Chapter 2 - The Man Who Didn't Know His Daughter
Z
Dominic dismissed the meeting within three minutes.
Carmine protested. Leo escorted him toward the entrance. Two guards collected the papers, and Gerard hurried to reassure the remaining diners that the disturbance had been nothing more than a private disagreement.
Dominic ignored all of them.
He watched Chloe sit on the carpet with Mia.
The little girl had stopped shaking, but she still held Chloe's sleeve as if the fabric were a rope stretched across deep water.
“Can you tell me why she won't come to me?” Dominic asked.
Chloe looked up.
“Can you tell me why you keep asking her to come to you instead of meeting her where she is?”
He stared at her.
Nobody spoke to Dominic Russo that way.
Most people wanted his approval, his money, or his protection. The few who wanted none of those things usually wanted to stay alive.
Chloe simply wanted the frightened child to feel safe.
Dominic crouched a little lower.
“Mia, sweetheart, I’m not angry with you.”
Mia didn't look at him.
Chloe signed the sentence.
Mia glanced at her father, then pointed at the table where Carmine had struck the wood.
Dominic's jaw tightened.
“He frightened her,” Leo said quietly.
“She was frightened before he hit the table,” Chloe replied.
That silenced both men.
Dominic looked at his daughter’s untouched dinner, the broken crayon, and the drawing of a house with black windows.
“How long has she been doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Communicating like that.”
Chloe hesitated.
“You should ask her, not me.”
“I have asked.”
“Have you learned enough signs to understand her answer?”
Dominic looked away.
The truth was humiliating.
His daughter had been born without functional speech, and her doctors had explained that she could communicate through signs, pictures, writing, and other methods. Dominic had paid for specialists, private tutors, and expensive equipment.
He had also spent months traveling between cities, managing his criminal organization, and believing that providing everything money could buy was the same as being present.
After his wife, Isabella, died in a car accident two years earlier, Mia's silence had deepened.
She had stopped signing as often.
She had withdrawn from unfamiliar adults.
Dominic had responded by hiring more specialists.
When they failed to produce immediate progress, he replaced them.
He had never considered that his daughter might not need another person trying to fix her.
She might need someone willing to understand her.
“What’s your name?” he asked Chloe.
“Chloe Bennett.”
“Do you have training in sign language?”
“Some. My brother is hard of hearing. I learned American Sign Language when we were little.”
“Are you a specialist?”
“No. I'm a waitress.”
“Could you work with Mia?”
Chloe looked at the child.
“I can spend time with her, if she wants that. But I'm not going to promise you that she'll speak, and I'm not going to force her to do anything.”
Dominic studied her.
“Name your price.”
Chloe's expression hardened.
“She's your daughter, Mr. Russo. Not a business deal.”
For the first time that evening, something resembling embarrassment crossed his face.
He had spent his life reducing complicated problems to numbers. Money could purchase loyalty, silence, information, and sometimes forgiveness.
But Chloe had drawn a line he couldn't buy his way across.
“Then tell me what she needs.”
“Consistency. Patience. People who don't panic when she communicates differently. And a father who learns her language.”
Dominic looked at Mia.
“What if I get it wrong?”
Chloe gave him a small, tired smile.
“Then you apologize and try again.”
Mia released Chloe's sleeve and picked up her sketchbook.
She turned to a clean page.
With a blue crayon, she drew three figures beneath a crooked roof.
One was tall.
One was small.
The third had long hair.
She pointed at Chloe.
Then at the drawing.
Chloe's chest tightened.
“She wants me to stay for dinner,” she said.
Dominic looked at the clock.
“Of course.”
Chloe glanced toward the kitchen.
“My shift isn't finished.”
“I'll pay the restaurant for your time.”
“No.”
He paused.
Chloe gently corrected herself.
“I'm not leaving my job because you can afford to make me. I'll finish my shift, and if Mia still wants to see me afterward, we'll discuss it.”
Dominic was accustomed to people obeying him before he finished speaking.
He had just discovered that his daughter liked a woman who did not.
“Fine,” he said.
Then he turned to Leo.
“Find out everything you can about Chloe Bennett.”
Chloe heard him.
“Don't.”
Dominic looked back.
“Excuse me?”
“If you want to know me, ask me. Don't send men to investigate my life.”
Leo's eyebrows rose.
Dominic held her gaze for a long moment.
Then he nodded.
“Fair enough.”
Neither of them knew that someone else in the restaurant had been watching the entire exchange.
Someone who had just recognized Chloe's name.
May you like
Someone who knew what Isabella Russo had been trying to tell Dominic before she died.
And someone who was already reaching for his phone.
