Chapter 2 - The Velvet Cage on Park Avenue
The black armored Maybach moved through the streets of Manhattan like a hearse carrying the living.
I sat in the plush leather backseat, staring out the tinted windows as Fifth Avenue blurred past. Nico sat beside me, silent, his massive shoulders taut against the dark upholstery. He hadn't touched me. He hadn't forced me into the car with physical violence; he hadn't needed to. When three armored SUVs box in a boutique and a man who controls half the eastern seaboard tells you that your alternative is an ambulance ride to a private clinic, you choose the passenger seat.
""Where are we going?"" I asked, breaking the oppressive silence. ""If you take me back to the estate in Westchester, I will jump out at the first red light.""
""We're going to Park Avenue,"" Nico replied, his voice rough, gravelly from disuse. ""The duplex. Westchester is... compromised. It has been since the week you disappeared.""
I turned my head sharply, studying his profile. The harsh daylight filtering through the tint revealed details I hadn't caught in the boutique. The sharp angles of his jaw were leaner, almost hollowed out. There were silver threads woven through his thick dark hair that hadn't been there eight months ago, and deep, bruised crescents shadowed his eyes. He looked like a man who had been consumed by a private war, hollowed out from the inside until only steel and scar tissue remained.
""Why was Westchester compromised?"" I asked quietly.
Nico’s jaw tightened. ""Because after you vanished, the Moretti family assumed I had grown weak. They thought my wife running away was an invitation to strike. Three days after you left, they threw pipe bombs through the conservatory windows. The glasshouse where you used to grow those white orchids is nothing but scorched earth.""
A cold knot tightened in my chest. The conservatory. That had been my sanctuary. I had spent countless afternoons there, hiding from the blood-stained whispers of his business, watering delicate white petals while bodyguards patrolled the perimeter with submachine guns. If I had stayed... if I hadn't packed that single canvas bag and fled into the rain that Tuesday night...
""I was pregnant, Nico,"" I said, my voice barely above a whisper. ""I found out that very morning. Two pink lines on a plastic stick in the upstairs bathroom. I wanted to tell you. I was walking down to your study with the test in my pocket, ready to believe we could finally be a normal family.""
Nico turned his head, his eyes burning into mine with an agonizing intensity. ""Then why didn't you?""
""Because when I reached the landing, the study door was cracked open,"" I said, the memory flooding back with all its sickening clarity. ""You were standing over Marco’s body. You had blood on your cuffs, Nico. Real blood. And you were telling Leo to dump him in the East River where the fish wouldn't leave enough for his mother to identify. And right on the silver tray on your desk... was a severed thumb wearing the signet ring of my father's old driver.""
Nico flinched as if I had struck him across the face. The silence stretched between us, thick with the ghosts of the past.
""Marco was selling our security codes to the Russian syndicate,"" Nico said through clenched teeth. ""He was the one who told them when you went to the farmers market. He was setting you up for a kidnapping, Elena! I didn't kill him out of cruelty. I slaughtered him because he was three days away from putting a bag over your head and demanding my entire empire as ransom!""
""You never told me!"" I cried out, my voice cracking with pent-up fury. ""You never spoke to me! You treated me like a porcelain doll you kept locked in a golden cabinet! You smiled at breakfast, kissed my forehead, and then walked downstairs to chop men into pieces! How was I supposed to bring an innocent baby into that world? How could I raise a child knowing her father might come home smelling of gunpowder and someone else’s blood?""
The car came to a smooth halt in the subterranean garage beneath a towering glass monolith on Park Avenue. The heavy reinforced steel gates rolled down behind us, sealing us away from the outside world.
Nico stared at me, his chest heaving. ""You should have trusted me. You should have told me there was a life inside you. Do you know what I did to this city looking for you? I burned down four shipping docks in Brooklyn. I put a gun to the head of every capo between here and Atlantic City. I thought they had taken you, Elena! I thought you were rotting in a concrete foundation somewhere, and every breath I took was agony because I had failed to protect you!""
He reached out, his large, calloused hand hovering inches above my swollen belly. He hesitated, his knuckles trembling, waiting for permission that he knew he hadn't earned.
""Is it a boy or a girl?"" he asked, his voice breaking on the final word.
I looked at his trembling hand, remembering the tenderness with which he had once held me before the violence swallowed our marriage whole. The baby gave a sudden, hard kick against my ribs, as if responding to the vibration of his voice.
Tears pricked my eyes, blurring the harsh fluorescent lights of the underground garage.
May you like
""A girl,"" I whispered. ""She’s a girl, Nico.""
A single, silent tear escaped his dark eyes, tracking down the rugged hollow of his cheek before he pulled his hand back, clenching it into a tight fist against his knee.
