When the Lights Go Out
Chapter 08 - When the Lights Go Out
Darkness does not fall in hospitals.
It snaps.
One second, room 412 hummed with yellow light and old machines. The next, Saint Agnes Long-Term Care vanished into emergency red glow, alarms beginning their uneven calls through the walls.
Claire grabbed the bedrail.
“Alessandro?”
His monitor flickered but held.
Dominic’s voice moved through the dark, low and controlled.
“Stay beside the bed.”
“I’m going back to Sophie.”
“Claire—”
“No.”
The word came out like a blade.
He stopped.
Good, she thought wildly. He can learn.
Rocco appeared in the doorway, phone light in hand.
“Backup generator is running for medical equipment, not hallway systems. Elevators are down.”
Dominic said, “Valentina planned this.”
The nurse sobbed, “There are patients—”
“Get staff to the stairwells,” Claire said before the men could turn strategy into a private language. “Use phone lights. Check oxygen first. If she wants us trapped, don’t help her by panicking.”
Everyone looked at her.
“I worked nights at a care facility for eight months,” she said. “Move.”
The nurse moved.
Dominic looked at Claire with something like wonder.
Not romantic wonder. Not the foolish, glittering kind.
The more useful kind: recognition.
He said, “Rocco, get Alessandro out. Use the rear stairs. Marco will send a car to the alley.”
Rocco glanced at the bed.
Alessandro’s eyes opened again, clearer now because fear can sometimes burn through drugs.
“No,” he said weakly.
Rocco stopped.
Alessandro looked at him. “I believed you came to kill me.”
Rocco’s face tightened.
“I believed you killed my men.”
“We were both useful idiots.”
Dominic muttered, “Reconcile later.”
Claire almost laughed. It came out as a cough.
Dominic turned to her.
“You’re with me.”
“Not because you said so.”
“No,” he answered. “Because Sophie is.”
That was true.
And cruelly persuasive.
They took the stairs down. Four flights. Claire’s knees shook by the second. Dominic moved like a man raised for pursuit, every step measured, no wasted sound. At the second-floor landing, he removed a small pistol from an ankle holster.
Claire stopped.
He saw her face.
“For Valentina’s men,” he said.
“My daughter hugged you.”
“I remember.”
“Then don’t become something she’ll have to forget.”
Dominic looked at the weapon.
Then he handed it backward to Marco’s second man, who had caught up behind them.
“Only if necessary,” he said.
The man nodded.
Claire did not know whether that counted as victory in Dominic’s world.
In hers, it counted enough to keep moving.
At the mansion, Sophie sat at the kitchen table with Mrs. Bell, three guards, and a plate of cookies shaped like stars. Valentina stood across from her, elegant in winter white, one gloved hand resting on the back of a chair.
No one had touched anyone.
Somehow that made it worse.
Valentina smiled when Claire burst in.
“There you are.”
Claire went straight to Sophie and lifted her.
Sophie wrapped both arms around her neck.
“Mommy, the fancy lady said Mr. Buttons was hers.”
Claire turned slowly.
Valentina’s smile did not move.
Dominic entered behind Claire.
“You lied about Alessandro.”
Valentina looked at him.
“Which time?”
Mrs. Bell gasped.
Dominic took one step forward.
Claire shifted Sophie away from both of them.
Valentina continued, “Before you perform outrage, remember that family empires are not protected by nursery feelings. Alessandro was weak. He wanted to run off with this woman and expose business he barely understood.”
Claire said, “He understood enough to scare you.”
Valentina’s eyes cut to her.
“You have no idea what fear is.”
“I’m a single mother with an eviction notice and a three-year-old who asks where fathers go. Don’t lecture me on fear because yours wears pearls.”
For the second time that day, Valentina was speechless.
Dominic did not smile.
But Marco, by the doorway, looked down very quickly.
Valentina recovered.
“Fine. You found Alessandro. He’s alive. Congratulations. That does not make him innocent.”
Dominic’s voice was quiet.
“Paolo is alive too.”
A crack.
There it was.
Not on her face. Valentina was too practiced for that.
In her hand.
Her fingers tightened around the chair until the glove creased.
Dominic saw it.
So did Claire.
Sophie whispered, “Mommy, why is everyone doing scary quiet?”
Claire kissed her hair. “Because grown-ups are bad at using words.”
Valentina stared at the child.
“She looks like him.”
“Like her father?” Claire asked.
“Like all of them.”
“Them?” Dominic said.
Valentina’s eyes closed for one slow second.
When she opened them, something had changed. The cruelty was still there, but beneath it sat exhaustion, old and bitter.
“Your father had another child.”
Dominic did not move.
Mrs. Bell whispered, “No.”
Valentina looked toward the old housekeeper.
“You knew he was unfaithful. Don’t pretend shock now.”
Dominic’s voice went flat.
“Who?”
Valentina looked at the kitchen door.
Rocco stood there, pale, with Alessandro in a wheelchair behind him.
She smiled then.
A terrible, victorious smile.
May you like
“Ask him,” she said.
And everyone turned toward the man Claire had believed dead.
