And when the bullets flew at the Aster Crown, he hadn't hesitated for a single millisecond to hunt down the men who tried to kill his mother—and by extension, me.
“You belong to me now, Elena,” his voice echoed in my memory.
I reached out, my fingers trembling as I picked up the burner phone.
Before I could dial the first digit, the heavy mahogany door of the master suite clicked open.
Dominic stepped into the room. He wasn't wearing his suit jacket; his white dress shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, and his sleeves were rolled up, exposing the corded muscles of his forearms. He looked exhausted, the lines around his slate-gray eyes etched with the fatigue of a man waging a silent war to keep his family alive.
He stopped mid-stride when he saw the phone in my hand.
The air in the room instantly dropped twenty degrees. Dominic’s eyes locked onto the burner phone, then slowly rose to meet my gaze. The dangerous, quiet fury radiating from him was palpable.
“You were going to call him,” Dominic stated, his voice dangerously low.
I didn't cower. I gripped the phone tighter, lifting my chin. “I didn't ask for this life, Dominic. I didn't ask to be your wife, and I didn't ask to be hunted by a lunatic like Victor Costa.”
“You think Miller can keep you safe?” Dominic scoffed, taking a slow, predatory step toward the bed. “Miller is on Costa’s payroll. The moment you step outside these gates with the feds, Costa’s snipers will turn your car into Swiss cheese.”
“And what about you?” I fired back, my voice shaking with accumulated rage and fear. “Are you keeping me safe, or are you just keeping your favorite hostage locked in a tower?!”
Dominic closed the distance in a blur of motion. Before I could flinch, he reached out, snatched the burner phone from my hand with brutal efficiency, and crushed it beneath his heel against the hardwood floor until the plastic casing and microchip shattered into useless dust.
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He leaned over the bed, trapping me between his arms, his chest heaving with suppressed emotion.
“I don't keep hostages, Elena,” Dominic hissed softly, his face inches from mine, his slate-gray eyes burning with fierce, possessive intensity. “I keep what is mine. And whether you understand it yet or not... you are mine.”
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