Chapter 2 - The Ghost Who Watched in Silence
The rain began to turn into a thick, clinging mist that blurred the edges of the cemetery. Between two towering granite mausoleums seventy feet away, a figure stood motionless in a tailored black trench coat.
I didn't see him at first. My head was bowed, my forehead resting against the cold, wet stone of Alessandro’s headstone. But a primal instinct—the kind of hyper-awareness that living among wolves had beaten into my bones—made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I turned my head slowly, wiping rain from my eyes, and stared into the gray fog.
The figure was gone.
“Hello?” I called out, my voice sounding small and ragged against the wind.
No answer. Only the dripping of water from oak branches and the distant rumble of traffic on the perimeter road. I shivered, pulling my black wool coat tighter around my shoulders. I was losing my mind. Grief was playing cruel tricks on me, painting ghosts in the shadows because my heart refused to accept the reality of the empty space in my bed.
I stood up, my knees aching, and gave the headstone one last, lingering touch. “I have to go, Alessandro. But I’ll be back tomorrow.”
As I walked down the gravel path toward the iron cemetery gates, I didn't know that the man in the trench coat had only stepped further back into the darkness of a crypt’s entryway.
From beneath the brim of a dark hat, Alessandro Duca watched her go. His jaw was clenched so tight a muscle ticked in his cheek. A jagged, angry scar ran from behind his left ear down his neck—a souvenir from the blast that was supposed to have killed him.
He wanted to run after her. He wanted to catch her in his arms, bury his face in her hair, and tell her that he was alive, that the explosion had been a trap set by his own uncle to flush out the rats, and that he had faked his own death to protect her.
Instead, he stayed in the shadows.
“She looks thin, boss,” muttered Mateo, his new head of security, stepping out from behind a stone pillar. Mateo kept his voice low, his eyes scanning the perimeter. “If the Chicago syndicate knows she’s still connected to you, staying near her is a death sentence for both of you. Don Luciano is still hunting for loose ends.”
Alessandro’s eyes remained locked on the slender figure of Emma as she reached her battered sedan and climbed inside.
“She shouldn't be here,” Alessandro growled, his voice deep, gravelly, and laced with suppressed fury. “I left explicit instructions with the council. She was supposed to be relocated to London three months ago under a new name.”
“She refused the transfer, sir,” Mateo said cautiously. “She burned the bank drafts, threw out the new passport, and moved back to her old neighborhood. She told your accountant she’d rather die in Boston than live somewhere you weren't.”
Alessandro closed his eyes. A fierce, terrifying wave of love and agony crashed through him. That stubborn, beautiful, impossible woman. He had tried to push her away, tried to create a wall of distance to keep her safe from the blood war tearing through the East Coast underworld, and she had simply sat down in the mud and wept over a fake grave.
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“Start the car,” Alessandro ordered, his voice dropping into the cold, ruthless register that made even his most trusted men step back. “It’s time to clean house.”
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