Chapter 3 - The Cold Haven
Adrian’s armored Maybach sped through the rain-slicked curves of Ocean Drive, heading north toward an unmarked safehouse hidden in the dense pine forests outside Providence.
Inside the rear passenger compartment, the silence was heavy. Evelyn sat as far away from Adrian as the leather bench allowed, her knees pulled to her chest, her bare arms hidden beneath the folds of Adrian’s cashmere overcoat. The heater hummed quietly, but she continued to shiver.
In the front seat, Adrian’s most trusted enforcer, Rocco, drove with one eye on the rearview mirror and one on the dark highway. His heavy brows were furrowed. He had served the Moretti family for twenty years; he had carried Julian’s empty coffin alongside Adrian.
“Boss,” Rocco said quietly, his voice a gravelly rumble. “We’ve got two tails coming out of the estate gates. Professional distance. Not state cops.”
“Vance’s people?” Adrian asked, his eyes never leaving Evelyn’s pale profile.
“Could be. Or could be the other faction.” Rocco paused, hesitating. “Boss... is it true what she said back there? About Julian?”
“Drive the car, Rocco,” Adrian replied softly.
Adrian turned his attention back to his wife. “Evie.”
She jumped at the sound of her name. “Don’t look at me like that, Adrian. Like I’m a prize you won back.”
“You’re my wife.”
“I’m a ghost!” she cried out, her voice breaking the muffled hum of the engine. “Do you have any idea what he did to me? He didn’t just lock me in a basement! He made me a maid. He stripped away my name, my clothes, my dignity. He told me that every time I looked in a mirror, I had to remember that I was nothing more than a stray dog his little brother picked up off the Chicago streets!”
Tears spilled over her eyelashes, thick and hot.
“He showed me footage of your house, Adrian. He had cameras in your bedroom. He showed me you sitting alone with a bottle of scotch and a pistol on your desk. And then he told me that if I ever tried to run, if I ever spoke to a soul, he would push you over that edge. He made me stay away to keep you alive!”
Adrian felt a dagger twist in his gut. The guilt was instantaneous, suffocating him with the weight of three wasted years. While he had raged across the criminal underworld, torturing informants and drowning his sorrows in bourbon, she had been enduring systematic humiliation to shield him from an enemy he thought was buried beneath six feet of consecrated dirt.
He slid across the leather seat, slow and deliberate. When she flinched, he didn't retreat. He reached out and gently encircled her wrists, holding them so she couldn't pull away, but applying no pressure that would cause her pain.
“Look at me, Evelyn,” he commanded, his voice thick with uncharacteristic emotion.
She met his gaze, her dark brown eyes swimming with misery.
“I am alive,” he said, pressing her trembling palms against his chest, right over the steady, rhythmic hammering of his heart. “Feel that. That is yours. It has been yours since the day I took your hand at Holy Name Cathedral. And no one—not Vance, not Julian, not God himself—is taking you from me again.”
She swallowed hard, her fingers curling slightly against the fabric of his shirt. For the first time in thirty-six months, she felt the real, unyielding warmth of another human being who did not seek to break her.
“He’s changed, Adrian,” she whispered, leaning her forehead against his shoulder as the first sobs began to wrack her frame. “He’s not the brother you remember. He’s hollowed out. He’s become a demon.”
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“Good,” Adrian whispered into her hair, his eyes turning to black ice in the reflection of the rain-streaked window. “Because demons are the only things I know how to kill.”
***
