Chapter 5
SAMUEL
Five months. One hundred and fifty-three days since a pale-haired angel stepped into an elevator, smiled at me over her shoulder, and vanished.
I shuffle the deck and let the cards whisper between my fingers. The mahogany table under my forearms is new. Expensive. Built for showing off, not for playing.
Edgar Silvani's poker room occupies the west wing of a brownstone that belongs to a dead man.
Crown molding lines the ceiling in craftsmanship Edgar couldn't commission with all the money he married into. The original hardwood floors are a deep honey oak, worn in places by decades of real living, and the contrast between those floors and the gaudy crystal decanters lining a sidebar cabinet makes my back teeth grind together. Gold-framed mirrors hang where photographs once took up space. I can see the faded outlines on the wallpaper left behind after frames were removed. The man who built this home had taste. Edgar, on the other hand, wasn’t gifted with an eye for elegance.
The whole mansion reeks of cigar smoke, the bitterness ground into the curtains and the upholstery.
Underneath all of it, is a floral perfume so cloying it coats the back of my throat every time I inhale.
It cuts through the cologne and sweat of twenty-plus guests packed in for Edgar's first annual poker game.
I didn't choose this location. Edgar insisted, and since I need him to sign a document that prevents a war, you give a little. I'd rather be on my own territory, drinking my own whiskey in silence.
But the peace agreement sitting in the briefcase at my feet is more important than my comfort.
Giving up my father’s support cost me a little in the relationship department.
Once I cut ties with the Payne family, some people sided with him.
Edgar is one of those men. He values older relationships rather than building new ones.
I get it. But I still need to bridge the gap I formed when I told my father I didn’t want his New York kingdom.
I deal the next round and glance across the table at the three men sharing this overdecorated room with me.
Oliver Stone leans back in his chair, one ankle crossed over his knee, charcoal eyes scanning his cards with a boredom that borders on disrespectful.
He’s my oldest friend. My brother in every way that counts except blood.
He got married eight months ago and the sharp edges I've known for thirty years have started to round.
He’s a fucking softy through and through for that woman.
Bastian sits to Oliver's right, rotating a poker chip between his fingers with lazy precision.
Those same hands have snapped necks, and most of the people in here know it.
His jacket hangs open. His tie is loosened.
A gold wedding band catches the light every time the chip spins.
That ring is newer than Oliver's, and Bastian touches it more often than he realizes.
Valerian fills the chair across from me, his scarred frame dominating the space around him.
Burns cover over ninety percent of his body in various stages of healed tissue, and the cigar between his lips sends a thin ribbon of smoke curling past the ruined side of his jaw.
He and Bella just had their first baby. His wife and daughter are at home waiting for him.
I understand the pull of that distance in the way he checks his phone between hands.
I wouldn’t say it to his face, but he’s a fucking teddy bear hiding inside a body that terrifies most people on sight.
All three of them are married. All three softened at the places where they used to be granite.
I watch the way Bastian absentmindedly turns that ring, the way Oliver's jaw unclenches when his phone buzzes with a text from home, the way Valerian smiles at his screen with a tenderness that would terrify anyone who only knows him by reputation.
These men used to sit at tables like this with nothing waiting for them on the other side of the night.
Now they all have someone to go home to.
I don't envy them.
I keep telling myself that.
"You going to stare at your cards or play them?" Oliver lifts his tumbler without looking up.
I toss two chips into the center. "Raise."
"Bold for a man who's been distracted all evening." Bastian's grin pulls wide, all teeth and diabolical amusement.
"I'm focused."
"You're somewhere else entirely, brother." Valerian draws on his cigar and exhales through his nose. Smoke wraps around his head and the low light from the chandelier overhead turns the haze amber. "You've been somewhere else for months."
I don't respond. He's not wrong about that either.
Pale blonde hair. So light it glowed under the firelight of that penthouse suite.
Blue eyes with a silver sheen that turned translucent when she looked up at me.
Every time I close my eyes, all I see is the black raven inked across her left shoulder.
I mentally trace the edges of its wings as I try to drift off to sleep.
And in my dreams she whispers to me ‘A dream is a wish from the heart’.
Falling feathers drift in a hazy blur and then I wake.
Every night for the past five months, it's the same damn dream. The hole in my heart grows a fraction larger each time I wake up and she’s not at my side.
But that’s not all. I can still smell her. The taste of her on my lips has not faded. The warmth of her skin is a ghost of a memory that chases into the sunlight.
Cinder promised she would come back. Every fucking day I curse myself for letting her walk away. I should have asked for her full name. At least that way I could have hunted her down.
Searched for her, I correct myself. Searched for her and then begged her to be mine.
"The contract." I redirect. "Edgar is the last signature we need. Without him, the peace agreement is incomplete and war breaks out by the end of the year. It will be Payne against Payne. Silvani against Stone. You get the idea. We will all be at each other’s throats."
Oliver sets his cards face down. "We are aware. None of us want a war with the fucker or your father."
"Then let's get him to sign and get the hell out of this place." Bastian drops three chips and leans forward. "I don't trust a soul in here."
Neither do I. The stiff leather chairs are new and unyielding against my back.
The whiskey Edgar left for us is expensive and showy, all burn and no depth.
Every surface in this poker room is staged for impression.
The Ashford warmth this place used to hold is gone, just like the man behind the name.
Vincent Ashford built this mansion. He was a good man and easy to do business with, but I didn’t socialize with him on a personal level.
Edgar married Ashford's widow sometime after the funeral and moved himself in like the ink on the death certificate was an invitation.
I didn't pay attention to the details at the time.
Ashford's death didn't involve my territory, and the nuptials that followed were none of my concern. What I know of Edgar is secondhand. He’s somewhat respected across Chicago. He wants to be as powerful as Vincent was in real estate. But no one can be Vincent. He was friends with half the city, from the doormen to the politicians. Had a daughter who kept out of the public eye, smart enough to stay behind the curtain while her father worked the stage, so I’m told.
A good man by most accounts, which in our world means he was either genuinely decent or very good at hiding his dirt.
Edgar is neither. Edgar wears another man's legacy like a stolen coat and expects compliments on the fit.
"How much do you think he'll want?" Oliver tips his chin toward the briefcase.
"He doesn't want money. He wants leverage." I pick up my tumbler and the crystal is cold in my grip. I take a slow pull. The whiskey is a waste of good glass. "He wants to feel like he's above the agreement. Like signing it is a favor to us instead of the only move that keeps him breathing."
"So we stroke his ego for thirty minutes, get the signature, and leave." Bastian shrugs a heavy shoulder.
I can feel my scowl deepen when I move my eyes to my friend. "If it were that simple, we'd have been done two months ago."
Valerian stubs his cigar in the crystal ashtray at his elbow. "Edgar Silvani is a man who believes he's smarter than everyone in the room. That makes him predictable and dangerous in equal measure. He'll stall. He'll posture. He'll want concessions none of us should give."
"And if he doesn't sign?" Bastian's grin fades. The humor leaves his expression and what replaces it is flat professionalism. I know that look. He's already calculating how many bodies a war would cost.
"Then we deal with the consequences." I drain the rest of my whiskey. The burn doesn't touch the cold sitting in the center of my chest.
Maybe I should take Oliver up on his offer to use the villa in Italy. Get out of Chicago for a month. Clear the mental fog. Find my footing in a life that's started to feel like a room I'm pacing in circles.
Or maybe I should find her.
The thought surfaces the way it always does, quiet and insistent. I know her first name. I know she runs a business. I know she has a friend named Lavender who works at the Gilded Key Society. I have resources that could locate her in under forty-eight hours.
This isn’t the first time I’ve entertained the idea. I just don’t want to be the stalker type.
She chose to leave. And a man who forces himself into a woman's life after she's walked away is no man at all.
Doesn't stop me from wanting to.
That pale hair against my pillowcase. The warmth of her body curled into mine, so small she fit inside the circle of my arms with room to spare.
The feel of her lips when she kissed my cheek in the shower hasn’t faded from my memory.
And the way she said daddy had every wall I've built in forty-three years of survival crack down the center.
Five months. I've gone as far as to start a sourdough starter of all the fucking things. Like baking bread is some new age shit that will heal my broken soul.
But I did it anyway. Turns out the bread is pretty good. I like to work out my frustration on the dough right before I pop it into the oven.
I've paced the perimeter of my compound so many nights the enforcers stopped noting it in their logs.
"I need a refill." I push back from the table and cross the room to the sideboard.
The hardwood groans under my weight in a spot near the doorway.
I pour two fingers from a decanter and carry the glass back to the table.
The cards are where I left them. Bastian has folded.
Oliver is watching me with an expression I recognize from three decades of friendship.
"What?" I drop into my chair.
"When's the last time you slept through a full night?"
I flick his concern away. "I sleep fine."
"Bullshit." Oliver sets his tumbler down. "You look like you haven't had a solid eight hours since spring."
He's not wrong about that either.
I pick up my cards. "Can we focus on why we're here?"
The pocket doors to the poker room swing open and a butler steps through. Mid-fifties, stiff posture, white gloves. He clasps his hands behind his back and addresses the room with practiced neutrality. Every opinion he's ever held is scrubbed clean from his voice.
"Mr. Silvani is here. He'll be with you momentarily."
“And Mrs. Silvani?” Valerian asks.
The butler pauses at the door. “She and her daughters are set to arrive in an hour. Their flight from Paris was delayed.”
With that he excuses himself. The doors close and we’re left to wait again.
Valerian exhales through his nose and settles deeper into his chair. “Good. Without her here, we can get this signed and get out before she returns. My last encounter with her left a sour taste in my mouth.”
“Then let’s get this done quickly.” I could be on a flight to Italy by morning. Sun on my face, a glass of something worth drinking in hand, the sound of water washing away all the heartache.
Maybe I'll find peace in the quiet. Maybe the distance will shake this woman from the marrow of my bones where she's settled in and refused to leave.
Or maybe I'll spend another month pacing a different set of rooms in a different country, running through the memory of pale blue eyes and the scent of warm vanilla until I'm half-mad with it.
Maybe I should just leave. Not Italy. All of it.
Walk away from the territory, the empire, the politics and the blood.
If I can't get this man to sign a piece of paper that benefits his own survival, what am I really doing?
I am so damn tired of fighting with men who can't see reason when it's for their own good.
I set my cards face down on the mahogany. Lean back. The leather is cold and rigid against my spine.
Oliver catches my eye across the table. He's reading me the way he always does, patient and too perceptive for his own damn good. He lifts his glass an inch off the table with a silent question arrowed at me. You good?
I nod once. He accepts it. Because that's what brothers do.
Bastian gathers the deck and starts shuffling for the next hand. The snap of cards fills the silence. Valerian lights a fresh cigar and the flame flickers across the scarred landscape of his hand before he shakes it out.
Beyond the pocket doors, heavy footsteps approach. Edgar.
Fuck me. This man likes to posture.
I straighten in my chair and roll my shoulders once. The briefcase at my feet holds the contract. Five signatures will keep the peace. Four of them are already dry. One more and I can stop carrying this weight and be done with all the worry for a while.
One more, and then what?
I go home to an empty mansion. Heated concrete floors and silence so deep the click of my phone screen bounces off the walls.
I feed my sourdough starter at six in the morning because it's the only living thing in my house that needs me.
I run my territory with the same efficiency I've used for two decades, making money I don't spend, building power that insulates me from everything except the one thing I actually want.
Her.
The footsteps grow louder. Closer.
Truth be told, I'm tired. Period.