Chapter 5 - The Glass Between Us
The storm didn't wait for us to resolve four months of agony.
Within five minutes, the sky over Black Mountain collapsed into a sheet of gray water that turned the alley into a rushing creek. Lightning danced along the telephone wires overhead, the crack of thunder rattling the brick foundations of the shops.
Declan stood up slowly, the water cascading off his broad shoulders. He looked down at my shivering frame—my lips turning blue, my teeth knocking together in the freezing mountain downpour.
“You’re freezing,” he said. The syndicate boss was gone; in his place was a man whose entire universe had narrowed to the temperature of my skin. “Amelia, please. Get in the car. Just to get warm. I won't lock the doors. Gavin won't touch you. Just get out of the rain.”
I looked at the open door of the Escalade.
Inside, the leather seats were dry and glowing with amber ambient light. The climate control was already blowing a warm, steady stream of air against the windows. But stepping into that vehicle felt like surrendering—like stepping back onto the executioner’s block after escaping the blade.
“No,” I said, backing up toward the main street. “Not your car.”
Declan didn't argue. He didn't order Gavin to flank me. He simply nodded, rain streaming down his face. “Where, then? Show me where you live. I’ll walk behind you.”
“You don't get to come into my home, Declan.”
“Then I’ll stand on the sidewalk in the rain,” he replied without hesitation. “I will stand outside your door until you tell me to leave. But I am not losing sight of you again, Amelia. Not today. Not ever.”
Ten minutes later, we were inside the back room of *Black Mountain Relics*.
June Whitaker was not there—she had run over to the church annex to help with the storm preparations—leaving the cavernous shop smelling of damp varnish, clove tobacco, and old cedar.
I stood near the cast-iron woodstove in the corner of my restoration workspace, clutching a heavy wool blanket around my shoulders. Declan had stripped off his sodden suit jacket, throwing it over the back of an antique rocking chair. He stood eight feet away from me, near a tall mahogany secretary desk, keeping a strict, painful distance between us.
His white shirt was soaked through, clinging to the heavy muscle of his chest and arms, exposing the dark black ink of his syndicate tattoos. Water dripped from his dark hair onto the hardwood floor.
He hadn't looked away from my stomach once.
“How far along are you?” he asked softly.
The silence between us was fragile, vibrating like a tightened violin string.
“Twenty-one weeks,” I murmured, pulling the blanket tighter around myself.
Declan closed his eyes, his jaw clenching as a wave of emotion passed through him. “May. She’s due in May.”
“Late May.”
He swallowed hard, stepping two inches closer before checking himself and stopping. “Did you... did you see a doctor? Have you had proper care? Prenatal vitamins? Ultrasounds?”
A bitter, defensive laugh escaped my lips. “I go to the free county clinic in Asheville, Declan. I don't have a private concierge medical team like your friends in Lake Forest. I wait on plastic chairs with the rest of the working class.”
His jaw tightened, a flash of his old, lethal authority surfacing in his eyes. “You shouldn't have had to wait on plastic chairs. You shouldn't have had to hide in a drafty antique shop smelling of chemicals.”
“I was hiding from *you*!” I snapped, my voice rising, bouncing off the exposed rafters of the ceiling. “Do you understand that? I wasn't running from the Calloways! I didn't even know what the Calloways looked like until I saw that woman hanging off your arm on the news! I was running from the man who kissed me on Sunday and planned my ‘resolution’ on Monday!”
Declan flinched. He took the blow without defending himself.
“I know,” he said, his voice rough. “I know what it sounded like.”
“It didn't *sound* like anything, Declan—it *was* what it was! You live in a world where human beings are cleared away when they become inconvenient! You think I didn't see the news over the last two years? The warehouse fires? The councilmen who resigned in disgrace? The bodies they pulled out of the Calumet River?”
I stepped away from the stove, my eyes burning with four months of accumulated fury.
“You brought me into your penthouse, Declan. You bought me seventeenth-century canvases. You listened to me talk about Raphael and Leonardo. You let me pretend you were just a complicated, wealthy man who liked art. But you aren't!” I pointed a shaking finger at his chest. “You’re a killer. You rule an empire built on extortion, blood, and fear. And I will die before I let that touch my daughter!”
Declan stood entirely still under the barrage.
When I finished, panting, my chest heaving beneath the blanket, he slowly raised his eyes to meet mine. There was no anger in them. Only a bottomless, aching sadness.
“You’re right,” Declan said quietly.
I blinked, caught off guard by the admission.
“You’re right about what I am,” he continued, taking a slow step toward me. “I am a killer. I was raised by a father who put a gun in my hand when I was twelve and told me the only way to survive in Chicago was to make everyone else bleed first. I built Voss Maritime into an empire because if I didn't, the Morettis or the Calloways would have buried me in a concrete footer under the Dan Ryan Expressway.”
He stopped four feet away. The heat radiating off his body was palpable.
“I never pretended I was a saint, Amelia,” he whispered. “Except with you.”
A single tear cut through the grime on his cheek.
“With you, I didn't want the empire. With you, I didn't want the guns, the ledgers, or the blood. You were the only place on this earth where I could close my eyes and forget what my hands had done.” He took another half-step, dropping his gaze to the swell of my belly. “And if you had told me... if you had given me one hour... I would have burned Voss Tower to the ground myself before I let you walk away.”
“Declan...”
“Look at me, Amelia,” he demanded softly.
I looked.
He was trembling. This man, who had terrified politicians, judges, and rival bosses across the Midwest, was shaking like a child in the dark.
“I didn't marry Savannah,” he said.
My breath caught.
“The Drake was the end of it,” Declan said, his voice flat with cold certainty. “The moment I realized you were gone, I cancelled the alliance. Marcus Calloway tried to leverage the distribution routes, and I stripped his family of every asset they owned in Cook County. Savannah is on a plane to Europe. Her father is currently answering subpoenas from the Department of Justice because I handed fifty years of their offshore accounts to the FBI.”
I stared at him, stunned. “You... you cooperated with the feds?”
“I don't give a damn about the feds,” Declan spat, his eyes blazing. “I burnt the Calloways to ash because their name was the last thing you heard before you ran from me. And I’ll do the same to every syndicate from here to New York if that’s what it takes to keep you safe.”
The room fell into an echoing silence, punctuated only by the drumming of the rain on the tin roof above.
My heart was beating in my throat. The anger was still there—a deep, protective wall built around my child—but beneath it, the terrifying, undeniable love I had tried so hard to extinguish flared back to life.
“You can't just fix this with violence, Declan,” I whispered, hugging myself. “You can't just kill everything that scares you and expect me to raise a baby in a fortress.”
“Then tell me what to do,” he said instantly.
He closed the final distance between us, stopping just inches away. His eyes pleaded with mine.
“Tell me what you need, Amelia. Do you want me to leave Chicago? I’ll sell the holdings. Do you want me to sign the company over to a blind trust? Done. Do you want to stay in these mountains? I’ll buy the ridge. I’ll buy the town. I’ll build a house with twenty-foot fences or a farmhouse with no locks at all. Just don't ask me to leave you. Don't ask me to pretend my daughter doesn't exist.”
He slowly, agonizingly, lifted his right hand.
His fingers hovered over my belly again. His breath caught in his throat, waiting for my permission.
I looked at his scarred, powerful hand. I looked at the dark ink on his wrist. Then I looked at his eyes—haggard, bloodshot, and filled with a devotion that bordered on religious madness.
I didn't slap his hand away.
Slowly, leaning against the heat of the stove, I lowered my own hand, letting my fingers brush against his.
Declan took a sharp, jagged breath.
With infinite care, as if touching the wing of a bird that might shatter under his weight, he pressed his broad palm against the cotton of my sweater.
For three seconds, nothing happened.
Then, against the center of Declan Voss’s scarred palm, our daughter kicked.
A hard, distinct thump.
May you like
Declan’s knees buckled. A choked, broken sound tore from his chest, and he dropped his forehead against my shoulder, his massive frame shaking violently as the king of Chicago wept against my neck.
***
