Chapter 4
Desperate.
Blood and smoke and fear between them.
“I’m coming back.”
His mouth remained near hers.
“I swear to God, Nora.”
Then he stepped away.
“I’m coming back.”
The steel door closed.
Locks engaged.
Norah was alone.
She watched the monitors.
For 7 hours.
One feed failed.
Then another.
Before the cameras died, Norah saw Arthur move through the house.
She saw him kill.
Saw bodies collapse onto Persian rugs she had vacuumed the previous morning.
She saw him become the thing she had always known he was.
Arthur Costello was not misunderstood.
Not gentle beneath everything.
He was a warlord.
And he was terrifyingly good at surviving war.
When the panic-room locks finally disengaged, morning had arrived.
Arthur stood in the open doorway.
For several seconds, Norah barely recognized him.
Soot and dried blood covered his face.
His left arm hung uselessly.
A dark stain was spreading rapidly across the shoulder of his shirt.
Behind him, the estate was silent.
Norah ran to him.
She wrapped both arms around his waist.
Arthur hissed with pain but pulled her against him using his uninjured arm.
He buried his face in her hair.
“It’s over.”
His voice was almost gone.
“They’re gone.”
He leaned against her.
“It’s over.”
Together they left the cellar.
The Russo estate—no longer an elegant fortress but the aftermath of a battlefield—was barely recognizable.
Mahogany doors had been reduced to splintered wood.
Crystal chandeliers covered marble floors.
Spent casings glittered among glass.
Surviving Costello men silently removed bodies.
Arthur did not take Norah downstairs.
He led her up the grand staircase.
They stepped over debris and blood.
His private study had survived with relatively little damage.
Arthur collapsed into the leather chair behind his desk and let his head fall back.
Norah went immediately into the attached bathroom.
She returned with towels and the first-aid kit.
She had treated Arthur before.
This was different.
The first time, he had arrived drunk and broken after killing an old friend.
This wound came from war.
Norah cut his shirt away.
A bullet had passed through the flesh of his shoulder.
The wound was vicious, but the round had missed the major artery.
She packed the injury with gauze.
Blood coated her hands.
Again.
Arthur watched without speaking.
His eyes were heavy.
Distant.
Filled with whatever remained after hours of killing.
When Norah finished compressing and wrapping the shoulder, she stepped back.
Arthur opened the lowest drawer of his desk.
Using his good arm, he pulled out a heavy black canvas duffel bag.
He dropped it onto the desk.
The impact was dense.
Then he placed a set of car keys beside it.
Finally, a thick manila envelope.
Norah looked at the 3 items.
The air inside the study changed.
“There’s $200,000 in cash in the bag.”
Arthur’s voice was hollow.
“The black sedan in the garage is clean. It isn’t registered to anybody in the family.”
He touched the envelope.
“This contains a new passport, a new Social Security card, and the deed to a house in a quiet town in Oregon.”
Norah stared at him.
“What is this?”
“Your way out.”
Arthur looked toward the destroyed doorway.
“Dominic is dead.”
Norah stopped breathing for a moment.
“He took 2 rounds in the chest holding the foyer.”
Arthur’s jaw tightened.
“Half my crew is gone.”
He continued staring outside.
“The Colombians are broken, but federal agents will be all over the city by tonight.”
Finally, he looked at Norah.
His eyes were haunted.
“I wanted to keep you.”
His voice cracked.
“God, Nora.”
He swallowed.
“I wanted to keep you more than I have ever wanted anything in this miserable life.”
Then his face tightened.
“But I can’t.”
Norah said nothing.
“You saw what I am.”
Arthur’s voice became softer.
“I’m a monster.”
His attention dropped to his own blood-covered surroundings.
“I destroy everything I touch.”
He looked back at her.
“If you stay here, you die here.”
“Arthur—”
“Take the bag.”
The order came out harshly.
Almost desperately.
“Take it and leave before I change my mind and lock every door in this house.”
He leaned back.
“Get out of Chicago.”
A pause.
“Go be invisible again.”
Norah stood still.
She looked at the duffel.
$200,000.
A vehicle nobody would associate with the Costellos.
Documents giving her another identity.
A house in Oregon.
A clean exit.
She could leave Chicago before the city understood what had happened.
She could work in a quiet coffee shop.
Walk beneath trees.
Live without gunfire.
Never smell cordite or blood again.
She could be safe.
Then Norah looked at Arthur.
He was wounded.
His closest friend was dead.
Half his men were gone.
He had spent 7 hours turning his own home into a killing ground.
And now he was alone in the ruins.
Arthur Costello, a man who controlled people through obligation, had given Norah something almost nobody inside his world received.
Freedom.
Norah approached the desk.
Her hand closed around the duffel strap.
Arthur closed his eyes.
He prepared himself for the sound of the bag being lifted.
For her footsteps.
For the door.
Instead, he heard the zipper.
Arthur opened his eyes.
Norah pushed the bag from the desk.
It hit the floor.
She picked up the keys.
Threw them into the metal wastebasket.
Then she took the manila envelope containing her new identity and placed it into the paper shredder.
The machine pulled the documents down.
Arthur stared.
“What are you doing?”
For once, genuine shock overcame everything else.
“Nora, are you insane?”
“Probably.”
Her voice was steady.
Norah walked around the desk.
She stopped between his knees.
Then she placed both hands on the uninjured side of his chest.
Arthur’s heart was pounding.
“I spent my whole life being invisible.”
Norah met his eyes.
“I spent my whole life afraid of debt.”
She spoke slowly.
“Afraid of the world. Cleaning other people’s floors. Living in basements. Trying to make myself small enough that nobody dangerous would notice me.”
She glanced toward the ruined corridor.
“Oregon has nothing for me.”
“Nora—”
“Safe is an illusion.”
Arthur tried to speak.
She did not let him.
“There are no saints in this world, Arthur.”
Her expression hardened.
“There are only people who survive.”
“You don’t understand this life.”
“I understand exactly what it is.”
Her voice sharpened.
“I saw it tonight.”
Norah leaned toward him.
“I saw all of it.”
Arthur remained completely still.
“I know what you are.”
Her eyes did not leave his.
“I know there’s blood on your hands.”
Then she pressed her forehead against his.
“But you’re my monster.”
The words were barely above a whisper.
“And I’m done hiding.”
Arthur exhaled.
Not normally.
The sound came from somewhere deeper, like the final structural support inside him had broken.
His good arm went around Norah.
He pulled her onto his lap.
Then Arthur Costello buried his face against her neck and finally began to cry.
Not quietly.
Not with control.
A raw sound tore through him.
The same man who had crossed his own home killing armed intruders only hours earlier now held Norah like a drowning man clinging to the final thing keeping him above water.
Norah wrapped both arms around his shoulders.
She held him with equal force.
Beyond the study, the Costello estate was broken.
Blood darkened the hallways.
Glass covered floors.
Dominic was dead.
Half the organization had been destroyed.
Federal scrutiny was coming.
Nothing about the future was clean.
Nothing about Arthur had become innocent.
Norah knew who he was.
She had seen the evidence before she had ever allowed herself to care about him.
He was a murderer.
A criminal.
A man formed by rules written in violence and maintained with more violence.
She also knew precisely what she had rejected.
$200,000.
A new identity.
A house thousands of miles away.
A chance to disappear.
She rejected all of it with her eyes open.
For years, Norah had survived by making herself invisible.
The maid who had entered the Costello estate had believed that safety meant passing through dangerous rooms without anyone remembering her face.
That woman no longer existed.
May you like
Whatever came after that morning would not be safe.
But it would be chosen.
