But it’s too late.
All around us in the darkness, as though we’re at a concert, cellphone lights blink awake in the room.
And then, one by one, men start to make for the exit.
Patty cries and roars at them, but soon there’s only Patty and his six men standing in a circle around Dad and Dom, all of them with their guns pointed.
“So what?” Patty growls. “We’ve got the guns. We still outnumber you. What the fuck are you going to—”
Dom lashes out with such ferocious speed it doesn’t even seem possible, the savage way he moves, as though he’s just time traveled from the period when men had to hunt and fight for their meat.
He grabs Patty’s gun hand and snaps it upward, causing him to drop the gun and yelp and fall backward. Dom catches the gun and spins, smashing the closest Irishman across the jaw, and then he ducks aside.
Bang, bang, gunshots flare into the shadows and ricochet brightly, loudly.
Dad leaps at a man and starts tussling, and Dom springs forward and throws Patty’s gun into the face of a guard.
It bounces off with a bony crunch and the man falls, and then Dom spins into a flurrying fury of destruction, grabbing one man and throwing him over his head, knocking another to the ground with a forceful right hook that has his face snapping sideways, so hard I’m surprised his head doesn’t fly off his shoulders.
Dom moves like a practiced fighter, always keeping one of the Irishmen between him and the gunmen, tackling one into another and seeing them all topple like rolling pins.
“The guns, Gabriel,” he snarls, once all the men are lying on their backs, groaning and clutching their injuries.
Dad hurries around the room, collecting the guns and struggling to carry them all in his arms.
He recedes into the darkness and there’s a big metallic clattering sound as he drops them all, and then he returns, holding just two now.
Dom gestures with his hand and Dad places a gun in it.
Dom hefts it toward Patty, who’s just about climbed to his feet and is looking around in disbelief.
“How the fuck did he do that?” Patty snarls at his men. “Two fucking guys. What are you, a bunch of amateurs?”
“They’re under-motivated and intoxicated, that’s all,” Dom says casually, causing Patty to stand as still as a statue when he aims the gun at him. “You’re the amateur, Patty. You always have been. You killed your dad and got a few foolish men to believe you could make something of the Irish. You used up the last of your dad’s funds buying mercenaries, and even that backfired. I should put you down right fucking now.”
He pauses.
I stare at Dom. I stare at the flare in his eyes and the determination in his grim set lips. Part of me wants him to pull the trigger. Patty is an evil man and would deserve it, just like the men who killed his parents deserved it.
But then Dom nods at Dad.
“Gabriel, find something to tie these motherfuckers up with. We’re calling the Chief of Police.”
Dom and I exchange a glance and Dad follows his instructions, Patty and his men having no choice but to fall to their knees and take the zip-ties and the gags and the bags over their heads.
Dom’s gaze is filled with confused emotion. I imagine mine must be the same.
But behind the confusion – Mom knows, Dad probably knows, all hell has broken loose and it’s not even dinnertime – I feel a swelling in my body.
I feel my womb singing in victory.
I feel our offspring flowering inside of me and our future stretching out like a star bright bridge.
We can do this.
I hope.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Domenico
Later, the four of us are sitting around the table in the garden, the night air pricking coolly as a presage to autumn.
Poppet runs up and down the garden, sniffing at the lights that dot the flowerbeds, and then sprinting for the fountain where even more lights glitter.
Dallas sits beside me, so close I can scent her, her womb, her everything, our child flourishing inside of her minute by minute.
Growing.
And soon our family will be large and happy and filled with laughter.
After the scene at the warehouse, it was a long afternoon and evening of interrogation and questions and getting the story straight with Ms. Kerkenwall, who agreed to make it seem like the police busted Patty and his men. She assured me that all of them would be facing life in prison and that Patty would never see the outside of a cell.
That doesn’t mean my desire to put him in the ground vanished entirely – I can feel it, niggling – but my desire to be a man Dallas can be proud of far outweighs it.
Sitting here with Dallas is the first time I’ve seen her since she was taken to the hospital to be checked over for injuries. She looks devastatingly beautiful, her arms hugging herself, making imprints in her curvaceous flesh that even now I have to force my gaze away from, lest they ruin my impulse control and I just take her.
Now, just gone midnight, we sit in a cool huddle with an ignored bottle of wine resting on the table between us. Gabriel and Samantha happen to be sitting on the opposite side to Dallas and me, as though we are arranged against each other.
As though we’ve picked teams.
“So,” I say, breaking the silence, “I suppose we should talk about this.”
“Yes,” Gabriel murmurs, looking down at the table. He’s changed into a baggy suit and his hair is combed over again, but his eyes still hang tiredly. “The first thing I want to know is how you feel, Dallas. That’s the most important thing to me. No offense, Skip.”
I laugh darkly, glad that even now Gabriel feels like he can joke with me. I have to believe that’s a good sign.
“Well, when I saw that video, I was confused,” Dallas says, turning
