Chapter 2 - The Cold House
The Gold Coast mansion smelled of old cedar, ozone, and fresh disinfectant.
When Roman strode through the grand iron doors, the entrance hall was silent except for the quick, rhythmic tap of leather soles on marble. Marco met him near the foot of the sweeping mahogany staircase, his face grim, a bloodstained towel clutched in one hand.
“She’s upstairs in the master suite,” Marco said, falling into step beside Roman as they took the stairs two at a time. “Dr. Chen got the IV started. Her temperature was dangerously low when we picked her up, boss. Eighty-nine degrees skin temp. We put three heated blankets on her.”
Roman did not slow his stride. His overcoat was still slick with rainwater. “Who found her?”
“One of our watchers on the West Side. He was doing a routine drive-by near Division.” Marco paused, his jaw tightening. “He said she was slouched against the bench. People were walking right past her thinking she was asleep.”
Roman stopped at the top landing. He turned his head slowly, his dark irises reflecting the chandelier light like polished flint. “A routine drive-by? On Division? Why was a Valenti watcher anywhere near Division at ten o’clock on a Tuesday?”
Marco swallowed. For a man who had faced down federal indictments and armed cartel enforcers without blinking, he looked suddenly fragile under Roman’s stare.
“The detail was assigned six months ago, boss,” Marco whispered. “After the decree. You gave orders that she was to be kept safe.”
“I gave orders that she was to be settled in London,” Roman said, his voice dropping into a register so low it vibrated in the floorboards. “With two million dollars in a blind trust, a townhouse in Kensington, and round-the-clock protection under Julian’s supervision.”
Marco closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. “Boss... she never went to London.”
Roman stared at him. The air in the corridor felt suddenly thick, as if the oxygen were being sucked out by an invisible vacuum.
“What did you say?”
“She never left Chicago,” Marco said, his voice breaking slightly. “The reports you’ve been getting every month... the wire transfer receipts... the security updates from Kensington... they were fabricated.”
Before Roman could strangle him where he stood, the double doors of the master suite swung open.
Dr. Lila Chen stepped out, pulling off a pair of latex gloves. Her face was pale, lined with exhaustion, her eyes dark behind her wire-rimmed spectacles. She had been the Valenti family doctor for twenty years; she had delivered Roman’s younger brother, and she had treated Roman’s bullet wounds in back rooms when the police were listening to scanner bands.
“Roman,” she said softly.
“Is she going to lose it?” Roman’s voice was stripped bare.
“The baby is stable for now,” Lila said, stepping aside to let him see into the room. “Heartbeat is strong—one hundred and forty-eight beats per minute. But Claire is in severe distress. Chronic malnutrition, dehydration, and early signs of physical exhaustion. She’s twenty weeks pregnant, Roman. She weighs less than she did when you married her.”
Roman stepped past her into the bedroom.
The room was vast, dark, lit only by a single amber lamp on the bedside table. Claire lay in the center of the emperor-sized bed—the bed they had shared for three years—looking impossibly tiny beneath the mountain of white duvets and heated green blankets.
Her face was translucent. Dark, bruised shadows sat beneath her closed eyes, her cheekbones sharp enough to cut paper, her pale pink lips dry and cracked. An IV tube snaked from a plastic bag on a metal pole into the back of her left hand, which was taped to a small wooden board to keep the vein open.
Roman approached the bed as if approaching a unexploded shell.
He sank to his knees on the Persian rug beside her. Slowly, hesitantly, his large, calloused hand reached out and touched her hair—the soft, honey-gold strands that he had once spun around his fingers in the quiet hours of the morning.
It was coarse now. Dry.
“Claire,” he whispered.
Her eyelids twitched, but she did not wake.
He moved his hand down, letting his palm rest gently, terrified, against the blanket over her stomach. He expected to feel nothing. He expected it to feel like a tragedy, a memory, a lie.
Then, beneath the heavy layers of wool and cotton, he felt it.
A firm, distinct, rhythmic thud against his palm.
May you like
A heartbeat. A second life, hidden in the dark, beating against his own skin.
Roman closed his eyes, and a tear, hot and silent, cut through the dust on his cheek. He leaned his forehead against the mattress beside her hand and stayed there while the rain battered the glass outside.
