Chapter 4 - Blood on the Marble
The silence that followed the faint, muffled thuds of his weapon was instantaneous. Two heavy splashes hit the black ocean water near Pier 4, swallowed immediately by the roaring storm.
Gideon lowered the weapon, flicked the safety on, and tucked it into his leather holster. He turned to face Ruby.
In the pale, flickering light of a nearby sodium lamp, his expression was entirely unreadable. Water ran in streams down his sharp jawline, dripping off his chin. His white shirt was soaked translucent, clinging to the heavy muscle of his shoulders and chest. His gray eyes were dark, almost black, filled with a turbulent emotion she had never seen in him before.
He reached out to touch her wet face.
Ruby flinched, stepping back until her spine hit the corrugated wall of the container.
Gideon’s hand froze in mid-air. His fingers slowly curled into a fist, dropping back to his side.
“You’re shivering,” he said quietly.
“Why did you follow me?” she demanded, her voice cracking with exhaustion and residual adrenaline. “You burned the contract, Gideon! You got what you wanted—the terminals are legally bound to your business holding for the next two years regardless of our marriage status! You don't owe me anything!”
Gideon stared at her. For the first time in the six months she had known him, he looked genuinely lost.
“I didn't follow you for the terminals, Ruby.”
“Then why?”
“Because,” he stepped closer, closing the distance until she could feel the heat radiating off his body in the freezing night air, “you left without shoes suitable for rain.”
It was such an absurd, ridiculously practical response that Ruby almost laughed, a dry, ragged sound in her throat. “You are impossible. You are completely, hopelessly insane.”
“Probably,” Gideon agreed without hesitation. He reached down, swept his arms around her waist and under her knees, and lifted her off her feet before she could protest.
“Put me down!” she yelled, hitting his shoulder with her fist. “Gideon! Let me go!”
“No.” He carried her through the dark alleyways toward an idling black SUV parked illegally on Northern Avenue. “You can hit me all the way to the car, Ruby. You can scream at me for the rest of the night. But you will not freeze to death on my docks.”
Mateo held the rear door open as Gideon reached the vehicle. He placed Ruby gently onto the heated leather seat, immediately wrapping a heavy cashmere blanket around her trembling shoulders. Before she could slide out the opposite door, Gideon climbed in beside her, slamming the heavy door shut.
“Drive,” Gideon ordered Mateo. “To the harbor house.”
“Not Beacon Hill?” Mateo asked, looking through the rearview mirror.
“No,” Gideon said, his eyes never leaving Ruby’s face. “The harbor house.”
Ruby pulled the blanket tightly around her chin, ducking into the corner of the seat as far away from him as the leather cabin allowed. “I’m not staying with you.”
“You are staying until you are warm,” Gideon said, his voice flat, absolute, leaving no room for argument. “After that, if you still want to leave, I will hand you the keys to a vehicle and a check for whatever sum you require.”
Ruby looked at him in surprise. “You’d let me go?”
Gideon looked out the tinted window into the black, rain-swept streets of Boston. His jaw tightened until a muscle jumped in his cheek.
“I spent thirty-two years believing that if you held something tight enough, it could never break,” he said softly, almost to himself. “Tonight I held you by the wrist, and I watched your heart break right in front of me. I am a criminal, Ruby. I am not a fool.”
He turned back to look at her, his gray eyes shadowed with a deep, silent ache.
“If you leave me, I won't stop you. But I will not let you die in a ditch just to prove a point.”
They drove in complete silence through the rain, the vehicle turning away from the aristocratic streets of Beacon Hill and heading toward the quiet, isolated peninsula of Hull, where Gideon’s private coastal estate sat perched above the wild Atlantic waves.
When they arrived, the house was dark, a massive modern structure of black stone and floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking the ocean.
Gideon stepped out and offered her his hand. Ruby looked at his palm—the same palm where she had pressed her ring hours earlier. She ignored his hand and stepped out on her own, her legs wobbly and weak from the cold.
She made it three steps before her knee gave out.
Gideon caught her before she hit the wet pavement, scooping her up into his arms again. This time, she didn't fight him. She was too tired, too cold, and her heart was too bruised to offer any resistance.
He carried her through the massive double doors of the harbor house, past the quiet entry hall, and straight into a large bedroom facing the ocean. A fire was already roaring in the stone hearth, lit by the household staff before their arrival.
Gideon set her down gently on the edge of a massive, plush bed. He immediately knelt before her, unlacing her wet boots and pulling them off her icy feet.
Ruby watched him. The most feared mob boss in the Northeast, a man who commanded hundreds of armed men and controlled hundreds of millions of dollars, was kneeling on a hardwood floor, gently rubbing her blue, freezing feet with his bare, warm hands.
“Why are you doing this?” she whispered, tears slipping down her cheeks again. “You don't love me, Gideon. You don't love anyone.”
Gideon froze. His hands rested on her ankles. He stayed kneeling on the floor, looking up at her through his dark lashes, his face illuminated by the dancing orange flames of the fireplace.
“I don't know how to love anyone, Ruby,” he admitted, his voice rough and stripped bare of all authority. “My father taught me how to count enemies. My uncles taught me how to clear accounts. No one ever gave me a contract that explained how to keep a woman’s heart from turning to ice.”
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He reached up, his thumb gently catching a tear as it slid down her cheek. His touch was so light, so achingly soft, that it made her heart violently shatter inside her chest.
“Teach me,” he whispered. “Or leave me. But do not tell me I don't care.”
