Chapter 9 - The Price of Forgiveness
"I fired Vanessa," Dominic said desperately, stepping closer, ignoring the freezing wind that was whipping his dark coat. "I saw the security tape, Nora. She staged the whole thing. I know she tore her own dress. I know she lied to me."
Nora didn't look triumphant. She didn't look relieved. She simply raised an eyebrow.
"You think this is about Vanessa?" she asked softly.
"I know I made a mistake—an unforgivable, catastrophic mistake," Dominic pleaded, his eyes bloodshot, reaching out toward her before hesitating and letting his hand drop. "I was stressed about the launch. The investors were breathing down my neck. I lost my temper. I swear to God on my father’s grave, Nora, I have never hated myself more than the second my hand hit your face."
"Your father’s grave?" Nora let out a short, cold laugh that cut deeper than the icy wind. "Your mother told me how he broke her ribs on your seventh birthday, Dominic. She told me you promised her when you were ten years old that you would never be him."
Dominic flinched as if she had struck him with a whip.
"I’m not him," he choked out. "Nora, please. Come home. We can rebuild this. I will give you full operational control of CDG. You can run the entire design division. Your name will be on the marquee above mine. Just... bring my son home. Don't take him away from me."
"I’m not taking your son away from you, Dominic," Nora said, her voice dropping into that terrifyingly level tone that signaled a verdict had already been rendered. "You will have court-supervised visitation twice a month in Boston. You will pay thirty-five thousand a month in child support, which will go directly into a blind trust for his university."
"Supervised visitation?" Dominic’s voice rose, a flash of his old arrogance sparking through the desperation. "I am Dominic Caruso! I have the best family lawyers on the East Coast! You think a family court judge is going to give sole custody to a woman who ran off in the middle of the night?"
Nora reached into her sweater pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She handed it to him.
"What is this?" Dominic muttered, his cold fingers unfolding the sheet.
"That is the sworn deposition of Teresa Caruso," Nora said. "She documented every time you came home drunk and smashed furniture. She documented the threats you made to my business partners four years ago when I tried to launch Vance Atelier. And attached to the back is the high-resolution medical scan of my facial bone contusion taken at New York-Presbyterian Hospital at three in the morning."
Dominic stared at the paper. His mother’s signature was scrawled at the bottom in blue ink, notarized by a state official.
"My own mother..." Dominic whispered, his knees trembling.
May you like
"Your mother knows what monsters look like when they put on five-thousand-dollar suits," Nora said. "You wanted to be the king, Dominic. You built an empire on my designs, my silence, and my submission. But kings only rule when their subjects agree to kneel. And I am done kneeling."
***
