Chapter 1 - The Weight of the Cuff
The dried blood on Roman’s French cuff was dark, stiff, and smelled faintly of copper and river mud. It belonged to a lieutenant from the South Chicago docks who had failed to understand that logistics weren’t just about shipping manifests; they were about gravity. If you dropped a link, people fell.
Roman pushed open the private elevator doors of his Lake Shore Drive penthouse at 1:43 a.m., expecting the silence he paid a fortune to maintain. The penthouse was a monument to severe geometry—black marble, floor-to-ceiling glass framing the ink-black expanse of Lake Michigan, and art that didn’t invite comfort so much as it demanded respect. He had just spent three hours cleaning up a mess that Patrick Sloane’s men had conveniently pretended not to notice. The alliance between Roman’s organization and the Sloane syndicate was supposed to be a marriage of steel and oil, cemented by paper and rings.
Instead, the air inside his home tasted like old ozone and vinegar.
Before he could reach for the recessed wall panel to flick the lights, a shadow detached itself from the grand piano.
“Don’t turn on the lights, Roman.”
His right hand twitched toward the small of his back, where an HK P30 rested against his spine. His fingers curved over the grip, the safety sliding off with a microscopic click that in the vast, hollow room sounded like a gavel falling.
“Identify yourself or lose your teeth,” Roman said, his voice flat, dropping two octaves into that low, flat register that usually made grown men drop their briefcases.
“Take your hand off the steel,” the voice replied. It didn't tremble. It didn't hurry. It belonged to Naomi Wells, a woman who had spent the last eighteen months dusting his first editions and ensuring his children’s breakfast eggs were soft-boiled to precisely four minutes. “If you draw that gun in this room, you will shoot the only person who can keep your children from being buried beside their mother.”
Roman didn’t move. He stood half-shadowed by the foyer light spilling from the elevator car. “Naomi. You’ve lost your mind. Get your coat and get out. If you’re still here when I count to three—”
“Your son hasn’t slept in four days,” she interrupted, stepping closer until the scent of lavender soap and old paper reached him through the smell of river water. “Your daughter thinks her breath is a sin. And the woman you’re taking to the altar on Saturday morning isn’t marrying you for your name, Roman. She’s harvesting your life.”
The name Camille tasted like alum in his mouth. He hadn’t chosen her because he loved her; love was an amateur’s luxury, a liability that had died the night Isabella’s heart stopped on an operating table five years ago. He had chosen Camille because Patrick Sloane controlled the rail spurs from Indiana, and marrying Patrick’s daughter was the cleanest way to avoid a suburban bloodbath. He had told himself he was protecting his children by securing the perimeter.
He had never once looked inside the walls.
May you like
“She’s upstairs or in the guest wing,” Roman said, his jaw tightening until the bone clicked. “If she’s disturbed the children—”
“She hasn’t disturbed them,” Naomi said, her voice dropping to a low, jagged hiss. She reached out and caught his sleeve—the bloody one—with a grip that was surprisingly hard. “She’s building them. Come with me. But if you make a sound louder than a heartbeat, I’ll let you destroy yourself.”
