Chapter 6 - The Cleansing of the Syndicate
The night did not end in the penthouse.
By three o'clock in the morning, the Duca Tower had become the command center for a total, ruthless purge of the Chicago underworld.
Roman did not execute Mateo or Vincent in the penthouse. That would have been too quick, too clean for the men who had stolen six years of his family's life. He had them dragged down to the soundproof interrogation suites beneath the city docks, where the family's oldest enforcers went to work dissecting six years of financial treason.
Inside the penthouse, the air was quiet once more.
A team of discreet cleaners had swept away the shattered glass, replaced the rug, and wiped down the marble surfaces.
I stood by the floor-to-ceiling glass wall, looking out at the rain falling over Lake Michigan. I was wearing one of Roman’s large black silk robes, tied tightly at my waist. My wet clothes were being laundered downstairs.
Behind me, the guest suite door opened softly.
Roman stepped into the living room. He had showered and changed into a clean dark shirt and trousers. His hair was damp, and the terrifying rage that had filled his face hours ago had been replaced by a deep, hollow exhaustion.
He stopped three feet behind me. He didn't touch me. He stood there, his heavy presence warming the cold air around me.
"The children are asleep," Roman said softly. "Mara took the middle of the bed. Luca insists on sleeping near the door. Sophia hid a silver fork under her pillow."
A soft, tearful chuckle escaped my lips. "She gets that from me. I taught her never to go to sleep without a weapon nearby."
Roman was silent for a long moment. The sound of his heavy, rhythmic breathing filled the space between us.
"Vincent confessed," Roman said quietly. "He and Mateo forged the wire transfers using a private server they bought from a rogue intelligence firm in Berlin. They paid off two of your father's former associates to vouch for the fake hotel meetings in Milwaukee."
I closed my eyes, a single tear slipping down my cheek. Six years of carrying the weight of being branded a traitor, six years of wondering if I was crazy, six years of hating myself for still loving the man who banished me—all of it collapsed into a quiet, painful wave of relief.
"I knew," I whispered. "I knew I wasn't crazy."
Roman stepped closer. His large, warm hands reached out, gently resting on my shoulders. His fingers dug into the soft fabric of the robe, pulling me back until my spine was pressed firmly against his broad, muscular chest.
"I knelt before them, Elena," Roman rasped, his voice breaking with a raw, agonizing emotion I had never heard from him before. "I knelt beside our children on the floor... and I realized that every single night I spent sitting in this room alone, hating you... you were out there, carrying my blood, fighting for their survival."
He turned me around in his arms until I was facing him.
The powerful, terrifying lord of Chicago was weeping. Silent, heavy tears ran down his rugged cheeks, shining in the dim light of the city below.
"I can never fix what I broke, Elena," Roman whispered, taking my face in his trembling hands, his thumbs wiping away my tears. "I can give you all the money in the world, I can execute every man who touched that lie, I can build a kingdom for our children... but I can never give you back those six years."
I looked into his dark eyes, seeing the broken, bleeding heart of the man I had loved since I was twenty-two years old.
"You can't give them back, Roman," I said softly, my hands coming up to cover his where they held my face. "But you can make sure the next sixty years belong to us."
May you like
Roman gasped, leaning down and pressing his forehead against mine, his arms wrapping tightly around my waist, lifting me off my feet, holding me as if he would never let me go again.
"They belong to us," Roman swore against my lips. "I swear to you on my blood, on my life, on my soul—nobody will ever stand between us again."
