Chapter 4 - Stripping Away the Armor
The silence that followed Norah’s confession was heavier than any vault door Declan had ever locked.
For months, he had convinced himself that her distant behavior, her cold silences, and her refusal of his gifts were signs that she was pulling away from him, plotting an escape, or regretting her marriage to a monster. He had attributed her withdrawal to fear of his enemies or cold calculation.
It never once crossed his mind—not in a million years—that she was fighting an invisible, agonizing war with her own self-image, hiding her physical insecurities behind oversized hoodies because she believed he was disgusted by the very body carrying his child.
Declan stepped across the threshold of the bedroom.
Norah flinched, taking a stumbling step backward until the back of her legs hit the edge of the mattress. “Don’t,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut as fresh tears cut tracks through the powder on her cheeks. “Please, Declan. Just... leave the room. Let me put on my sweater.”
Instead of stopping, Declan closed the remaining distance between them in two long strides.
He didn’t stop at arm’s length. He reached out, his large, calloused hands—hands that had held guns, signed death warrants, and crushed rival syndicates—gentle as falling snow as they cupped her damp face.
Norah gasped softly at the warmth of his touch, her eyes flying open in utter shock.
“Look at me, Nora,” he commanded, his voice thick with an emotion she had never heard from him before. It wasn't the voice of the boss of the Chicago outfit; it was the voice of a man begging for his life.
She slowly raised her tear-blurred eyes to meet his.
“You think I’m disgusted by you?” Declan whispered, his thumb brushing a tear from her cheekbone. “You think I send you those dresses because I want a plastic doll on my arm?”
“I... I don't know what to think anymore,” she sobbed, her lower lip trembling. “You’re never here. You buy me things with price tags attached to ease your conscience, and then you look at me like I’m a fragile piece of glass that’s about to break.”
“I’m never here because I was terrified, Nora,” Declan confessed, the confession tearing upward from a place he kept locked away from the entire world. “When I found out you were pregnant, my first instinct wasn’t joy—it was raw, blind terror. Every enemy I’ve made, every bomb that’s gone off in this city, every drop of blood on my hands... I thought, How dare I bring a child into this? How dare I put you in the crosshairs?”
Norah stared at him, her breath catching.
“So I threw myself into the war,” Declan continued, his voice cracking slightly. “I worked twenty-hour days trying to kill every threat before our baby was born, believing that if I built a high enough wall of cash and violence, nothing could ever touch you. And every time I bought you a diamond or a dress, it wasn’t a guilt offering. It was a pathetic, desperate prayer. I was trying to buy safety for you because I didn't know how to protect you with my own two hands while I was bleeding out on the streets.”
He slowly slid his hands down from her face, tracing the soft line of her shoulders, moving past her arms until his palms rested flat against the warm, taut curve of her swollen stomach.
Norah’s breath hitched sharply. Her hands flew down instinctively to cover his, pressing his palms deeper against her skin where their child rolled in a sudden, undeniable kick.
A sharp intake of breath escaped Declan’s lips. He had felt explosions, knife wounds, and broken bones, but nothing had ever shaken him to his core quite like the tiny, powerful thump of his child pressing against his palm through Norah’s skin.
“You aren’t deformed, Nora,” Declan whispered, leaning forward until his forehead rested gently against hers, ignoring the tears sliding down his own cheeks. “You are the most breathtaking thing I have ever seen in my entire life. Look at what you’re doing. You’re building a life inside you. You’re carrying our future while I spend my days wading through filth.”
“Declan...” she whimpered, her hands gripping his expensive silk shirt as she finally allowed herself to collapse forward into his embrace.
May you like
He wrapped his arms entirely around her, burying his face in her dark hair, holding her so tightly against his chest that there was no air left between them. For the first time since she had taken that pregnancy test two months ago, Norah stopped shivering. She stopped hiding. She simply wept against his shoulder, letting years of collected fear, loneliness, and exhaustion pour out of her into the only man who could ever truly understand her world.
“I’m sorry,” Declan repeated over and over into her hair, his voice rough and broken. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I’m done running away. I’m done hiding behind money. From now on, I’m right here.”
