Chapter 2 - The Romano Safehouse
The exodus of Manhattan’s elite was swift, silent, and fueled by absolute terror. Nobody lingered for coats. When Matteo Romano gave an order, billionaires obeyed with the frantic urgency of deckhands on a sinking ship.
Within fifteen minutes, the Grand Astoria’s ballroom was empty except for a dozen men in dark suits stationed at every exit.
"Can you walk, Abigail?" Matteo’s voice was remarkably softer than it had been moments before. He held out an arm, offering his forearm rather than his hand—giving me stability without presuming permission to touch me.
"I can walk," I said, though my knees trembled violently as I rose.
Isabella was already at my side, gently wrapping a warm, cashmere wrap around my shoulders. "Please let us take care of you. Just for tonight. Please."
I looked down at the opulent emerald wrap draped over my damp, stained uniform. For seven months, I had been completely alone. When my fiancé, Marcus, abandoned me the day the pregnancy test turned positive—cleaning out our joint checking account of its meager three thousand dollars—I had locked away any expectation of help from anyone.
"I have an apartment in Sunnyside," I whispered. "My shift wasn't supposed to end until midnight. If I lose the agency fee—"
"You will never worry about an agency fee again," Matteo said simply. "Lev, bring the car to the private bay."
The black Maybach glided through the rain-drenched streets of Midtown without hitting a single red light, escorted by two black Suburbans. Inside, the leather was supple, the engine virtually silent. Isabella sat across from me, her eyes never leaving my face.
"We searched every hospital database in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut," Isabella said softly, reaching across to gently clasp my cold fingers. "The clinic where you donated... their records were destroyed in a basement flood six months after my accident. All we had was the first name 'Abigail' and a partial blood donor registry that ended in dead ends."
"I was a freshman at Hunter College," I explained, leaning back against the headrest, exhausted beyond measure. "I saw the emergency alert on the campus board. They said a trauma patient was incompatible with the entire state blood bank. I didn't think twice. I just went."
"You saved my sister when four doctors told me she had twenty minutes left to live," Matteo said from the front passenger seat, turned slightly so his piercing eyes could study me in the ambient neon light of Fifth Avenue. "The Romano family does not forget a debt. Nor do we allow those who protect us to bleed in the dark."
The vehicle didn't take me to Queens. Instead, it swept beneath the iron gates of a private estate tucked along the Hudson River in Riverdale. High stone walls, discreet security cameras, and manicured hemlock hedges sealed the property off from the outside world.
A medical team was already waiting inside the grand foyer.
"Dr. Vance," Matteo instructed an older woman with silver hair and kind, discerning eyes. "Examine her. Thoroughly. Check the baby. If there is a single scratch on either of them, I want to know."
"Right this way, Miss Foster," Dr. Vance said, guiding me toward a suite on the ground floor fitted like a private hospital room.
For the next hour, I endured gentle examinations, fetal monitors, and an ultrasound. When the rhythmic, thumping cadence of my baby’s heartbeat filled the room—thump-thump, thump-thump—the tension coiled in my chest finally snapped. I broke down, tears spilling onto the paper runner of the exam table.
Dr. Vance placed a warm hand on my shoulder. "Your little girl is perfectly healthy, Abigail. The placenta is intact, fluid levels are normal, and her vitals are exceptional. But your blood pressure is dangerously high. You are working yourself to death."
"I have to pay rent," I whispered, wiping my eyes. "Nobody hires a woman seven months pregnant for an office job."
"You're done working," a deep voice said from the doorway.
Matteo stood leaning against the frame, his jacket discarded, the sleeves of his crisp white shirt rolled up to reveal muscular forearms laced with faded scars. He held a glass of ice water in one hand.
"Drink," he ordered softly, walking over to hand me the glass.
I took it, sipping the cold liquid gratefully. "Mr. Romano, I appreciate what you did tonight. I really do. But I don't belong in a house like this. Vanessa Sinclair will ruin me. Her father—"
"Richard Sinclair cannot ruin a stray dog while I am breathing," Matteo interrupted. He pulled up an armchair and sat down beside the exam bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. The domestic posture clashed sharply with the predatory stillness that defined him. "Tell me about your mother, Abigail."
The sudden change in topic knocked the breath from my lungs. "My mother? Why?"
"When Richard Sinclair heard your name tonight, he looked like a man who had seen his executioner," Matteo said, his gaze drilling into mine. "He muttered her name before my men cleared the floor. Evelyn Foster. Did your mother know him?"
My heart gave an erratic jump. I reached up, my thumb tracing the worn contours of the silver locket beneath my collar. "My mother died of cancer when I was twelve. She never talked about her family. She grew up in upstate New York, but she worked as a chemist in the city during her twenties. She told me she walked away from that life because... because powerful people didn't care who they destroyed to stay rich."
"Did she ever mention Sinclair Pharmaceuticals?" Matteo asked.
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"No," I replied truthfully. "She only left me this locket and a locked safety deposit box at an old bank in Lower Manhattan. She told me never to open it unless I was starving, or unless someone came looking for her."
Matteo leaned back, a dark, calculating smile touching the edges of his lips. "It seems, Abigail, that fate has brought you back to the board just as the game is beginning. Sleep tonight. Tomorrow, we find out what Richard Sinclair is so terrified of."
