Chapter 2 - The Exile and the Ashes
The storm did not give Hazel the luxury of grief.
By the time she reached the end of the long, winding iron driveway of the Lombardi estate, the icy downpour had soaked through her wool cardigan, turning it into a heavy, freezing weight against her skin. Her cheap leather shoes slipped on the wet asphalt. She didn't look back at the grand stone mansion rising like a fortress among the pines. She knew if she looked back, she would see the amber light glowing in his third-floor office window, and the sight would finish tearing her apart.
She walked two miles down the dark lakefront road before her trembling legs finally gave out near a rusted bus shelter.
Sitting on the cold wooden bench, shivering violently, Hazel opened her faded canvas bag. Inside were three pairs of simple trousers, four cotton shirts, her chef's whites, her passport, her personal savings ledger, and six hundred dollars in cash—money she had earned from her salary, recorded down to the last cent. There was nothing of value. Nothing expensive. Nothing that bore the touch of Mateo Lombardi’s limitless wealth.
She pulled out her phone. The screen was cracked, but it still lit up. She had two missed calls from an unknown number.
With shaking fingers, she pressed the call-back button.
"Hazel?" a raspy, terrified voice answered on the first ring.
"Caleb?" She clutched the phone to her ear, her breath catching. "Caleb, where are you? Are you alright? Mateo said—"
"I’m at the bus terminal on 95th," Caleb sobbed into the line. The sound of background announcements and rain echoed through the receiver. "Hazel, I'm so sorry. I’m so sorry, I fucked up, I fucked up so bad..."
"What did you do, Caleb?" she demanded, tears finally bursting past her eyelids and washing down her cold, wet cheeks. "Did you take his money? Did you sell his records?"
"They said they’d kill my debts!" Caleb cried. "The Moretti guys... they had my markers from the underground casino in Cicero! They told me if I got them the safehouse locations, they’d wipe the slate! Hazel, Mateo’s men... they caught me at the warehouse. Marco broke my fingers, Hazel! They were going to put a bullet in my head, but Mateo... Mateo told them to let me walk."
Hazel froze. "Mateo let you walk?"
"He said... he said if I was ever seen in Illinois again, he’d skin me alive," Caleb gasped through his tears. "He gave me five minutes to get on a bus out of the state. Hazel, you have to come with me. We have to go now!"
Hazel sat in the dark bus shelter, the wind whipping through the wooden slats, and understood the full scope of Mateo's cold calculations.
He hadn't executed Caleb because he knew Caleb was her brother. Letting him walk was the only mercy Mateo possessed. But in doing so, he had cast them both into the wilderness, stripping Caleb of his life in Chicago and stripping Hazel of her dignity, her lover, and her home. Mateo believed he was cleaning his house, cutting away a diseased limb before the gangrene spread to the rest of his organization.
He believed he was being fair.
"Where is the bus going, Caleb?" she asked softly.
"Denver," he whispered. "Then further west. Oregon, maybe. Hazel, please. Don't stay there. If Moretti finds out Mateo dropped you, they'll use you to get to him."
"Moretti doesn't care about a chef," Hazel said, though the words felt hollow in her mouth. She rested her forehead against her knees, her hand sliding down to cup her lower stomach. The warmth of her own skin through her wet clothes was the only comfort she had left. "Meet me at the south station. I’ll buy a ticket."
Two hours later, Hazel sat beside her broken, trembling brother on a long-distance Greyhound bus rolling through the flat, dark cornfields of Indiana, heading west into the unknown.
Meanwhile, in the third-floor study of the Lombardi estate, the silence was thicker than the storm outside.
Mateo stood by the high, arched windows, a tumbler of neat Scotch sitting untouched on the wide mahogany desk behind him. He had stripped off his blood-stained shirt, replacing it with a plain black linen sweater. His hands were tucked into his trousers pockets, his knuckles white with tension.
A soft knock sounded at the heavy oak door.
"Enter," Mateo said without turning around.
Marco stepped into the room, his dark suit crisp, his face set in grim lines. "The sweep is complete, Boss. Her quarters have been cleared. Her personal items were limited to what she carried out. She left her company phone, her credit cards, and the keys to the service vehicles."
Mateo stared out at the black surface of the lake. "Did she take the jewelry?"
"No," Marco said, walking over to set a small velvet tray on the desk. Sitting on the black fabric were the heavy ruby ring and the diamond pendant. "She left them on the foyer table, just as you saw."
Mateo’s jaw twitched. He turned slowly, his gaze falling onto the red stone. It seemed to mock him beneath the soft light of the desk lamp.
Take nothing tied to my name.
He had said it to break her pride—to force her to accept the reality of her brother’s betrayal, to make her realize that in his world, love could not survive treason. He had expected her to cry. He had expected her to beg, to insist on her innocence, to use her soft, rounded body and her sweet, addictive mouth to weaken his resolve.
Instead, she had stripped herself of every trace of him, looked him in the eye with a terrifying, silent quietude, and walked out into a freezing gale.
"Where is she now?" Mateo asked.
"One of our lookouts spotted her at the south bus station with Caleb," Marco reported. "They bought two one-way tickets to Denver. They boarded twenty minutes ago."
Mateo felt an odd, hollow sensation open up in his chest—a sudden drop, like an elevator with its cables snapped. He reached out, his thumb touching the cool surface of the ruby ring.
"Should I have a team follow them to Denver?" Marco asked softly. "Just to ensure they don't make contact with Moretti’s people out west?"
"No," Mateo said, his voice dropping into an icy register that closed the subject forever. "She took nothing. She owes us nothing. Let her go."
He turned back to the window, watching the rain streak down the glass like tears. He told himself it was the right decision. A boss who let his heart dictate his security was a boss who ended up in a pine box. Hazel was a distraction—a soft, warm weakness he could no longer afford with a war brewing on his eastern border.
He had cut her out. The wound would bleed for a while, but eventually, it would scar over, just like every other wound he had suffered since taking his father’s chair.
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He did not know that three states away, inside a rumbling bus cutting through the dark heartland of America, the woman he had discarded was whispering a vow to the dark.
"He will never know you," Hazel whispered into the quiet rustle of her coat, her fingers pressed tight against her belly. "He will never see your face, hear your voice, or teach you how to hurt people. You are mine. Only mine."
