Chapter 9 - THE UNSEEN THREAD|
Two weeks passed.
The news of Chloe Marlow’s arrest had sent shockwaves through high society. Her elite friends vanished overnight, her family’s accounts were frozen, and her name became a cautionary tale in luxury circles across the country.
Nora, meanwhile, had moved her father into a quiet brownstone in Brooklyn funded by her official salary as the Executive Director of the Russo Foundation.
For the first time in her life, she woke up without the crushing weight of unpaid medical bills or the exhaustion of three overlapping shifts.
Yet, despite her new life, she found herself returning to the Russo penthouse every evening—not to clean, but to sit with Dominic over dinner.
"You're quiet tonight," Dominic noted, cutting into a steak across his dining table. The dining room had been fully restored, the bullet holes patched and painted over as if the attack had never happened.
"I went to see my father today," Nora said, setting down her wine glass. "He looked at the news coverage of Marro's arrest. He recognized your family's crest."
Dominic paused, his fork hovering inches above his plate. "His crest?"
"He said twenty years ago, before he got sick, he worked as a mechanic for a shipping yard on the docks," Nora explained, watching his expression carefully. "A yard owned by your father, Lorenzo Russo."
Dominic's eyes narrowed slightly, a spark of deep intrigue lighting up his silver gaze.
"Arthur Hale?" Dominic repeated the name slowly, as if searching through decades of dark family archives. "Your father was Arthur Hale?"
"Yes," Nora said, frowning. "Why? Did you know him?"
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Dominic set his cutlery down, leaning back in his chair. "My father didn't just run shipping lines, Nora. Twenty years ago, his life was saved during an ambush at Dock 19. A mechanic threw him into an armored oil truck and drove him through a line of hitmen."
Nora's heart slammed against her ribs. "My... my father?"
