Chapter 2 - The Mark Behind the Ear
Roman sat on his knee in the freezing snow, refusing to let go of the small boy’s hand.
“Who gave you this picture, Noah?” Roman asked, his voice shaking with a tenderness Gabriel had never heard in ten years of service.
“My mom,” Noah whispered, pointing a small finger at Roman’s face in the faded wedding photograph lying on the pavement. “She keeps it under her pillow. She told me my daddy was a prince who went far away to fight monsters so we could be safe.”
Roman’s eyes burned. The monsters weren't far away. He had built an empire out of them.
“Noah!” a woman’s frantic voice screamed from the far end of the block.
Roman turned his head slowly.
Running across the slush-covered sidewalk, her coat flying open against the biting December wind, was Grace.
She looked thinner than he remembered, pale and worn down by five years of hiding, but her dark hair and wide brown eyes were unchanged. She carried a heavy canvas bag filled with fresh eucalyptus leaves from her shop.
She froze fifteen feet away.
Her canvas bag slipped from her fingers, scattering leaves onto the gray snow.
“Roman...?” she breathed, her voice barely audible over the roaring traffic.
She looked as though she had seen a ghost—because she had.
“Grace,” Roman said quietly, standing up to his full six-foot-two frame.
For five years, Grace had lived with the agonizing memory of a phone call from Enzo Bellandi telling her that Roman’s body had been blown to pieces in a harbor explosion. She had mourned him, fled the city, changed her name to Miller, and raised their son alone in a cramped apartment above a failing flower shop.
“You’re dead,” Grace whispered, taking a step back in sheer terror. “They buried you... Enzo showed me the wreckage...”
“Enzo lied to you, Grace,” Roman said, taking a cautious step forward, his hands open. “He told me the Morettis were hunting you. He convinced me that the only way to keep you and our unborn child alive was for me to fake my death and go into hiding until the war ended.”
Grace’s eyes widened as the horror of the deception washed over her.
“He... he told me you were gone,” she sobbed, holding her hand over her mouth. “He took thirty percent of my shop’s profits every month as 'protection money' to keep us safe from your old enemies!”
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Roman’s jaw tightened until the bone clicked.
Enzo hadn't just arranged Roman’s disappearance. He had stolen Roman’s empire, blackmailed his grieving widow, and forced his five-year-old son to sell bruised flowers in the snow for dinner money.
