The Godfather’s Forsaken Rose Chapter 11
Vivian’s tearful question hit Dominic like a stone dropped into a frozen lake, cracking the surface of his carefully controlled calm.
His fingers tightened around the phone until his knuckles whitened.
“Bella is gone. Isabella is gone,” Vivian cried. “She took the earliest flight out of the country. She said she’ll never come back. Godfather, are you satisfied now?”
Then she hung up.
The busy tone rang in Dominic’s ear.
He remained motionless in the family office. The crystal chandelier above him cast a cold light across the hard angles of his face. There was no expression there, only a brief fracture deep in his eyes before the ice closed over it again.
Gone.
Left the United States.
Never coming back.
The words slid under his ribs like a sliver of ice, sharp and unfamiliar.
But years of power had taught Dominic self-control, and his attachment to Sophia made him instinctively suppress any emotion that should not have existed.
He frowned, tossed the phone onto the desk, and tried to return his attention to the merger documents before him.
The numbers and dense legal language blurred into a swarm of black insects. He could not focus.
Instead, the look Isabella had given him before she was dragged away replayed in his mind again and again.
Broken.
Desperate.
Filled with hatred, and beneath that hatred, a pain too deep to name.
Irritated, Dominic loosened his tie and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window.
New York glittered below him, all traffic and neon, but none of it could reach the darkness inside his chest.
For the first time in years, something in him felt out of control.
It crept quietly around his heart like a vine.
Before he could think better of it, he grabbed his keys and strode out of the office.
In the elevator, he called the airport manager directly. His voice allowed no argument.
“Find out which outbound flight Isabella Moretti is on. Now.”
He drove to JFK at a terrifying speed, running a red light on the way. By the time he reached the international departures hall, the airport manager was already waiting, pale and nervous, with the information in hand.
“Mr. Morello, Miss Moretti was on flight FX108 to Paris. The plane took off twenty minutes ago.”
Dominic stopped.
He lifted his head and stared at the departure board.
FX108.
Departed.
He stood frozen in the crowded terminal, like a man whose soul had been stripped from his body. Around him were boarding announcements, rolling suitcases, laughter, conversations in different languages.
All of it seemed to come from behind a thick wall of glass.
For the first time, Dominic understood with painful clarity what it meant to miss something.
To lose control.
Something important had been ripped out of the precise, sealed order of his life.
Just then, his phone vibrated.
Sophia’s name appeared on the screen.