Chapter 9 - The Fall of Lockwood and Hart
The destruction was absolute.
By Tuesday afternoon, the Lockwood Capital building on Bryant Park had its signage removed. Damian Lockwood was indicted on eighteen counts of securities fraud, bank fraud, and wire fraud. Unable to make the five-million-dollar cash bail set by a federal judge who had no patience for disgraced financiers, he was remanded to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn to await trial.
Vivian and Celeste were removed from the Westchester estate by the county sheriff's department. Roman’s men didn't have to burn their luggage; they simply locked the wrought-iron gates behind them. Without Damian’s money and with Edward facing twenty-five years in federal prison, Celeste’s credit cards were declined at the first midtown hotel she attempted to book.
They were last seen by reporters checking into a budget motel in Queens, their designer luggage piled haphazardly into the trunk of a rented sedan.
On Wednesday morning, I walked through the empty rooms of the Westchester house.
The house was silent, but for the first time in thirteen years, the air didn't feel heavy with poison. The cheap, gaudy decorations Celeste had brought into the home had been packed away. The original mahogany floors, the watercolor paintings my mother had made of the Hudson Valley, and the Steinway grand piano stood bathed in the pale morning sunlight.
Footsteps echoed softly on the hardwood behind me.
I didn't turn around. I knew the rhythm of his walk now.
Roman stopped beside me, looking out through the French doors toward the overgrown rose garden my mother had planted.
"The deed has been transferred back to Vance Holdings," Roman said quietly. "The house is yours. Exclusively."
"Thank you," I said.
"What will you do with it?"
I looked around the grand room. "I'm going to tear out everything they touched. I'm going to replant the roses. And then I'm going to establish a foundation for female entrepreneurs in my mother’s name."
Roman turned his head to look at me, his dark eyes steady, curious. "And the harbor project?"
"We break ground on the Atlantic Terminal on the first of the month," I said, looking up at him. "Fifty-fifty partnership between Vance and Moretti Marine. Just as the original contract intended."
Roman reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy brass key. He took my right hand and pressed the key into my palm, folding my fingers over it.
"This is the key to the master vault at the Brooklyn Navy Yard," he said. "Everything my father took from Edward Hart fifteen years ago is inside. Elise's private jewelry, her letters, her personal records. It belongs to you."
I looked down at the brass key, then up at his face. The scars, the sharp angles of his jaw, the deadly reputation that made the most powerful men in the city tremble—none of it frightened me.
"Why did you do this, Roman?" I asked softly. "You could have taken the harbor land through foreclosure. You could have forced the debt settlement without marrying me."
Roman stepped closer. His hand rose, his fingers gently brushing a loose strand of hair behind my ear, his touch warm against the winter chill.
"Ten years ago, I stood across the street from your mother's funeral," Roman said, his voice dropping into a low, raw cadence. "I watched a seventeen-year-old girl stand in the pouring rain, refusing to take an umbrella, refusing to let her father hold her hand. I saw you stand alone against the world and never once bend."
His thumb traced the line of my lower lip, his gaze burning with an intensity that made the breath catch in my chest.
"When your father offered me your sister, I was going to ruin him and walk away," he murmured. "But when you walked into my car and offered me an empire with that fire in your eyes... I realized something, Arya."
"What?" I whispered.
May you like
"I didn't want the harbor," Roman said, leaning down until his lips were a breath away from mine. "I wanted you."
***
