Chapter 17 - The Eve of the Covenant
The night before the wedding, the manor was eerily quiet.
Outside, a late spring thunderstorm rattled the leaded glass windows, wrapping the sprawling stone estate in sheets of dark water and flashes of cold lightning.
The perimeter was secured by over a hundred men, armored checkpoints established three miles out on every access road through Lake Forest.
I could not sleep.
I walked the long, empty corridors of the mansion, dressed in a simple silk robe, my bare feet making no sound against the Persian runners.
I found myself drawn, as I always was when the shadows pressed too close, toward the northern wing and the heavy oak door that led down into the cellar.
The padlock was gone, replaced by a polished brass latch that turned smoothly under my hand.
I flipped the switch, and the yellow incandescent bulbs flickered to life along the stone corridor, illuminating the old wine racks, the iron drainage grates, and the heavy brick furnace where Arthur had nearly bled to death twelve months ago.
It smelled different now—cleaner, stripped of the copper stench of dying flesh, yet the memory was burned into every stone.
"You're haunting your own history, Norah."
I turned.
Arthur stood at the bottom of the stone stairs, wearing dark flannel trousers and a gray henley, his bare feet mirroring mine.
The scars across his chest and shoulder were stark in the harsh overhead light—jagged tracks where Marcus’s men had cut him open, lines of survival that matched the fire inside him.
"I come down here to remember who I am," I admitted softly, walking toward the wooden workbench where I had once stitched his torn flesh with fishing line and an embroidery needle. "Upstairs, everyone calls me Madame Vance. They bow their heads. They treat me like glass."
"You are not glass, Norah," Arthur said, closing the distance between us, his hands coming up to rest gently on the sides of my waist. "You are forged steel. The only reason that house upstairs is still standing is because your foundation is down here."
"Are you afraid of tomorrow, Arthur?" I asked, looking up into the gray eyes that had once terrified my soul.
Arthur was silent for a long moment, his thumb gently stroking the curve of my hip.
"For ten years, I believed that the only way to protect this city was to become a monster that even the dark was afraid of," he confessed, his voice thick with a vulnerability he revealed to no other living creature. "I killed my cousin. I buried friends who turned for a handful of silver. I thought my legacy would be an unmarked grave and a name whispered by widows."
He leaned down, pressing his forehead against mine, his breath mingling with mine in the damp chill of the cellar.
"Then I woke up on this concrete floor, blind with pain, and saw a girl with soot on her apron holding a towel against my ribs, refusing to run even when I put a gun to her skull."
"I knew you wouldn't shoot," I whispered, smiling against his lips.
"I couldn't have shot you if I tried," he answered, his voice cracking with emotion. "You were the only human thing left in this house."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a delicate gold chain, from which hung a tiny, tarnished brass key.
"What is this?" I asked.
"The master key to the vault beneath the floorboards in the old carriage house," Arthur said, slipping the chain over my head so the key rested against my collarbone. "Inside are bearer bonds, five clean European identities, and the deed to an estate in Tuscany on Lake Como."
I stepped back, my eyes narrowing with sudden apprehension. "Why are you giving me an escape plan on the night before our wedding?"
"Because tomorrow, Moretti’s remaining loyalists will make their last stand," Arthur said, his expression hardening back into the kingpin who left nothing to chance. "Gable intercepted chatter from a splinter faction within the CPD tactical squad. Someone was paid half a million dollars to open a corridor near Holy Name Cathedral."
"You know who it is?"
"Not yet," Arthur admitted, his jaw tightening. "Which is means tomorrow is not just a ceremony, Norah. It is an ambush in reverse. We are drawing them out in the open where they cannot hide behind badges or boardrooms."
I looked at the key resting on my chest, then looked Arthur straight in his eyes, my hands reaching up to grip his lapels.
"If they come for us at the altar, Arthur, I am not running to Tuscany."
"Norah..."
"I stood in your blood once," I said fiercely, pulling his mouth down to mine. "If they want this crown, they will have to drown both of us to take it."
May you like
Arthur groaned, his arms wrapping around me like iron bands, lifting me onto the wooden workbench as his lips took mine with a desperate, hungry passion that banished the ghosts of the cellar forever.
***
