Chapter 5 - The Shadow War
The silence that followed was deafening.
I looked at the man kneeling before me—the ruthless king of Chicago's underworld, a man whose name made governors tremble—and for the first time in our marriage, I saw the blood on his hands not as a symbol of power, but as a cage.
"Why didn't you just tell me?" I whispered, tears spilling over his thumbs. "I'm not fragile, Roman. I grew up in this world. My father was a consigliere. I knew what I was marrying."
"Because you have a soul, Serena," he said quietly, his thumbs wiping the moisture from my cheeks. "And Julian Vance is an artist at reading fear. If you knew the threat existed, you would have looked over your shoulder. You would have flinched at shadows. Julian would have known you were warned, and he would have changed his tactics. He would have stopped hunting you at galas and switched to car bombs. To nerve agents. To things I couldn't protect you from."
He bowed his head, resting his forehead against my bare knee. His massive shoulders shook with the tension he had carried alone for half a year.
"I had to draw him in. I had to wait until he believed you were so utterly abandoned that he could approach you directly."
A cold realization struck me.
"Tonight," I breathed. "You knew he would be there."
Roman lifted his head. His eyes were cold again, the lethal calculus of a mob boss resurfacing.
"Julian assumed the identity of Alexander Hayes three months ago. Bought into a venture capital firm, entered your social circle through the museum board. He thought he was playing the long game—seducing the neglected wife, extracting my security codes, and then executing you when the time was right."
"And you let him touch me?" I asked, a sudden spark of anger cutting through my sorrow. "You watched him put his hands on my waist and did nothing until I took off my ring?"
Roman’s grip on my face tightened, not in violence, but in a sudden, possessive fury that made my pulse race.
"Do you think I wanted to wait?" he growled, his voice dipping into a dangerous growl. "Every second his hand was on your skin, I was planning thirty different ways to skin him alive. I had three snipers on the catwalk. But the moment you looked at him and smiled... the moment you took off that ring..."
His breath caught. His dark eyes flickered with genuine, unmasked pain.
"I thought I had lost you anyway. I thought the lie had consumed the truth."
Before I could answer, the heavy study doors burst open. Nikolai strode into the room, his expression grim, his tactical vest smeared with gray dust.
"Boss," Nikolai said sharply, ignoring the intimate tableau before him. "We have a problem."
Roman was on his feet in an instant, the protective commander instantly replacing the broken husband. "Did Vance get out?"
"No," Nikolai said, handing Roman an encrypted tablet. "Vance didn't come alone. And he didn't come just to kill Serena tonight."
Roman tapped the screen, his eyes scanning rapidly. His face drained of color, his jaw setting so hard I heard the enamel of his teeth grind together.
"What is it?" I asked, standing up from the couch, ignoring the trembling in my limbs.
May you like
Roman looked up from the screen, his voice grim. "The Casiraghis didn't just hire Vance to kill you. They used him as a distraction. While we were at the gala, three of our supply warehouses at the docks were hit with military-grade thermite. And someone just disabled the perimeter sensors on the south gate of this compound."
Nikolai drew his sidearm. "They followed us, Roman. They're already inside the treeline."
