Chapter 4 - A Father’s Awakening
The surgery took two hours.
When I woke up in the recovery suite, heavy gauze was wrapped tightly around my face.
Dr. Chen sat beside my bed, monitoring my vitals.
"The procedure was a complete success, Dominic," Henry informed me quietly. "We relieved the pressure on the nerve bundle. But you must keep the bandages on for forty-eight hours to allow the tissue to heal."
"Where is Lily?" I asked immediately.
"Mateo located her," Dr. Chen replied. "She and her mother are staying in a dilapidated apartment in the South Bronx. They've been living under assumed names, moving every few weeks."
"Bring them here," I commanded. "Now."
Three hours later, the door to the medical suite opened.
I heard the soft, light footsteps of a little girl, followed by the hesitant, terrified steps of a woman.
The scent hit me first.
Not cheap vanilla.
Raindrops, wild jasmine, and the subtle fragrance of expensive paper.
Elena.
"Dominic?" Elena’s voice was a ragged whisper, carrying four years of grief and unspoken pain.
"Elena," I breathed, reaching out my hand into the dark.
She rushed forward, falling to her knees beside my bed, her warm, trembling hands locking around mine.
"I thought you were dead," she sobbed, pressing her face against my knuckles. "Marcus told me you ordered my execution four years ago! He said... he said if I ever came back to New York, he would kill our baby!"
My breath caught in my throat.
"Our baby?" I repeated, my voice breaking.
"Lily," Elena whispered, weeping against my skin. "She's your daughter, Dominic. I found out I was pregnant two weeks after Marcus forced me onto that boat to Europe."
I sat frozen, the truth crashing over me with the force of a tidal wave.
Lily wasn't just a girl in the park.
She was my blood. My child.
And while I had been sitting in my estate, mourning a lost past, my daughter and the woman I loved had been hiding in dark rooms, hunted by the very people I called family.
May you like
I reached down, my fingers finding Lily's tiny shoulder, pulling both of them tight against my chest.
"No one is going to hide anymore," I vowed softly into the darkness. "In two days, I take the bandages off. And then I am going to tear their world apart."
