Chapter 2 - THE SILVER WATCH
Damian Russo did not panic. Panic was a luxury for men who didn’t hold the lives of thousands in their bare hands. But as he stared at the shattered crystal on his hardwood floor, a cold, unfamiliar dread coiled in his stomach.
“Trace it again,” Damian ordered, his voice dangerously low.
“We did, boss,” his underboss, Tommy, whispered through the phone. “The routing numbers, the shell signatures... they all lead back to the Navarro family. But the Navarros were slaughtered in Mexico ten years ago. They have no heir.”
“Everyone has an heir,” Damian snapped, hanging up.
He turned his gaze back to the console table. The platinum wedding band sat there, mocking him. For five years, he had treated Lena like a delicate bird he had rescued from a cage. He had dressed her in silk, guarded her with armed men, and dismissed her quiet, observant nature as shyness. He had been so entirely consumed by his own power that he never noticed the cage door was open the entire time.
And she had just locked him inside.
Across the city, rain lashed against the windshield of a black SUV. Lena sat in the backseat, the ivory shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders. She wasn't crying. The woman who had wept over Damian’s coldness had died the moment she saw Celeste wearing her mother’s dying work.
“Are we clear, Marco?” Lena asked softly.
The man in the driver’s seat—a man Damian believed was just a low-level enforcer for the Russo syndicate—glanced in the rearview mirror. “The accounts are drained, Doña Elena. The Feds are tearing apart Russo’s warehouses on the docks. He has no liquid cash and no product.”
“Good.” Lena looked out at the passing streetlights. “Take me to him.”
The SUV pulled into the underground garage of a non-descript apartment building on the outskirts of Boston. Lena moved with a purpose she had hidden for half a decade. She rode the elevator to the penthouse, her heart beating a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
When the doors opened, a warm, golden light spilled into the hallway.
A small figure in dinosaur pajamas peeked around the corner. Dark curls. Piercing gray eyes.
“Mama!”
Lena dropped to her knees, catching the four-year-old boy as he launched himself into her arms. She buried her face in his neck, inhaling the scent of baby shampoo and warm milk. Her hands shook as she pulled back to look at him. Leo. Her secret. Her reason for everything.
“Did you bring the bad man down, Mama?” Leo asked, his voice entirely innocent.
“I did, baby,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to his forehead.
Back at the estate, Damian was tearing through the walk-in closet they had shared. He was looking for anything—a note, a clue, a slip in her immaculate facade. He ripped open a cedar chest he had always ignored. It was empty, save for one object resting at the bottom.
A heavy, tarnished silver pocket watch.
May you like
Damian picked it up. His thumb brushed over the engraved crest on the front: a serpent coiled around a dagger. The Navarro cartel crest.
He clicked the watch open. Inside was a tiny, faded photograph. It wasn't of Lena’s mother. It was of a little boy with dark curls and piercing gray eyes. Eyes that looked exactly like Damian’s.
