Chapter 10 - Wings Unbound
Six months later, the spring wind off the Long Island Sound carried the scent of salt marsh, wild honeysuckle, and fresh cedar mulch.
The Blackthorne estate in Oyster Bay had been cleared of the charred ruins that had scarred the promontory for a decade. The blackened stone foundations of the old mansion had been transformed into an open-air stone terrace overlooking the private beach, surrounded by blooming dogwoods and high stands of sea grass that whispered softly in the morning tide.
At the edge of the terrace, leaning against the wrought-iron railing where her mother had once watched the schooners enter the bay, stood Evangeline Sterling.
Her hair had grown to her shoulders—a thick, luminous wave of pure champagne gold that caught the noon sun like spun honey. She wore a simple white linen shirt, dark trousers, and leather deck shoes that were scuffed with sand from her morning walk along the dunes. On her left wrist, she wore a simple watch with a leather strap; on her fourth finger, the platinum falcon ring remained, polished and permanent.
A gravel crunch sounded from the long driveway winding through the beech woods.
A solitary black Maybach pulled up to the turnaround, its engine dying into a smooth, silent purr.
Adrian Kane stepped out.
He was not wearing his heavy winter overcoat. He wore a navy linen blazer over an open-collared white shirt, his gait smooth and unhindered by the wound that had nearly killed him six months earlier. The lines around his eyes were still sharp, still watchful, but the predatory tension that had defined his life on the waterfront had settled into an easy, quiet authority.
He walked up the stone steps of the terrace, stopping three paces behind her.
"The federal court finalized the probate distribution this morning," Adrian said, leaning his forearms against the iron railing beside her. "Julian signed the plea agreement from the federal penitentiary in Otisville. Twenty-five years without parole. He surrendered every share in the terminal logistics company."
Evangeline did not turn her head. She was watching two osprey circle over the sandbar half a mile out. "And the Brooklyn berths?"
"The union contracts were executed yesterday," Adrian said with a faint smile. "The dockworkers have their pension guarantees. The Russian syndicates have been cleared from Red Hook completely. My family manages the security; your company manages the freight."
"A partnership," she murmured.
"A partnership," he agreed.
A comfortable, easy silence settled between them, filled only with the rhythmic shhh-shhh of the breakers rolling over the pebbles below.
Evangeline turned to face him, leaning her hip against the railing. Her blue eyes were clear, bright, free of the haunted shadows that had lived in them when she had thrown her matted hair over his bleeding ribs in the alley behind the theater.
"Lindqvist called me yesterday," she said, amusement coloring her voice. "He wants to know if I will sit for a portrait for the cover of Vogue. He said the story of the ninety-thousand-dollar haircut is currently the most expensive legend on Fifth Avenue."
Adrian let out a short, genuine laugh—a sound that still startled his lieutenants whenever they heard it. "What did you tell him?"
"I told him that hair is just keratin," she said, reaching up to touch the soft curls at her nape. "It grows back when you stop carrying the dead on your head."
Her hand dropped, her fingers brushing against the sleeve of his blazer.
"You never told me what you were going to do with your life once the war was over, Adrian."
Adrian looked out over the blue expanse of the Sound, where three white container ships bearing the Sterling flag were steaming out toward the Atlantic shipping lanes.
"I spent twenty years believing that the only way to survive in this city was to be the man everyone was afraid of," he said softly. "The man who owned the dark. The man who never left a debt unpaid because paying a debt meant admitting someone had reached you."
He turned his slate-gray eyes to hers, his expression softening into an unmasked, absolute devotion that made her breath catch in her throat.
"Then I met a girl who had lost everything in the world, who smelled like grease and river water, who had forty pounds of stone tied to her skull, and who still had the courage to pull a bleeding stranger out of the snow and tell him he couldn't die on her street."
He reached out, his large, scarred hand closing gently over hers on the iron railing, his thumb tracing the wings of the two falcons on the platinum seal.
"I don't need to own the dark anymore, Evie," Adrian whispered. "I just want to be the man who stands by the window with you."
Evangeline looked at their joined hands—the gangster and the heiress, the two survivors who had been forged in the same fire and pulled from the same gutter.
She stepped closer, closing the distance between them until her forehead rested against his shoulder, her arm slipping around his waist, feeling the steady, rhythmic beat of the heart that she had saved in the dark.
May you like
"Then stay here," she murmured into his collar. "The house is big. The ships are safe. And the door is never going to be closed again."
Above them, the two osprey broke their circle, their wings catching the offshore wind, soaring together out over the wide, open sea.
