Chapter 8 - Whispers in the Shadows
The kiss tasted of promise, salvation, and dangerous passion. When Vincent finally broke the kiss, Clara was breathless, her hands clutching his broad shoulders, her face flushed with heat.
“Dr. Bennett,” Vincent said without turning around, his eyes still devouring Clara’s blushing face. “Call Father Thomas. Have him brought to the estate immediately with two witnesses.”
“Tonight, Vincent?” Dr. Bennett asked, stunned. “It’s two o'clock in the morning on Christmas Day!”
“I said tonight,” Vincent replied coldly. “Before the sun rises, Clara Ellis will legally be Clara Hale. I want the marriage certificate filed, notarized, and sealed in our vaults before the syndicate council convenes tomorrow morning.”
As Dr. Bennett rushed out to fulfill the order, Vincent turned to Julian, who was standing guard near the doorway.
“Julian. Status on the Voss family?”
Julian stepped forward, checking an encrypted tablet. “The clean-up at the main manor is nearly finished. Marcus Voss is secure in room zero, conscious and stable. But Boss... we have a complication.”
Vincent’s jaw tightened. The romantic warmth vanished, replaced instantly by the calculating mind of the Don. “Speak.”
“Rosalind Voss,” Julian said grimly. “The transport van escorting her to the train depot was ambushed on Interstate 94 three miles outside the city limits.”
Clara gasped, instinctively stepping closer to Vincent.
Vincent’s eyes narrowed into slits of ice. “Ambushed by whom? The Vosses have no strike teams left in Illinois.”
“It wasn't the Vosses, sir,” Julian answered, lowering his voice. “The forensics team recovered spent casing rounds stamped with the double-headed eagle. It was the Petrov Bratva.”
Eleanor sat up straighter in bed, her expression darkening. “Viktor Petrov. I should have known that Russian snake was slithering in the grass.”
Vincent cursed under his breath. Viktor Petrov was the ruthless head of the Russian mafia in New York, a brutal oligarch who had long coveted the Chicago ports controlled by the Hale Syndicate.
“Rosalind didn't just conspire with her brother,” Vincent deduced, his voice dropping into a deadly register. “She was hedging her bets. She made a side deal with Petrov in case her brother failed to assassinate my mother.”
“Exactly,” Julian agreed. “If Petrov has Rosalind, he has the access codes to the northern shipping manifests she stole from your study. And worse... Rosalind knows every vulnerability in our supply chain.”
Vincent turned his gaze toward Clara, who stood quietly beside the bed, looking down at the magnificent diamond ring on her hand. Her knuckles were white with tension.
He walked over to her, gently cupping her chin and lifting her face to meet his.
“Are you afraid, Clara?” he asked softly.
Clara looked into his dark eyes. She thought about the cellar, the freezing cold, the smell of gunpowder, and the terrifying mercenaries who had stormed the stairs. She thought about how Vincent had shielded her with his own body.
“I was afraid when I was down in that cellar alone,” Clara whispered truthfully. “I was afraid when those men pointed their guns at Toby. But right now, standing next to you... I am not afraid of anything.”
A look of fierce pride flashed across Vincent’s face.
“Good,” Vincent said, leaning down to press a soft kiss to her forehead. “Because tomorrow, Clara, you step out of the shadows. Tomorrow, Chicago learns who owns my heart—and who will rule this city by my side.”
At that moment, the double doors opened once more. Father Thomas, the elderly syndicate chaplain who had served the Hale family for forty years, walked into the room wearing his black cassock, carrying a worn leather Bible and the syndicate marriage registry.
“Vincent,” the old priest said, his eyes darting between the battered matriarch, the bloodstains on Vincent’s cuffs, and the beautiful maid wearing the ancestral blue diamond. “I was told there is a union that cannot wait for dawn.”
Vincent took Clara’s hand, lacing his fingers through hers.
May you like
“Begin the ceremony, Father,” Vincent commanded. “Make her mine.”
***