Chapter 2 - Scars and Ash
The private elevator behind the kitchen ascended in utter silence, save for the shallow, ragged cadence of Adriana’s breathing. Damon held her firmly against his chest, refusing to let her feet touch the floor even when they reached the penthouse suite above the restaurant.
“Damon, please… your clothes,” she murmured, her voice faint, her face flushed with a dangerous, feverish heat. “The wine… the floor grease…”
“Let it burn,” Damon said, his jaw locked tight.
He kicked open the double doors of his private quarters—a sprawling, minimalist sanctuary of slate gray, heavy walnut, and bullet-resistant glass overlooking the rain-slicked expanse of Boston Common. He carried her down the wide corridor, bypassing his office, straight into the master suite.
Gently, he lowered her onto the king-sized bed, propping her head against three down pillows. Her face was ashen, save for the ugly crimson bruise blooming along her cheekbone where Celeste’s heavy signet ring had caught her skin. Her hands never left her belly, her fingers digging through the coarse fabric of her server apron.
Damon pulled a pair of heavy silver shears from the pocket of his waist-holster—a tool he usually reserved for cutting zip-ties—and carefully severed the apron strings, tossing the stained cotton aside. He pulled off her worn, rubber-soled shoes. Her ankles were swollen, pale, and mapped with blue veins that spoke of twelve-hour shifts on concrete floors without rest.
“Where does it hurt?” he demanded, kneeling beside the mattress.
“Low,” she whispered, her brow furrowing as a spasm passed through her abdomen. “A cramping pain. It started… it started when I hit the cart.”
Damon pulled his phone from his jacket, pressing a single speed-dial number.
“Vance,” a voice answered on the first ring, crisp and clinical.
“Get to the St. Cordova penthouse. Now,” Damon commanded. “Bring an ultrasound unit and your best obstetrics kit. If you take longer than ten minutes, I will have your medical license revoked by sunrise.”
“On my way, Damon.”
He dropped the phone onto the nightstand and looked down at her. Now that they were out of the dining room’s public glare, the reality of her presence hit him with the force of an oncoming train.
“Six months, Adriana,” he said, his voice dropping into a harsh, cracked register. “Six months I tore this city apart looking for you. I had divers dragging the Chelsea Creek. I put bounties in Montreal, in Chicago, in Miami. I thought… God forgive me, I thought they had taken you the same night they took Eli.”
Adriana turned her head away, her eyes glistening as she stared at the rain lashing the panoramic windows. “I couldn't stay, Damon.”
“Why?” The pain in his voice was raw, unvarnished. “Eli died protecting me! My life belonged to him! Did you think I wouldn't protect his wife? Did you think I would leave you to the wolves?”
“You don't understand,” she choked out, her hands tightening around the stainless-steel watch Damon had returned to her. “The night of the funeral… when everyone was at the wake… someone slipped an envelope under the door of the bakery apartment.”
Damon’s posture stiffened. “What envelope?”
“Pictures,” she said, her chest heaving. “Pictures of me at the grocery store. Pictures of Eli’s grave. And a note. It said… *If you stay under Damon Kalas’s wing, the baby will die before it takes its first breath. Damon brought the fire. The fire will burn everything he loves.*”
Damon felt the blood drain from his head, replaced by a cold, white-hot fury that made his hands tremble. “Who signed it?”
“There was no signature,” Adriana wept, turning her face back toward him, her amber eyes wide with remembered terror. “Just a symbol. A wax seal with a broken compass. Damon… that was the mark of the people you fought with. The people who ambushed Eli’s car. I thought… I thought you had enemies inside your own house. I didn't know who to trust! If I came to you, if I stayed at the estate, I was putting Eli’s child directly in the crosshairs!”
“So you ran to the gutter?” Damon’s voice broke. “You took Eli’s child and lived in a tenement on six-dollar tips?”
“I hid where nobody looks!” she cried out, her small voice rising against the hum of the penthouse air handlers. “Nobody looks for a king’s widow wiping mustard off a table! I just needed to survive until he was born! I promised Eli… the day before he died, I took the test. We were going to tell you that Sunday at dinner. Eli said, *‘Damon’s going to be the godfather, Adriana. He’s going to teach our boy how to fight, and I’m going to teach him how to bake, and nothing in this city will ever touch him.’*”
She covered her face with her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. “And then they killed him! They put him in the ground, and I was all alone, and I couldn't let them kill what was left of him!”
Damon closed his eyes. In the darkness behind his lids, he saw Eli’s grin—crooked, reckless, brilliant. Eli, who had stolen bread for him when they were twelve; Eli, who had taken a bullet in the shoulder during the dock strike when they were twenty; Eli, who had shoved Damon onto the floorboard of the town car when the machine guns opened up, using his own torso as a shield against steel.
*“Take care of her, brother,”* Eli had gurgled through the blood rising in his throat that night. *“Don't let them take the light.”*
Damon had failed him for six months. He had let Eli’s light scrub floors and endure the slaps of trust-fund monsters.
He leaned forward, placing his large hands over Adriana’s trembling wrists, gently pulling her hands away from her face.
“Look at me, Adriana,” he ordered softly.
She looked at him through her tears.
“The broken compass belongs to the North Shore syndicate,” Damon said, his tone flat, lethal, and absolute. “I slaughtered seven of their lieutenants in May. I burned their warehouses in Lynn to ash in June. But whoever sent that letter was already inside my perimeter. You were right to be afraid. You were right that someone wanted you dead.”
He smoothed back her damp, unevenly cut hair, his thumb catching a falling tear.
“But the running is finished. Do you hear me? If the devil himself walks through that door tonight, he will have to step over my corpse before he touches a single hair on your head. You are home. Eli’s son is home.”
Before she could respond, the bedroom door opened.
Dr. Richard Vance stepped in, carrying two heavy hard-plastic medical cases. Vance was sixty, with silver hair, steady hands, and an unshakeable allegiance to Damon that dated back to the night Damon pulled his daughter out of an illegal loan-shark debt ring in Southie.
“Damon,” Vance said, taking in the scene with swift, professional detachment. “Out of the way. Let me work.”
May you like
Damon stepped back, his back pressing against the cold glass of the window, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes never leaving Adriana’s face as Vance pulled on sterile gloves and began his examination.
***
