Chapter 2 - Frankie entered with a slight, gray-haired man carrying an old leather medical bag.
“Dr. Keller,” Vincent said. “Thank you for coming.”
The physician showed no sign of fatigue despite being called at 3:00 a.m.
He was the syndicate’s private doctor, paid to disregard gunshot wounds, unusual hours, and the identities of his patients.
“Where is the patient?”
Vincent indicated the sofa.
Dr. Keller approached.
His professional composure weakened momentarily when he recognized Clara.
He remembered her from the previous year, wearing diamonds at a syndicate gala and displaying controlled confidence before the assembled families.
Now she looked displaced and exhausted.
“Mrs. Rossi?”
“Only Clara. I do not require a physician. I require sleep.”
“You may require both.”
Dr. Keller placed a blood-pressure cuff around her arm.
The uniform sleeve exposed pale skin marked with small bruises from kitchen counters.
Vincent stood approximately 10 feet away with his arms folded, watching the doctor’s hands.
The cuff inflated.
Dr. Keller examined the reading, released the pressure, and used a stethoscope against Clara’s back.
Then he moved toward her stomach.
Clara placed her hands protectively over it.
“It is all right,” the doctor said. “I am checking the fetal heart rate.”
He placed a Doppler monitor against her skin.
Static entered the quiet room.
Then a rapid, rhythmic sound emerged.
The heartbeat filled the penthouse.
Vincent stopped breathing.
His rigid stance failed, and he stepped closer.
His eyes remained fixed on the device.
The sound was strong and undeniable.
“The rate is healthy at 150 beats per minute,” Dr. Keller said.
He put away the monitor.
Silence returned.
The doctor stood and addressed Vincent directly.
“The child is healthy. She is not.”
His expression remained grave.
“Her blood pressure is dangerously elevated. She is severely undernourished and dehydrated, and her lumbar spine is carrying too much strain.”
He closed the medical bag.
“If she remains on her feet, premature labor is likely. Given her current condition, I cannot guarantee that her body will survive delivery.”
Vincent’s jaw tightened.
He looked at Clara with violent possessive anger.
“Frankie.”
The capo moved from beside the door.
“Yes, boss?”
“Return to the diner and burn it.”
Clara sat upright.
“No. There are innocent people there. Mr. Henderson—”
“I do not care about Mr. Henderson.”
Vincent’s voice struck through the room.
He pointed toward her.
“You endangered my son for minimum wages. You deprived yourself of food in order to remain hidden.”
“I was hungry because you froze the accounts I actually used.”
Tears crossed Clara’s face.
“I had nothing.”
Vincent leaned over the sofa until only inches separated them.
“You had me. You had an empire. You selected poverty.”
He turned to Frankie.
“Purchase the diner. Dismiss everyone. Demolish the building completely.”
His voice remained cold.
“If she attempts to return, nothing will remain.”
When Clara woke, she did not know the hour or the day.
Blackout curtains sealed the master bedroom in darkness.
She lay on a mattress soft enough to feel weightless, beneath Egyptian cotton sheets more expensive than a year of her wages.
Her uniform had been removed.
Someone, probably a maid brought into the penthouse during the night, had bathed her and placed her in a loose silk garment.
Clara moved her head.
A lamp illuminated the corner.
Vincent sat in a wingback chair holding a tablet. Its blue light exposed the bruised shadows beneath his eyes.
He had not slept.
He had remained there, watching the bed and guarding the prison he had built around her.
“Are you thirsty?”
His voice was rough and stripped of the authority from the previous night.
Clara nodded and pushed herself against the headboard.
Her joints hurt, but the worst of the exhaustion had passed.
She believed she had slept for approximately 10 hours.
Vincent placed the tablet down, poured ice water from a silver pitcher, and handed her the glass.
Their fingers touched.
His skin was cold. Hers was warm with the elevated temperature of late pregnancy.
Clara drank rapidly.
When she lowered the glass, Vincent was looking again at the pregnancy beneath the silk.
“You look—”
He stopped, unable to find a word that did not expose weakness.
“You look like a mother.”
“I am a mother. Or I will be soon.”
Vincent leaned forward, resting his forearms against his knees.
“Why did you not tell me?”
He looked at her.
“When you gave me the divorce documents, why did you remain silent?”
“Would you have allowed me to leave?”
The silence answered before he did.
“No.”
His admission was barely audible.
“I would have destroyed the city before allowing you to leave with my child.”
“That is why I concealed it.”
Clara placed the glass down.
“Look around this room, Vincent.”
“It is secure. The windows can withstand a .50-caliber round. Entry requires biometric verification. You are completely safe.”
“I am completely confined.”
Her frustration rose again.
“This is a vault. You place money and weapons in vaults. I am not property, and neither is this child.”
“You believe I enjoy living behind armor?”
Vincent rose and crossed to the window.
He pulled the curtains open.
Gray daylight filled the room, revealing the city far below.
“There is a war outside,” he said. “The Falcone Syndicate is draining my southern territory. My own lieutenants are becoming ambitious.”
He pointed toward the streets.
“Weakness invites a bullet.”
Vincent looked at her.
“You believe you were living an honorable, independent existence in that diner? You were exposed. If the Falcones had found you—”
He stopped and closed his eyes.
The thought produced a visible physical reaction.
“They did not find me. I was no one. No one looks twice at a pregnant waitress in a poor district.”
“I looked twice.”
Vincent’s eyes were black when he faced her.
“If I could find you, they could.”
His voice became brutal.
“They would not have brought a physician. They would have removed the child from your body to send me a message and left you bleeding on the diner floor.”
Clara flinched and covered her stomach.
She hated him for describing it.
She hated the possibility because she knew it was real.
“I could not raise him at the estate,” she said.
Her resistance weakened.
“I remember the bodyguards accompanying me to purchase groceries, the searches beneath the vehicles, and men bleeding on the carpets during the night.”
She looked at her chemically damaged hands.
“I watched this organization remove parts of you. I watched you become stone.”
Clara met his eyes.
“I could not allow my son to watch his father become a monster.”
Vincent stared at her.
He did not defend himself.
“I am a monster,” he said.
He approached the bed and leaned over her.
“I am the monster keeping the others away.”
His presence filled the space.
“That is what you need now.”
The appearance of domestic calm ended shortly after noon.
Clara sat at the marble kitchen island and forced herself to eat fruit and steel-cut oats prepared by the chef.
Vincent sat opposite her, drinking black coffee while examining reports on a tablet.
It resembled their former married life except for the silence and fear surrounding them.
The biometric entrance sounded.
Frankie entered without knocking.
His jacket was open over a shoulder holster, and his face was severe.
“We have a problem.”
Vincent continued looking at the screen.
“Speak.”
“It concerns the diner.”
Frankie lowered his voice.
“I arrived this morning with a team to complete the purchase. Police had sealed the building.”
Vincent stopped moving his finger across the tablet.
He raised his head.
“Why?”
“There was an attack at approximately 5:00 a.m., shortly after we left. It was professional.”
Frankie shifted his weight.
“They fired through the rear booths, burned the kitchen, and painted a message on the wall.”
Clara’s spoon struck the marble bowl.
“Who was injured?”
Frankie looked at Vincent rather than answering her.
“Who?” Vincent demanded.
“The Falcone crew carried it out.”
Frankie’s expression remained grim.
“They did not find the person they wanted, so they destroyed the restaurant. Henderson was struck twice in the chest. He is dead. The dishwasher is in critical condition.”
Clara covered her mouth.
A wave of nausea moved through her.
The attack occurred 3 hours after Vincent removed her.
If she had resisted more successfully or hidden in the rear storage area, she and the child would be dead.
Vincent rose.
He did not look at Clara.
His face became empty.
The man who had touched the baby through her uniform and summoned a physician disappeared.
The head of the Rossi Syndicate replaced him.
“They were searching for her.”
It was not a question.
“Information must have circulated that she was moving through the South Side,” Frankie said. “They learned you removed someone from the diner.”
“Do they know who?”
“Not yet. They are watching hospitals for pregnant women. They know she was near delivery.”
Vincent moved around the island with controlled precision and put on his jacket.
“Find the men who fired the weapons. Search as deeply into Falcone territory as required.”
He adjusted his cuffs.
“Bring them to the meatpacking facility on 4th Street.”
“What about Falcone?”
“Leave the old man alive for the moment.”
Vincent’s tone contained no mercy.
“Take his lieutenants. Remove their teeth and break their knees. Place their bodies inside the trunks of their own vehicles outside Falcone’s residence.”
The orders were administrative.
A debt was being entered into a ledger and balanced with blood.
Clara watched him.
This was the world she had fled, now entering the protected penthouse despite the ballistic glass.
Vincent looked at her and saw the fear in her expression.
“Finish eating.”
“You are going to kill them.”
“I am going to butcher them.”
He placed both hands on the counter and enclosed her in his shadow.
“They came for my son and for you. The only language Falcone understands is disproportionate violence.”
“It is always blood,” Clara cried. “It never stops.”
“It stops when all of them are dead.”
Vincent wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb.
The gesture was gentle despite the orders he had just issued.
“You wanted to live in the real world. This is the real world.”
He held her gaze.
“You are my wife, and you are carrying my heir. Anonymity is no longer possible. There is only survival.”
He withdrew his hand.
“Do not leave the penthouse.”
He looked at Frankie.
“If she attempts to escape, lock her inside a room and discard the key.”
Vincent left.
The steel locks engaged behind him.
Clara remained alone in the kitchen and placed both hands against her stomach.
The baby moved beneath them.
The monster had gone to war to defend them.
She was safe and more frightened than she had ever been.
The penthouse became a tomb of expensive silence.
For 3 days, Clara did not see the sun. The storm remained over the city, sending gray rain against the windows.
She paced from the kitchen to the sofa and then toward the elevator doors.
The inexpensive shoes from the diner had been replaced by soft wool slippers that did nothing to relieve her swollen ankles.
Whenever Clara approached the exit, 2 armed guards with empty expressions shifted their stance.
She was a prisoner.
She was also an asset protected with absolute force.
At 4:12 a.m. on the fourth day, the elevator sounded.
Clara stopped beside the window and folded her arms over her stomach.
Vincent entered.
He no longer resembled the controlled leader from the diner.
He walked with a severe limp. His jacket was gone, and his white shirt was open at the collar with the sleeves above his elbows.
Blood covered the fabric.
It was not light spray. The front was saturated and drying into a dark, rigid layer.
His knuckles were swollen and split.
Vincent stopped in the foyer and looked at his hands as a drop of blood fell from his smallest finger onto the polished floor.
The metallic smell of blood, sweat, and fear reached Clara.
Vincent raised his head.
His eyes were hollow with exhaustion.
“Return to bed.”
His voice was damaged and rough.
He did not approach her.
He moved toward the guest bathroom as though keeping a contaminating substance away from her.
Clara remained motionless.
Every instinct told her to hide from what he had done.
She remembered Mr. Henderson, who had quietly given her additional slices of pie, dead because the attackers had been searching for her.
Clara followed the trail of blood.
Vincent leaned over the marble sink while water ran at full force.
He scrubbed his hands with a rigid brush.
The water turned pink before entering the drain.
He was not merely cleaning himself.
He was punishing his own skin until the wounds opened again.
“You will remove the skin.”
Vincent stopped without turning.
“I told you to sleep.”
“I told you that I am not your property.”
Clara entered the bathroom and switched off the water.
Silence filled the room.
She removed the brush from his hand.
Vincent allowed it.
The violent man stood without resistance before the woman carrying his child.
Clara took a white towel from the warming rack, dampened 1 corner, applied soap, and held his left hand.
His fingers were large, bruised, and damaged.
She cleaned the blood from his knuckles carefully.
“Did you find them?”
Her voice had become flat.
She did not want to know, but needed the answer.
“Yes.”
Vincent looked at the wall rather than at her.
“The men who attacked the diner and the lieutenant who gave the instruction?”
“They will not breathe again.”
His voice was quiet.
“Falcone received the message. He knows the South Side belongs to me. If he crosses the river again, I will not stop with his men. I will destroy his entire bloodline.”
Clara continued wiping his palm while controlling the nausea rising inside her.
“You killed them for me.”
“I killed them because blood is the currency accepted by my world.”
Vincent finally looked down at her.
“You believe I wanted to return to my pregnant wife smelling like a slaughterhouse?”
He removed his hand from hers and held the edge of the sink.
“When we were married, I attempted to build a wall. I intended to keep the blood outside and you within.”
A bitter laugh left him.
“I thought wealth, security, and houses were sufficient.”
Vincent lowered his head.
“I was foolish. Blood passes beneath the door. You saw it, and you ran.”
Clara looked at the strain across his back.
“I ran because I was drowning.”
She placed her hand against him.
“I could not breathe inside that house or look at you while pretending I did not understand how everything was purchased.”
Vincent turned his face toward her.
“And now?”
“Now I understand that the wolves outside do not care whether someone is good.”
Clara placed her hand on her stomach.
“They only want to consume what they can reach.”
She looked at the bloodstained towel.
“You are a monster, Vincent, but you are the father of this child.”
Clara drew a shaking breath.
“If the choice is between you and the people who attacked that diner, I choose you.”
Vincent stared at her.
The air changed around the agreement they had made.
He did not smile or embrace her romantically. Their circumstances were too violent for that.
He placed his clean hand over hers on the pregnancy.
“I will never allow them to touch either of you.”
The vow was made beside blood drying on his clothing.
“Never.”
Three weeks later, late-summer heat covered the city’s concrete while the penthouse remained artificially cold.
Clara was 39 weeks pregnant.
Her body felt stretched beyond endurance. Sleeping was almost impossible. Standing caused pain, while sitting placed pressure beneath her ribs.
May you like
She spent much of the day in an orthopedic chair ordered by Dr. Keller, looking over the hazy skyline.
Vincent rarely remained away for more than several hours.
Related Stories
