Chapter 6 - Thirty Days
The first week of the thirty days was awkward. Dominic did not know how to behave like a husband who had been told not to behave like a husband. Sadie enjoyed that. He asked before entering rooms. He stopped sending security with her unless she requested it.
He did not replace her clothes. He did not assign staff. He learned she liked coffee black, hated roses, and slept badly after court hearings. Sadie learned Dominic cooked eggs well and everything else badly. She learned he read history at night. She learned his mother had died when he was nineteen and his father three years later.
She learned Vincent raised him by teaching one rule above all others: never let anyone see what you need. That explained too much. It excused nothing. At The Vault, changes began. Sadie insisted. Dominic agreed reluctantly. A formal harassment reporting process. Independent review by Mara’s office.
Security cameras covering staff corridors. Zero tolerance for touching employees without consent. Several men complained. Dominic listened. Then fired two. Word spread quickly. The Vault did not collapse. Revenue increased. Elliot found that deeply amusing. “Apparently women prefer working where men can’t assault them.” Dominic glared.
“Revolutionary.” Sadie laughed. Knox returned to training. He asked Sadie to spar. She refused. “My shoulder still hates you.” “You threw me through the floor.” “Fair.” They became friends in the strange way fighters sometimes do. Knox told her he had known Frankie was dangerous but never thought he would hurt staff.
Sadie asked why he never intervened. Knox looked ashamed. “Because Frankie was above me.” That answer mattered. Hierarchy had protected more than secrets. Sadie brought it to Dominic. He listened. Then changed the chain of command for club safety. Not because Sadie ordered him. Because the argument made sense.
Good. The second week, Sadie attended a legitimate Russo shipping meeting as an observer. Men stared. One called her “the waitress.” Dominic started to respond. Sadie stopped him with a look. She answered herself. “Yes. And?” The man had nothing. Sadie reviewed port labor numbers.
She found overtime discrepancies in two warehouses. Nothing criminal. Just bad scheduling. Dominic corrected it. Afterward, he asked, “How did you see that?” “I worked double shifts for years.” “Useful.” “Careful.” He smiled. “Sorry. Valuable.” Better. The third week, Dominic asked Sadie to dinner. Not business.
Not contract. Dinner. She agreed. They chose a small restaurant outside the Russo neighborhoods. No private room. No men watching. Dominic looked uncomfortable. “You hate being normal.” “I’m bad at it.” “That is different.” They talked about childhood. Sadie grew up in a two-bedroom apartment with her parents.
Dominic grew up in a family house full of men who discussed money at dinner. Sadie asked whether he always wanted the empire. “No.” “What did you want?” He looked embarrassed. “Architecture.” She laughed. “You?” “I wanted to be a physiotherapist.” He blinked. “Fighting?” “Judo. Wrestling. Boxing later.”
“Why waitress?” “College debt.” He stared. “You have a degree?” “Two years completed. Then my mother got sick.” Dominic looked down. Sadie saw him understanding another version of her. Not mysterious fighter. Not investigator. Just someone whose life narrowed under responsibility. He said, “You could finish.”
“Maybe.” “I can pay—” She raised one eyebrow. He stopped. “Sorry.” “Good.” He tried again. “If you ever decide to, I will support the schedule.” That was different. At the end of dinner, he walked her to the car. “Can I kiss you?” Sadie stared.
“You’ve kissed me before.” “I didn’t ask.” True. She considered. “Yes.” The kiss was slower than the wedding one. No audience. No promise. Sadie felt the danger immediately. Not Dominic’s violence. Her own desire. She stepped back. “That was enough.” Dominic nodded. No attempt to continue.
Good. The fourth week brought the court hearing where Frankie pleaded guilty. Sadie spoke at sentencing. She told the judge about Thomas. Her mother. Eight years of uncertainty. She did not ask for maximum punishment. She asked for accountability. Frankie received twelve years. Long enough to matter.
Not life. Not death. Outside court, Dominic waited. Sadie walked toward him. He opened his arms but did not move. She stepped into them. That was the first time she hugged him. He held her carefully. Thirty days ended the next morning. The annulment papers remained unsigned.
Mara called. “What do you want?” Sadie looked across the breakfast table at Dominic. He pretended not to listen. “Another thirty.” Dominic smiled into his coffee. Sadie kicked his ankle. He looked delighted. That was annoying. And good.
The thirty-day extension also forced them to discuss money. Dominic offered Sadie a household account. She refused. He offered a salary for consulting on staff policy. She accepted only after Mara benchmarked the role against market rates. “You are impossible,” Dominic said. Sadie answered, “That is what fair compensation feels like when you cannot call it a gift.”
She kept her old bank account. Paid her own tuition. Bought her own textbooks. When Dominic discovered she was still taking weekend shifts at a rehabilitation gym for clinical hours, he almost objected. Sadie watched him catch himself. “You were about to say something stupid.” “Yes.” “Growth.”
At The Vault, the new reporting system received five complaints in its first month. Three were substantiated. One was a misunderstanding resolved through mediation. One was false and dismissed after evidence review. Sadie published anonymized outcomes internally so staff could see the process was real.
Dominic initially hated the transparency. Then he noticed something surprising: fewer rumors reached him. People trusted the process enough to stop turning every grievance into faction politics. That was the first operational reform he embraced without Sadie pushing. He told her at dinner. She smiled. “Congratulations. You discovered management.”
“I preferred fear.” “It was less paperwork.” “Much less.” They laughed. The intimacy between them grew around those ordinary exchanges, not around violence or danger. Sadie began to understand why that felt safer than passion. It was harder to fake.
The marriage also acquired boundaries around Dominic’s violence. Sadie made the rule explicit after seeing him return from a dock dispute with blood on his cuff. “If you come home having hurt someone, you tell me whether it was self-defense, enforcement, or anger.” Dominic stared at her. “That is not exactly normal spousal conversation.” “Neither is your profession.” He agreed.
The first time the rule mattered, Dominic admitted he had struck a man during an argument after the immediate threat had ended. Sadie did not excuse it because the man was dangerous. “You lost control.” Dominic’s jaw tightened. “Yes.” He returned to the dispute the next day, compensated an injured worker caught in the scene, and removed himself from the follow-up negotiation.
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Sadie did not mistake that for sainthood. It was accountability. At school, one professor asked why Sadie wanted rehabilitation work after competing in combat sports. She answered that fighting taught her how quickly people celebrated damage and how rarely they stayed for recovery. The sentence surprised her. It also clarified the clinic she wanted to build: a place concerned with what happened after the crowd went home.
The next morning, Dominic asked before borrowing her car. Sadie laughed because the man who commanded warehouses now requested permission for keys. He looked offended. “You made rules.” “And you’re following them.” “Reluctantly.” “Still counts.”
