Chapter 3 - The Cage at the Bellagio
The luxury suite on the thirty-fourth floor of the Bellagio felt less like a sanctuary and more like an opulent vault.
Penelope stood near the floor-to-ceiling glass wall, looking down at the illuminated dancing fountains below. The water swayed and leaped in time to a classical symphony she couldn't hear through the triple-paned, soundproof glass.
It had been thirty-six hours since Dominic had brought her to his Summerlin estate, and twenty-four hours since he had relocated her to this private floor of the Bellagio under the cover of a corporate event security detail. Her Honda was parked in a secure underground garage five miles away; her mother had been quietly moved to a private wing at St. Jude’s with round-the-clock "private nursing staff" who wore concealed Glock 19s beneath their scrubs.
The door to the suite clicked open with a soft electronic beep.
Penelope didn't turn around. She listened to the slow, heavy footfalls crossing the marble foyer, recognizing the cadence instantly.
"You haven't touched your dinner," Dominic noted, stopping a few feet behind her.
"I don't usually have an appetite when I'm being held hostage by a man who controls the local waste management union," she said coolly, her reflection in the dark glass showing her standing tall, her arms crossed over a dark red silk blouse.
"You aren't a hostage, Penelope. If you walk out that door, no one will stop you."
"Except the three men in tailored suits standing outside the elevator bank?"
"They are there to ensure no one enters without my permission," Dominic said calmly. He walked to the small bar cart in the corner, ice clinking against heavy crystal as he poured two fingers of single-malt scotch. "Though given your history with my employees, I suspect you could take at least two of them out with a heavy tray."
Penelope turned around, her dark eyes narrowing. "Do you think this is funny, Mr. Rossi? My life has been completely dismantled in three days. I haven't been to my office. My assistant at Lux Catering thinks I have a contagious strain of flu, and I’m currently living in a room that costs more per night than my annual grocery budget."
Dominic took a slow sip of his drink, his grey eyes watching her over the rim of the glass. He had discarded his tie, the top two buttons of his dark blue shirt undone, giving him a dangerous, relaxed appearance that felt far more threatening than when he was fully suited.
"I don't think any of this is funny," he said smoothly. "In fact, I find it deeply offensive that someone thought they could use my ballroom, my capo, and an innocent woman to pull off a heist right under my nose."
"Who was it?" she asked, taking a step toward him. "You’ve had your men digging for two days. You didn't bring me here just to keep me safe. You found something."
Dominic set his glass down on the marble counter with a sharp clink.
"The photographs came from an IP address routed through a server in Zurich," Dominic said, his tone turning businesslike and cold. "But the digital metadata buried in the image files contained a secondary encryption signature—a signature unique to the internal communications of Lombardi Enterprises."
Penelope paused, her breath catching in her throat. "Tony Lombardi?"
"Tony has been ambitious for a long time," Dominic replied, walking slowly toward her. "He thought I was getting soft. He thought my investments in legitimate hospitality and real estate meant I was losing my grip on the street. He orchestrated the incident with your waitress because he knew Clara was fresh out of training and easily frightened. He expected her to drop a tray, make a scene, and draw my attention to that side of the room."
"He didn't expect me to step in," Penelope realized, the pieces of the puzzle suddenly snapping together with terrifying clarity.
"No," Dominic smiled, that dark, intoxicating curve of his mouth returning. "He expected a frightened twenty-year-old girl to cry. Instead, he got a five-foot-eight woman in a deep-emerald dress who looked him in the eye and threatened to chop his hand off. You threw his timing off by ninety seconds."
"And when you stepped over..."
"You got angry," Dominic said softly, stopping right in front of her. He reached out, his long fingers hovering just an inch above the curve of her jaw, feeling the heat rising from her skin without actually touching her. "You felt cornered, insulted, and underestimating. So you struck me. And in doing so, you created a far bigger scene than Tony could have ever dreamed of."
Penelope felt her heart hammering against her ribs, her skin tingling where his hand hovered. "So Tony used me. He had those photos taken months ago, waiting for the right moment to frame me as his distraction if things went wrong."
"Tony isn't smart enough to orchestrate the surveillance," Dominic said, his tone dropping an octave. "He’s the blunt instrument. Someone else is pulling his string—someone who wanted to pit you against me, waiting for me to execute you for the slap, leaving a clean trail of dead bodies with no loose ends."
"And because you didn't kill me..."
"Because I didn't kill you," Dominic whispered, his gray eyes locking onto hers with an intensity that burned through her resolve, "the person behind Tony is getting desperate. And desperate people make mistakes."
The internal intercom beside the door suddenly chimed twice.
May you like
Dominic didn't break eye contact with Penelope as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black radio. "Speak, Matteo."
"Boss," Matteo’s voice crackled through the speaker, tight and urgent. "We just intercepted a delivery at the front desk. A box addressed to Ms. Davis. No return address, scanned clear for explosives, but... you need to see what's inside."
