Chapter 5 - The Price of Possession
The air in the kitchen went from warm to sub-zero in a fraction of a second.
Roman didn't flinch. His body moved on instinct, shifting slightly to place himself between Evelyn and Nora before his brain even registered the trajectory of the weapon.
“Evelyn,” Roman said, his voice dropping into that dark, lethal register that had made veteran mobsters beg for mercy. “Put the gun down.”
Evelyn was shaking violently. The diamond ring—the one Roman hadn't bothered to ask for back—sparked under the pendant lights as her finger tightened convulsively around the trigger guard. Her eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with smeared mascara.
“You ruined me!” she shrieked, the sound echoing off the exposed brick walls. “My father is ruined! Our name, our social standing, everything we built in this city—gone in forty-eight hours because of her?”
She pointed the barrel past Roman’s shoulder, directly at Nora.
“She’s a nobody!” Evelyn screamed, tears streaming down her face. “A kitchen girl from Highlandtown! A charity case! Why her? What does she have that I don’t?”
“Decency,” Roman answered instantly.
The word hit Evelyn like a physical blow. Her mouth opened, a pathetic gasp escaping her lips as the weight of the rejection finally shattered whatever fragile sanity she had left.
“I’ll kill her,” Evelyn whispered, her voice dropping into a manic, breathless pitch. “If I can't have you, Roman... if my life is over... I’ll take everything from you, just like you took everything from me.”
She started to squeeze the trigger.
Nora, standing just behind Roman’s shoulder, closed her eyes. She braced herself for the impact, her mind flashing not to her own life, but to Caleb upstairs—sleeping peacefully in his new room, believing for the first time in months that he was safe.
Tell him I didn't leave him.
CRACK.
The sound of the gunshot was deafening in the enclosed space, the smell of cordite instantly filling the air.
Yet, there was no pain.
Nora opened her eyes.
Evelyn was standing frozen, her arm jerked violently upward. A heavy iron skillet—the cast-iron pan Nora had left on the back burner of the stove—lay spinning on the concrete floor a few feet away.
Behind Evelyn, standing in the entryway with a smoking SIG Sauer in his hand, was Viktor, Roman’s chief of security. Viktor had entered through the service elevator the moment the biometric perimeter alarm had tripped, bypassing the front door entirely.
Evelyn’s revolver clattered to the floor as her wrist gave way under the impact of the cast-iron skillet, which Viktor had hurled across the room with lethal precision just milliseconds before she could fire at Nora.
“Boss?” Viktor asked calmly, stepping forward and kicking Evelyn’s gun away.
Roman didn't look back. His hands were gripping Nora’s shoulders now, his fingers digging into her sweater as he checked her over from head to toe, confirming every inch of her was intact.
“Is she hurt?” Roman demanded, his voice shaking with a fury that terrified even Viktor.
“I’m fine,” Nora breathed, her hands resting against Roman’s chest, feeling the wild, hammering beat of his heart beneath his shirt. “Roman, I’m fine.”
Roman turned slowly toward Evelyn, who was now kneeling on the floor, clutching her broken wrist and sobbing hysterically.
“Take her,” Roman told Viktor, his voice dead flat. “Put her on a freighter to South America. Make sure she never touches American soil again. If she so much as writes a letter to anyone in Baltimore, feed her to the sharks.”
“Understood, boss,” Viktor said, hauling the sobbing woman to her feet and dragging her toward the elevator without a word of protest.
May you like
As the elevator doors closed, sealing away the last remnant of Roman’s old life, silence settled back over the kitchen.
Roman turned back to Nora. He didn't say a word. He simply pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her hair as his strong frame trembled—not from fear, but from the terrifying realization of how close he had come to losing the only thing that had ever made his dark, violent world worth living in.
