Chapter 1 - ROW TWO
Blood on the snow was a familiar sight to a man like Roman. No ambush, no bullet, no betrayal in the back rooms of Chicago should have been able to surprise him anymore.
Nothing, however, had prepared him for row 2 of a commercial flight on Christmas Eve.
He boarded the plane furious. His private jet had been grounded by the storm, one of his lieutenants was bleeding out in a Colorado hospital, and a retaliatory hit was waiting for his authorization.
Then he looked across the aisle and saw his ex-wife.
Norah.
The woman who had vanished from his life 12 months earlier.
And in her arms were 2 identical infants.
The storm had hit New York like a backhand. Whiteout conditions buried the airport, freezing rain coated the runways, and a wind chill cut through Roman’s cashmere overcoat as though it were wet paper.
He hated snow.
Snow slowed everything down.
He stood before the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows of JFK’s Terminal 4, watching a baggage cart spin its tires helplessly on the ice. A paper cup of black coffee cooled in his right hand. His jaw was clenched hard enough to hurt.
“Tell me again.”
He did not look behind him.
He did not need to.
He could hear Carlo shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.
“The FAA grounded everything under 50,000 pounds, boss. Private aviation is completely locked down. The deicing trucks can’t even get to the hangar. They’re telling us tomorrow afternoon. Earliest.”
Roman crushed the paper cup.
Warm coffee spilled across his knuckles.
He did not react.
He dropped the mangled cardboard into a trash can and wiped his hand on a monogrammed handkerchief.
Tomorrow afternoon was unacceptable.
By then, the Irish crew moving against his Denver territory could have secured the shipping routes. One of Roman’s lieutenants was already in a Colorado hospital after being shot. If Roman did not reach Denver before midnight and authorize retaliation, the family would look weak.
In his world, weakness was the only unforgivable sin.
“Get me on a commercial flight.”
Carlo nearly choked.
“Commercial? Boss, it’s Christmas Eve. The terminals are a zoo. We have a federal tail on us, and half the flights are canceled anyway. You want to walk through TSA?”
Roman finally turned.
His dark eyes contained nothing resembling holiday cheer.
“I want to be in Denver before the clock strikes 12. I don’t care if you have to buy the airline. I don’t care if I have to sit in the cargo hold with the dogs. Put me on a plane.”
20 minutes later, Roman was walking down the jet bridge for Flight 409 to Denver.
He had paid $5,000 in cash to a frantic businessman in the boarding area for his first-class ticket. The man had taken 1 look at Roman’s tailored suit, the scars across his knuckles, and the silent, imposing figures of Carlo and 2 other men standing behind him and accepted the money without argument.
Roman left his men behind.
They would fly the next day.
He had to go alone.
The jet bridge smelled of wet wool, stale pretzel salt, and aviation fuel. Roman ducked slightly as he stepped through the aircraft door.
He hated every part of it.
His life was normally insulated by wealth and fear. He did not stand in lines. He did not share armrests. He controlled his surroundings with a ruthless, suffocating precision.
Now he was trapped inside a metal tube at the mercy of a tired pilot and a winter storm.
Row 2.
Seat A.
Window.
Roman shoved his leather duffel into the overhead bin and slammed it closed harder than necessary.
The flight attendant near the front of the cabin startled. Her rehearsed holiday smile faltered when she looked at him.
Roman ignored her.
He sat, unbuttoned his suit jacket, and braced his knees against the seat in front of him.
He needed a drink.
He needed a cigarette.
He needed to put a bullet into the man who had shot his lieutenant.
“Excuse me.”
The voice came from across the aisle.
Soft.
Slightly breathless.
Roman kept his eyes closed. He had no interest in talking to a corporate executive or wealthy holiday traveler.
“I’m sorry. I just need to get past. Thank you.”
The cadence of the voice reached him before the meaning did.
The small nervous hesitation at the end.
Roman’s eyes opened.
Blood roared through his ears like a freight train inside a tunnel.
He turned his head slowly, as though some part of his body understood the shock before his mind did.
Across the narrow aisle, in row 2, seats C and D, a woman struggled to settle herself.
A cheap-looking diaper bag hung heavily from 1 shoulder. Her chestnut curls, once familiar enough for Roman to recognize by touch, were twisted into a messy knot. An oversized gray sweater hung loosely from her frame, worn at the cuffs.
Norah.
His wife.
His ex-wife.
The woman who had walked out of their penthouse 12 months earlier while Roman dealt with a police raid at the docks.
She left no note.
No forwarding address.
No trace.
She simply disappeared.
Roman spent nearly $500,000 trying to find her. He tore through Chicago and New York. He questioned friends. He interrogated people who might have known something. He burned relationships and threatened men who swore they had never seen her.
Nothing.
Now she was standing across the aisle from him on a commercial flight on Christmas Eve.
Roman’s hands closed around the armrests until his knuckles turned white.
The rage that had simmered inside him all day surged toward violence.
He opened his mouth, ready to demand answers.
Then Norah turned.
A baby was strapped to her chest in a gray fabric carrier.
Small.
Red-faced.
Sleeping against the frantic pounding of her heart.
Roman stopped.
Before he could comprehend the infant against her body, Norah bent toward a portable car seat beside her and lifted a second baby wrapped in a yellow knitted blanket.
Identical features.
Another infant.
Twins.
Roman stopped breathing.
The boarding announcements, engine noise, passengers, and flight attendants seemed to disappear.
He looked at Norah.
Then at the 2 children.
The calculation took less than a second.
12 months since she disappeared.
The babies could not have been older than 3 months.
Norah settled the second child onto her lap and exhaled raggedly. She wiped perspiration from her forehead and finally looked across the aisle.
Her eyes met Roman’s.
Every trace of color vanished from her face.
Her hazel eyes widened with raw terror.
Her mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
She pulled the child on her lap closer.
Instinctive.
Protective.
Roman sat there like a ghost that had materialized from the past.
His anger disappeared.
Something colder replaced it.
She had been pregnant when she left.
Pregnant with his children.
For a long, agonizing minute, neither moved.
Only 2 feet of carpeted aisle separated them.
Norah trembled visibly. The carrier against her chest shook with the movement. Her knuckles whitened around the yellow blanket covering the second twin.
She looked like an animal calculating the distance to the nearest exit.
But there was nowhere to go.
Passengers continued boarding around them.
“Sir, are you in 2B?”
A large man in a garish Christmas sweater stood beside Roman, holding a boarding pass and looking impatiently toward the empty seat.
Roman did not look away from Norah.
“No.”
The man frowned.
“But you aren’t sitting there either.”
“Excuse me?”
“My ticket clearly says—”
Roman finally looked at him.
There was no anger in the expression.
Only the detached look of a man accustomed to deciding whether other people continued breathing.
“I suggest you find a seat in the back.”
Roman reached inside his jacket, removed a thick money clip, peeled away 10 $100 bills, and pressed them against the man’s chest.
“Merry Christmas. Walk away.”
The man looked at the cash.
Then at Roman.
He swallowed and disappeared toward coach.
Roman stood.
Norah immediately pressed herself against the window.
“Don’t.”
Her voice cracked.
“Roman, please don’t make a scene.”
Roman crossed the aisle.
He unbuckled the empty car seat occupying the aisle seat beside her, moved it across to his row, and sat down in 2C.
The seat barely contained him.
His broad shoulders intruded into her space. The familiar scent of cedar, cold air, and the metallic trace of gunpowder he never seemed able to wash away surrounded her.
“Look at me.”
Norah closed her eyes and shook her head.
“Leave us alone. I’m begging you. I don’t have anything you want.”
“Look at me, Norah.”
She opened her eyes.
They were wet.
Exhaustion had sharpened her face. Dark shadows sat heavily beneath her eyes. The luxury Roman once wrapped around her had disappeared, replaced by the visibly worn life of a single mother hiding from him.
Roman lowered his gaze toward the baby in the carrier.
A girl.
A thin wisp of dark hair matched his own.
Then he looked toward the boy sleeping in Norah’s lap.
His son.
Sleeping while his father looked at him for the first time.
“Mine.”
It was not a question.
Norah’s jaw tightened.
“Mine.”
“Don’t play word games with me right now.”
Roman leaned closer, keeping his voice low enough that only she could hear him.
“You left exactly 1 year ago. These children are what, 3 months old? You were pregnant. You were carrying my children, and you packed a bag in the middle of the night and disappeared.”
“I had to.”
A tear escaped.
Norah wiped it away angrily.
“You know why I had to.”
Roman’s jaw twitched.
“I know I tore Chicago and New York apart looking for you. I know I put men in the hospital interrogating them about where you went. And I know I am looking at my flesh and blood while you act like I’m a monster.”
“You are a monster, Roman.”
The truth remained between them like a blade.
Roman did not flinch.
He knew what he was.
He had never lied to her about the family business.
But knowing it and hearing the word from her while she held their children as though he might consume them were different things.
“I never hurt you.”
“You brought the blood into our home.”
Her voice shook, but her conviction did not.
“The night I left. Do you remember it? Do you even remember whose blood you were washing off your hands in the kitchen sink while I was in the bathroom staring at a positive pregnancy test?”
Roman remembered.
A lower-level enforcer had stolen from the pension fund.
The punishment had become messy.
May you like
And for the first time in his life, Roman understood that the blood he had washed from his hands that night had cost him far more than money.
It had cost him an entire year with his children.
