Chapter 9 - The Last Drive
By 7:00 PM, the storm had cleared, leaving the sky over New York washed in a brilliant, cold canopy of stars.
The door of Apartment 4B opened.
Luca stepped out first, carrying a single small duffel bag containing Emma’s clothes. His face was set in lines of grim, absolute resolve. Behind him came Emma, wrapped in her heavy winter coat, leaning slightly on his arm for support.
Paulie was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. When he saw them, he hurried up, taking the bag from Luca’s hand without a word and clearing a path through the dingy hallway.
They didn't speak as they got into the Escalade.
Luca settled Emma gently in the back seat, wrapping a cashmere blanket around her shoulders before sliding in beside her. He took her hand, holding it tight against his chest.
“Where are we going, Luca?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper as the car pulled away from the curb, heading back toward the bridge. “Back to the penthouse?”
“No,” Luca said, staring straight ahead through the windshield as the Manhattan skyline rose before them in a blaze of neon and steel. “Not the penthouse.”
Forty-five minutes later, the car turned off the highway and pulled through heavy iron gates into a sprawling, wooded estate in Westchester County—an old stone-and-glass house surrounded by towering pine trees, overlooking a private lake that mirrored the silver light of the moon.
It was the house they had bought during their second year of marriage, back when they still laughed in the kitchen at midnight, before the empire swallowed them whole.
Luca had kept the estate locked and empty for five years, visiting only twice a year to pay the groundskeepers, treating it like a museum piece of a life he thought he had outgrown.
The car stopped in front of the front porch.
Luca opened the door, stepped out, and gently lifted Emma into his arms, carrying her up the stone steps as if she weighed nothing at all.
“Luca... what is this?” she asked, resting her head against his shoulder, breathing in the scent of pine and rain and the man she had loved before he became a legend.
“This is where we stop running,” he said, kicking the front door open.
Inside, the house was warm. A fire was already crackling in the massive stone fireplace—one of the groundskeepers had spotted their plates on the security cameras and prepped the place within twenty minutes of Paulie’s call. The scent of cedarwood and old books filled the air.
He carried her to the large bedroom upstairs, laying her gently down on the white-sheeted bed facing the wide, glass doors that opened onto the lake.
May you like
For the first time in seven years, there were no phones ringing, no enforcers waiting outside, no ledgers of blood and debt.
Just the sound of the wind through the pines and the fire popping in the hearth.
