Chapter 1 - The Weight of Gold
The brass elevator doors slid shut with a soft, mechanical hiss, sealing off the penthouse and leaving Luca DeVito alone with the quiet hum of the climate control and the steady pulse of his own cold blood.
He didn't move. His hand remained resting on the black marble counter, fingers curled inches away from the gold band Emma had just placed there. The ring looked small, almost pathetic, sitting beside his heavy gold Rolex and the matte-black steel of his Walther PPK.
“She’ll come back,” he muttered to the empty room, his voice flat, testing the syllables against the silence to see if they carried any weight.
They didn't.
For seven years, Emma had been the permanent fixture in a life defined by volatility. While Brooklyn and Manhattan bled through turf wars, labor disputes, and federal investigations, Emma was the constant. When he came home with gunpowder on his collar and copper on his hands, she didn't scream or demand explanations; she poured him a glass of water, warmed up food that had gone cold hours ago, and let him shed the armor of a mob boss in the quiet safety of their hallway.
He had taken that safety for granted. He had assumed it was part of the rent, included in the security detail guarding the lobby, the armored cars, the millions tucked into offshore accounts, and the name that made grown men tremble.
Luca reached out, picked up the ring, and turned it over in his palm. The inside band was engraved with a date and three words: Always.
His jaw tightened. A sharp, unfamiliar ache struck behind his ribs, a physical sensation he immediately tried to squash with professional detachment. Women left. People left. It was the nature of his world. Associates betrayed you; rivals hunted you; family bled you dry. But Emma wasn't an associate. She was the foundation he had built his sanity upon, even if he had stopped visiting the rooms inside that house a long time ago.
He walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring out at the rain-streaked panorama of New York City. Down below, the headlights of cabs smeared into glowing orange streaks against the wet asphalt.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Luca pulled it out. A text from Paulie, his second-in-command: Docks are clean. Shipment from Marseilles cleared customs. No federal tail.
Luca stared at the screen for a long moment before tapping out a short reply: Keep a tail on her.
He stopped. His thumb hovered over the delete key.
No.
He tossed the phone onto the leather sofa. If Emma wanted space, let her have her three days. She’d rent a room at some quiet hotel downtown, realize she couldn't sleep without the sound of the city, and call for a car by Sunday morning. She always did.
Except... as he looked back down at the wedding ring resting in his palm, a cold drop of unease settled in his stomach.
May you like
She hadn't slammed the door. She hadn't cried.
She had looked at him the way a doctor looks at a patient past the point of saving.
