Chapter 8 Shadows in the Snow
SHADOWS IN THE SNOW
LUCIAN
Manhattan looks almost innocent wrapped up in snow. But I know better. Nothing in this city stays pure for long.
Except her.
It’s Saturday and I’m still with her. Following from a distance.
She’s bundled in a pale blue coat that can’t hide the tired set of her shoulders. She’s been working overtime at the shelter. She works seven days a week. Crazy fucking woman.
It’s the holiday surge. More mouths, more stories, more quiet desperation she takes home with her and tucks into bed beside her.
I want to step out of the shadows and help her, hold her, share the burden—but I can’t. It’s not who I am. I don’t walk in the light.
Instead, I watch her from the shadows, like always.
But everything has changed.
She knows I’m there. And she lets me.
She doesn’t look over her shoulder. She doesn’t run.
It should bother me, the trust with which she’s letting me be her shadow—but it doesn’t. Instead, it makes me feel ten feet tall.
I stay outside her building well into the morning, just watching the shadows move in her apartment.
She can’t sleep. I can’t, either.
I bet if I were in her bed or she were in mine, we’d be fast asleep.
No. We wouldn’t. Not for a while. We’d fuck. Hard. Long.
I’m not a beauty sleep kind of person, but anything less than five hours and I’m cranky. So, I’m cranky attending Gideon’s annual obligatory brotherhood breakfast.
It’s a board meeting with mimosas. Crystal, silver, and snowflake-themed napkin rings. Everything is curated down to the last cranberry garnish. It’s Kendra—not Gideon.
Adrian slides into the seat next to me, dressed like winter himself—charcoal wool coat, silver cufflinks, and dark eyes…sharper than usual.
Gideon was right. Something is up with him. I looked into it. Well, Logan did, since I’ve been too busy being obsessed with a target I don’t intend to kill.
So, we now know what’s up with Adrian.
“Gideon thinks you’re working out a lot,” I tell him as a greeting.
He grunts.
“And I hear that you’re spending a lot of time on the sixty-second floor.”
That’s where the guest quarters are—furnished luxury apartments for clients and executives who want to stay the night close to work. Adrian’s been spending quite a few nights there and not with his wife.
“Ask Logan to stop fucking tracking my ass,” Adrian snaps.
“Ask me to what?” Logan sits across from Adrian.
Adrian shakes his head. “Mind your own fucking business.”
“Always.” Logan grins.
Like hell! Knowing everyone’s business is his business.
Gideon joins us, and it starts stiff, then eases, then becomes like it always is.
Four brothers. Four dysfunctional souls. Always loyal. Together. In step.
I go down the elevator with Logan, who tells me I’m quieter than usual.
“You got something or someone on your mind?”
I shrug.
“What’s the fallback for…not delivering on a contract?”
I shrug again.
“You’re distracted.” He isn’t asking or even criticizing, he’s stating.
I offer, “I’m going to say what Adrian just did. Mind your own fucking business.”
Logan slaps my back as we step out of the elevator. “You let me know if you need someone at your back if the shit hits the fan.”
Some hitters demand half up front, half after—it’s a way to prove the client is serious, and to guarantee you get something for your trouble. I don’t like getting paid until the job’s done, so money hasn’t changed hands yet.
The people who hire me know better than to fuck around. They always pay.
But this is not about the money. It’s about keeping your word. In this business, when you take a contract, you finish it. If you don’t, someone comes after you—your family, your friends, anyone you care about.
That’s the real price of failure.
I have a week, tops, before the vultures will know that I’m fucking this up. Will it kill my career? Yes, because it will kill me…if I were not a Maddox.
My name will protect me. My brothers will be my armor.
Logan and I walk into the cold December morning. He studies me for a moment. “You’ve spent three nights watching a woman instead of killing her. Something’s bleeding through your ice.”
I give him a dry look, not hiding my irritation. “I’m the blade in the dark, not the fool who lays it down for a girl with soft eyes and a martyr complex.”
Logan smirks. “You telling that to me or yourself?”
I think about Logan’s bullshit remarks as I follow Calista to her building the next day, the snow crunching beneath my boots.
I need to end this—one way or the other. I need to let them know that I can’t fulfil the terms of the contract, and pay my way out of it, if I can. Or I need to meet the terms of the contract and stage an accident to end her life.
It won’t be a problem. It’s winter. It’s New York. Way too many people die crossing the street.
I’ve already found four perfect spots—no cameras, no corners, no witnesses—where a hit-and-run would look like bad luck, not murder. One bump, and Calista Ferraro would be just another casualty. Just another ghost swallowed by this city.
She stops at her building and turns as if looking for me.
She raises her hand, waving into the darkness, cutting through the falling snow.
I see her.
She waits for a while and then hangs her head and goes inside her building.
She’s chaos wrapped in quiet resolve. A forest fire pretending to be a candle.
I’m not her knight. I’m not her miracle. I’m the man sent to end her story, not save it.
I should walk away.
Instead, I stand there, outside the place where she lives, longer than I should, with my heart pacing like it’s got something to say.
Something I’m not ready to hear.