Chapter 4 - When it ended, Gallagher stitched the wound.
Administered antibiotics.
Then strong pain medication.
“He’s lucky.”
Gallagher cleaned his glasses.
“1 in to the right and the spleen is shattered.”
He looked at Hayes.
“Keep him flat. Fever means you call me immediately.”
Hayes lifted Roman carefully.
The medication was pulling him toward unconsciousness.
Roman fought it.
As Hayes carried him away from the kitchen, Roman looked back.
Morgana stood beside the destroyed island.
Her black scrubs were saturated and ruined.
Roman’s blood covered her arms almost to the elbows.
“You should have run.”
His words were slurred.
Morgana went to the sink.
She turned on hot water.
Red disappeared from her skin.
“I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
For the first time since arriving at the Costa estate, Morgana did not return to her bedroom and lock the door.
She followed the blood upstairs.
Then sat beside Roman’s bed.
She intended to hold the line.
Roman remained in bed for 6 days.
On the 2nd night, fever arrived.
His skin became dangerously hot.
Sweat soaked the sheets.
Delirium followed.
When Roman tried to tear at his stitches, Morgana held him down with her full weight.
When he called the names of people she did not know, men from a past filled with death, she wiped his face with cool cloths until he settled.
Morgana became the person controlling access to his room.
Hayes and Miller directed the street war from downstairs.
Neither entered the bedroom unless Morgana permitted it.
They did not challenge her.
They had seen her with Roman’s blood on her clothes while everyone else around her panicked.
In their world, where almost everything was transactional, that mattered.
Morgana was no longer simply the maid.
By the end of the 2nd week, Roman could sit upright.
By the 3rd, he worked from the leather chair beside the window with a laptop balanced against his uninjured thigh.
Yellow bruising covered his ribs.
Every movement remained careful.
But his eyes had become sharp again.
The Vulovs had failed to kill Roman Costa.
Now he was taking them apart.
On a Tuesday afternoon, the war delivered Jason directly to Roman’s front door.
Morgana was in the kitchen making green tea when the oak entry doors opened violently.
She heard a struggle.
Then a fist striking bone.
A sharp, pathetic cry.
Morgana stepped into the foyer.
Hayes had Jason by the collar of his filthy winter coat.
He threw him onto the hardwood.
Jason scrambled backward until his shoulders struck the wall.
He looked ruined.
His face was thin.
Gray stubble covered his chin.
His eyes were bloodshot and frantic.
Miller remained near the doorway rubbing blood from his knuckles.
“Found him trying to get on a Greyhound to Cleveland.”
Miller looked down at Jason.
“He’d been sleeping behind a dumpster 2 blocks from the station.”
Roman appeared at the top of the glass staircase.
He moved slowly because his wound still pulled against his side.
His left arm remained held rigidly near his stomach.
The injury had weakened his body.
It had not weakened his authority.
“Jason.”
The name fell through the foyer.
Jason looked up.
Then he saw Morgana near the kitchen.
“Morgana.”
He pushed himself onto his knees.
“Thank God.”
His hands reached toward her.
“Tell them.”
Jason’s voice became desperate.
“Tell them I’m your father. Tell them they can’t do this to me.”
Morgana held the warm mug in both hands.
She looked at him.
At the man who raised her.
She searched for the fear that once lived automatically inside her whenever he lifted his voice.
She looked for pity.
For obligation.
There was nothing.
Only emptiness.
“You aren’t my father, Jason.”
Her voice remained calm.
“You’re a man who lived in the same house until you sold me.”
His face whitened.
“I had to.”
He began crying.
“They were going to kill me. Morgana, you know that. I did it to keep us both alive.”
“You did it because you’re a coward.”
Roman began descending the stairs.
“You sold her to me.”
1 step.
“Then you sold my routes to the Vulovs.”
Another.
“You took their money to help put a bullet in my ribs.”
“I didn’t know.”
Jason covered his face.
“They only wanted schedules.”
His voice broke.
“They told me they were robbing the trucks. I didn’t know they planned a hit. I swear to God, Costa.”
“It doesn’t matter what you knew.”
Roman looked toward Hayes.
“Take him out back.”
Hayes moved.
“Wait.”
Morgana’s voice stopped him.
Hayes looked toward Roman.
Roman said nothing.
He simply looked at Morgana.
The decision was hers to address.
Morgana walked closer to Jason.
He stared upward.
Tears ran down his dirty face.
For 22 years, this man had been the monster in every room.
He dictated what she believed she was worth.
Controlled her through fear.
Then traded her life.
Now he was only a miserable gambler kneeling on another man’s floor.
“Morgana.”
His voice cracked.
“Please.”
He looked at her.
“I’m your blood.”
“My blood?”
Morgana thought about the blood she had washed from her hands 3 weeks earlier.
Roman’s blood.
Blood spilled because Jason never stopped taking.
“You still owe the Vulovs.”
Jason’s eyes shifted.
“The money they paid you.”
Morgana watched him.
“You gambled it while you were hiding.”
Jason looked away.
Confirmation.
Morgana turned toward Roman.
“If you kill him, you do the Vulovs a favor.”
Roman remained still.
“You clean up their problem.”
“If he stays alive, he’s a loose end.”
Roman’s tone was neutral.
“A liability.”
“Only if he’s here.”
Morgana looked down at Jason.
“He has no money.”
“No protection.”
“The Vulovs know they failed because you’re standing here alive.”
She understood Jason’s situation better than he did.
“They’ll be looking for him.”
Morgana’s voice became very quiet.
“If you put him outside, he won’t last a week.”
Jason’s face collapsed into panic.
“Morgana, no.”
He tried to crawl toward her.
“They’ll skin me alive.”
His voice became shrill.
“You can’t put me out there. You have to hide me.”
Morgana looked at him.
“I don’t have to do anything.”
She turned toward the kitchen.
“Open the door, Hayes.”
Jason began screaming.
“No!”
Hayes seized him.
“Morgana!”
Jason fought uselessly.
“You ungrateful—”
He thrashed while Hayes dragged him toward the entrance.
“I fed you!”
The doors opened.
Cold March air rushed through the foyer.
“I kept a roof over your head!”
Hayes threw Jason onto the concrete driveway.
“Don’t come back.”
Hayes stood above him.
“Or the boss won’t be the one deciding what happens.”
The doors slammed.
The deadbolt turned.
Silence returned.
Roman remained on the stairs.
He looked toward Morgana.
She stood near the kitchen with her tea.
Her shoulders were relaxed.
She had not reacted to Jason’s final screams.
“Are you all right?”
Morgana looked up.
Then smiled.
A small, genuine smile.
The first Roman had ever seen.
“The house is clean.”
April rain washed gray slush from the streets.
It washed away old blood as well.
The war ended not in an alley but in a boardroom.
Roman spent 3 days in Chicago.
When he returned, the Vulov leadership had been isolated and systematically eliminated.
The Costa estate stood down.
Most of the perimeter guards disappeared.
Lieutenants stopped crossing the foyer at every hour.
The gray tracks of boots vanished from the hardwood.
The house became quiet again.
This time, the silence did not feel peaceful.
It felt expectant.
On Thursday morning, Roman found Morgana in the library.
He had returned to tailored charcoal suits.
The exhaustion that defined his face through winter was finally gone.
He looked whole.
“My office.”
He did not wait for an answer.
Morgana put down what she was doing and followed.
The office was the only room in the house she had been explicitly forbidden to enter.
Roman opened the heavy double doors.
Old paper and faint cigar smoke scented the room.
A huge mahogany desk occupied the center.
Roman went behind it.
He held a manila folder.
Then dropped it onto the desktop.
“That is your father’s ledger.”
He took out a heavy silver lighter.
A flame appeared.
Roman touched it to the corner of the first sheet.
Morgana watched.
Paper curled.
Blackened.
Collapsed into ash inside a thick glass tray.
“The debt is paid.”
Roman watched the final flame die.
“Jason’s account is closed.”
He looked at her.
“The Vulovs are gone.”
Another page became ash.
“No one is looking for you.”
Roman closed the lighter.
“You don’t owe me anything.”
He took a thick white envelope from the desk.
Placed it in front of her.
“There’s $20,000 inside.”
Morgana stared.
“Cash.”
Roman continued.
“Severance.”
He looked toward the door.
“Hayes is bringing the SUV around.”
His voice remained controlled.
“He’ll take you anywhere.”
Morgana looked at the envelope.
Freedom.
The thing she prayed for while shivering in the back of Roman’s armored vehicle 5 months earlier.
She could leave.
There was no debt.
No Jason.
No Vulovs.
No contract.
Yet instead of relief, she felt the floor vanish beneath her.
“You’re firing me.”
“I’m freeing you.”
Roman’s voice remained steady.
His jaw did not.
The tension there gave him away.
“You were collateral, Morgana.”
He forced each word into something cold.
“A hostage used to guarantee a coward’s behavior.”
Roman met her eyes.
“The coward is gone. The contract is over.”
He added, “I saved your life. That’s why you’re leaving with $20,000 instead of a bus ticket.”
His tone became harsher.
As though cruelty might make departure easier.
“You won.”
Roman nodded toward the envelope.
“Take it.”
He looked away.
“Go live somewhere that doesn’t have bulletproof glass.”
Morgana looked at him.
At the faint uneven scar still visible above his collar.
She had spent her life trying to escape monsters.
Roman was not what she had expected a monster to be.
He was a man holding up an enormous darkness.
For a while, Morgana had helped him hold it.
She picked up the envelope.
“Okay.”
Her voice was almost inaudible.
She went upstairs.
Her old duffel bag remained beneath the bed.
Morgana pulled it out.
She did not pack the expensive clothing purchased since her arrival.
She packed the same 2 pairs of jeans.
The same worn sweaters.
The photograph of her mother.
She folded the black cleaning scrubs and left them on the mattress.
Then she carried the duffel downstairs.
The front doors stood open.
Spring air entered the foyer.
The black SUV waited outside.
Hayes stood beside its rear door.
Roman waited inside the house to see her leave.
He looked as though he were bracing himself for impact.
Morgana walked toward the threshold.
Outside smelled of wet pavement.
Of the world she came from.
Double shifts.
Overdue bills.
Always watching shadows.
She stopped.
Then turned.
The duffel bag slipped from her shoulder.
It hit the hardwood.
Roman blinked.
For the first time, his composure visibly failed.
“Morgana.”
He looked toward the waiting SUV.
“Hayes is waiting.”
“I don’t care.”
She walked back inside.
She crossed the foyer until only inches remained between them.
“I told you.”
Roman’s voice dropped.
“The debt is paid.”
There was something desperate underneath the roughness now.
“You don’t have to stay.”
“I know.”
Morgana looked directly into his eyes.
“But I’m not a hostage anymore.”
She moved slightly closer.
“And I don’t work for you.”
“No.”
“Then I don’t need a room with a lock.”
Roman stopped breathing.
For several seconds, neither moved.
He searched her face.
For fear.
For obligation.
For some sign that what she felt came from trauma rather than choice.
What he found was the woman who had held his blood in both hands and refused to run.
Roman slowly raised his hands.
Scarred palms framed her face.
His thumbs moved gently along her jaw.
“If you stay…”
His voice became almost a whisper.
He rested his forehead against hers.
“You don’t leave.”
A ragged breath moved through him.
“I won’t let you leave.”
Roman closed his eyes.
“I’m not a good man, Morgana.”
Morgana lifted her hands.
She closed them around his wrists.
Held him there.
“I don’t want a good man.”
Her voice was equally quiet.
“I just want you.”
The breath left Roman’s chest.
5 months of restraint broke at once.
He pulled her against him.
Buried his face in her hair.
Outside, Hayes watched for only a moment.
Then quietly closed the heavy oak doors.
The deadbolt clicked.
May you like
This time, Morgana was not behind the locked door because she had been sold, trapped, or ordered to stay.
She had been given the money, the open doorway, and the car that could take her anywhere.
