Chapter 4 - The Shadow on the Curb
The glass door of Miller’s Groceries rattled as the driver stepped out of the Maybach.
It wasn't Declan.
It was Gavin Roarke.
He wore a dark charcoal overcoat over a black turtleneck, looking entirely out of place among the rusted pickup trucks and pine-paneled storefronts of Black Mountain. His sharp, clinical eyes scanned the street with the efficiency of a targeting system. He didn't pull a weapon; he didn't need to. His very presence screamed high-level violence.
My heart slammed against my ribs with such force it made me dizzy. My vision swam with dark spots.
*He found me. Oh God, he found me.*
I dropped the basket of apples. They hit the linoleum floor with a series of dull, hollow thuds, rolling under the shelves.
“Claire?” Mr. Miller called from the counter, his pen hovering over his newspaper. “You drop something back there?”
I didn't answer. I backed down the aisle toward the emergency exit at the rear of the store. My hands were shaking so violently I could barely grip the strap of my canvas purse. If Gavin was here, Declan’s men had already sealed the street. They would have cars at the crossroads, spotters on the highway, a transport van waiting to take me back to a locked suite in Voss Tower.
*I won't let him take her.*
I turned and pushed through the red metal crash bar of the rear exit.
The door flew open with an ear-splitting electronic alarm that shrieked into the cold mountain air. Rain was falling now—heavy, icy drops that smacked against the asphalt of the alleyway. I didn't care. I ran.
I hauled my coat around my belly, one arm braced tightly across the curve of my child, my boots slipping on wet gravel and rotting leaves. The alley opened up behind the local bakery, leading toward the dense pine woods that sloped up toward the ridge. If I could reach the tree line—if I could cut through the state park trail—I could reach June’s house through the back hollow.
“Amelia!”
The voice didn't come from behind me.
It came from the front.
I skidded to a halt, my boots throwing up a spray of muddy water.
At the mouth of the alley, blocking the path to the woods, a second vehicle was parked. A black Cadillac Escalade, engine humming softly in the rain.
And standing beside the open passenger door was Declan Voss.
He wasn't wearing a coat. He stood in the pouring rain in his dark suit, the rain plastering his dark hair against his forehead, his face pale and carved from raw stone. For four months, I had pictured this moment in nightmares: Declan arriving with armed squads, his face twisted in cold syndicate rage, demanding the return of his property.
Instead, he looked shattered.
He stood entirely still, his chest heaving as if he had run five miles through the storm. His pale blue eyes were locked not on my face, but on the arm I had thrown defensively across my stomach.
“Amelia,” he whispered again.
The sound of my real name—spoken in that deep, gravelly voice that used to whisper against my bare collarbone in the dark—shattered the fragile reality I had built over the last hundred days.
“Stay back,” I choked out, taking a step backward into the muddy alley. My voice was high, frayed, terrified. “Stay away from me, Declan!”
He raised both hands slowly, palms open, completely disarmed. The mafia boss who had executed three cartel lieutenants without blinking looked as if a sudden movement from me would stop his heart.
“Amelia, please,” he said, his voice raw, thick with an emotion I had never heard in him before. “Look at me. Look at my hands. Nobody is going to touch you. I swear on my life, nobody is going to touch you.”
“You lied to me!” I screamed, tears suddenly hot against my rain-soaked cheeks. “I heard you! I was at the tower! I was standing outside the office with the ultrasound in my bag, Declan! I heard you tell Savannah I’d be resolved quietly!”
Declan’s face went dead white.
Every drop of color drained from his skin. The breath left him in a ragged, agonizing gasp.
“You... you were there?” he whispered, his eyes wide with a realization so horrifying it seemed to physically bend his spine. “At the tower? Before the Drake?”
“I saw the television!” I backed up another step, my heel catching on an exposed root. I stumbled, gasping, and Declan lunged forward on pure instinct, catching me before I could hit the wet gravel.
His hands were burning hot through my damp wool sleeves.
The scent of him hit me like a physical blow—rain, cedar, expensive tobacco, and Declan. For a fraction of a second, my body betrayed me, leaning toward that familiar, terrifying warmth.
Then terror took over.
I shoved against his chest with both hands. “Don't touch me! Don't you dare touch me!”
Declan didn't fight me. He stepped back immediately, retreating two paces, his hands raised again, his chest rising and falling violently. Rain dripped from his chin, running down into the open collar of his shirt.
“Amelia, listen to me,” he pleaded, his voice shaking. “You have to listen to me for sixty seconds. Just sixty seconds, and if you want me to walk into the woods and blow my own brains out, I will hand you the gun.”
“Stop it!” I cried, wrapping both arms around my belly, trembling so hard my teeth clattered. “You’re getting married! You have an empire! You have Savannah Calloway! Leave us alone!”
Declan’s gaze dropped to my stomach again.
A tremor went through his entire frame. He slowly sank to one knee in the soaking mud, right there in the middle of a gravel alley in North Carolina, heedless of the rain, heedless of the filth ruining his four-thousand-dollar suit. He looked up at me from the ground, his eyes wet with tears he didn't try to hide.
“Us,” he choked out. “You... you’re carrying my child.”
“She isn't yours,” I lied desperately, the words tasting like poison on my tongue. “She’s mine. She has nothing to do with Chicago. She has nothing to do with Voss Maritime or your wars. She’s just mine.”
Declan let out a broken, strangled laugh that was half sob. He looked at the curve beneath my hands as if he were looking at the face of God.
“A girl,” he whispered, his voice trembling violently. “A daughter.”
He reached out a single hand toward me, his fingers hovering three inches from my coat, terrified to make contact without my permission.
“Amelia... ‘resolved quietly’ didn't mean you.” Declan looked up into my eyes, his face twisted in pure, unadulterated anguish. “The Calloways had placed three hitmen in the Drake. They knew about you. Marcus Calloway was going to use you to break me. I told them you were a civilian to keep their eyes off you while Gavin’s team moved to liquidate their strike team.”
I stared at him through the blinding rain, my chest heaving. “You... what?”
“I was building a wall around you,” Declan whispered, his voice breaking. “I announced the engagement because Marcus had his hand on the trigger of twenty tons of explosives tied to our commercial docks. It was a play, Amelia. It was a forty-eight-hour stall so I could gut his family from the inside out.”
He bowed his head, rain soaking into his hair, his shoulders shaking.
“I came back to your loft at midnight to put you on a private plane to Zurich,” he said, his voice muffled by the storm. “And the apartment was empty. The phone was in the toilet. And you were gone.”
He looked up at me then, his pale blue eyes bloodshot, haunted, stripped of every shred of pride.
“I didn't care about the Calloways,” Declan said softly. “I didn't care about the syndicate. I burned half of Chicago looking for you, Amelia. I haven't slept in a hundred days. If you run again... I won't survive it.”
Behind us, thunder cracked across the mountain ridge, violent and close.
The rain turned into a torrential downpour, washing the mud around his knees. I stood before the most dangerous man in Illinois, watching him kneel in the dirt at my feet, weeping over the shape of my coat.
May you like
And inside me, our daughter kicked.
***
