Chapter 6 - The Sovereign Suite
The rain over Lake Michigan had turned into an early November sleet by the time the private elevator opened into the penthouse on Lake Shore Drive.
The apartment was dark, illuminated only by the rhythmic, blue sweep of the lighthouse beacon four miles out on the water and the amber city lights reflecting off the wet travertine terrace.
Vincent walked through the foyer, his heavy jacket already discarded on the marble bench, his white shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest, his holster hanging from the back of the dining room chair like an ancient sword returning from a campaign.
I stood by the floor-to-ceiling glass in the primary salon, watching the sleet hit the double-paned windows.
In my right hand, I held an eight-ounce crystal tumbler containing two fingers of Macallan 18.
The silence between us was different now. It was no longer the polite, pressurized neutrality of two corporate executives sharing an expensive corridor. It was heavy, electric, and laden with the knowledge of what had happened on the fourth floor of the Fulton Market studio.
Vincent walked up behind me. He didn't take a glass. He reached out, his arm wrapping around my waist, pulling my back firmly against his chest.
His chin rested lightly on the crown of my head.
“Marco called from the border,” Vincent murmured, his voice rumbling against my shoulder blades. “The transport crossed at Detroit an hour ago. The Canadian syndicate confirmed the transfer. She’s on a non-commercial manifest to a regional terminal outside Quebec.”
I took a slow sip of the scotch, the peat and smoke burning cleanly down the back of my throat.
“Did she say anything?” I asked.
“She asked Marco if I would ever come to Montreal.”
“And what did Marco tell her?”
“Marco told her that Mr. Moretti does not leave his wife for business in the provinces.”
A soft, quiet laugh escaped my lips. I set the crystal tumbler on the black marble ledge running beneath the glass, turned within the circle of his arms, and looked up into his face.
The lines around his eyes were deeper than they had been three years ago. The scar across his collarbone stood out white against his skin in the city light. He was thirty-four years old, and he had carried the weight of five hundred violent men, twelve corporate subsidiaries, and a dying dynasty on his back since he was twenty-five.
“Why did you let her come to the studio, Vincent?” I asked quietly.
His hazel eyes darkened, shifting toward the black expanse of the lake.
“I didn't let her,” he answered, his fingers tightening against the silk of my waistline. “She slipped the surveillance detail at the Drake by trading coats with a maid in the laundry tunnel. By the time Marco flagged her vehicle on the city cameras, she was already across the river.”
He paused, his thumb tracing the curve of my jawline, lingering on the small hollow beneath my ear.
“I was four minutes away when she pulled that iron, Claire,” he whispered, his voice dropping into a register of raw, ragged vulnerability that he had never shown to a living soul. “Four minutes. In my line of work, four minutes is an eternity. Four minutes is the difference between a wife who comes home to dinner and a casket covered in white carnations.”
“I’m not a white carnation, Vincent,” I said, resting my hands flat against his chest, feeling the hard, steady rhythm of his heart beneath the linen. “I’m the woman who designed this building. I know how much load the foundation can take before the steel begins to buckle.”
He looked down at my mouth, his breath warm against my lips.
“The foundation isn't buckling, Claire,” he whispered.
May you like
“Then what is it doing?”
“It’s expanding,” he said, and lifted me off the marble floor with an effortless, fluid strength that took my breath away, carrying me through the double doors into the master bedroom that had sat empty for thirty-six months.
