Chapter 7 - Blood and Confessions
“Evelyn!”
Vincent knelt beside her on the wet gravel, his hands trembling as he checked her arms, her face, her shoulders. “Did you take a bullet? Are you hurt? Talk to me!”
Evelyn pushed herself up on shaking elbows, looking into the wild, uncharacteristically terrified eyes of the man who had terrified Manhattan for a decade. She had never seen Vincent Calder look so undone, his bespoke graphite suit soaked with rain, his dark hair plastered against his forehead, his chest heaving with ragged breaths.
“I’m okay,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the sirens wailing in the distance. “I’m not hurt. Danny... is Danny safe?”
“He’s in an armored ambulance right now,” Vincent promised, cupping her cold face in both of his warm, strong hands. “Marco’s men are taking him to a private clinic upstate. He’s completely protected, Evelyn. It’s over. No one can ever touch your family again.”
The relief hit her so violently that the world spun. Evelyn collapsed forward against his chest, clutching his wet shirt as uncontrollable sobs tore through her. She had held it together for forty-eight hours of pure hell, but now the dam broke.
Vincent wrapped his massive arms around her, pulling her onto his lap right there in the rain-soaked industrial mud. He pressed his face into her hair, holding her so tightly she could feel the fierce, irregular pounding of his heart against her ribs.
“I was so angry at you,” Vincent murmured into her temple, his voice cracking with emotion he had hidden behind walls of cold stone for years. “When you walked into my office in his coat, I thought I was losing you. I didn’t care about the ledgers. I didn’t give a damn about the archive or the business. The thought of another man having you, of you looking at someone else to protect you instead of me... it almost drove me out of my mind.”
May you like
Evelyn lifted her tear-streaked face, staring at him in utter disbelief. “You... you were jealous?”
“I have been completely, irrevocably in love with you since the second month you worked for me, Evelyn,” Vincent confessed, his dark eyes vulnerable for the first time in his life. “And God forgive me, I almost got you killed trying to prove I owned this city.”
