Chapter 22 Shelby #2
Silence settles over the room like a shroud.
I think of her face when she first told me about Cesare.
The way her voice trembled when she described his cold stare, the emptiness behind his eyes, the wrongness she sensed in him.
She knew something was off. She trusted her instincts enough to run, to come to me in the middle of the night and ask for my help.
She just didn’t know how deep the rot went.
None of us did.
Dave breaks the silence first. His voice is careful, measured, the tone he uses when he’s about to say something he knows I won’t want to hear. “Shelby, I need to ask you something.”
I meet his eyes. “Ask.”
“Can we really trust Serena?”
The question lands like a grenade in the middle of the room.
“She’s been helping us gather evidence, hasn’t she?” Tommy steps up before I can respond. “For fuck’s sake, brother. Shelby’s wife isn’t the enemy here.”
I shoot my twin a grateful look.
“I’m not suggesting she’s the enemy,” Dave says, sincere, holding up a hand.
“But Giovanni is her father. Blood is blood. She might be building castles in clouds, trying to justify his actions. Now that we’ve got undeniable proof of what he’s really done, how he’s been using people, using her.
..” He trails off, leaving the implication hanging in the air between us.
“Serena chose me over blood loyalty when she asked me to help her escape the arranged marriage.” My voice stays steady despite the turmoil churning in my gut.
“She’s been digging through her family’s records, risking everything to expose the truth.
She’s not going to flip because the truth is uglier than she expected. ”
“You’re certain?”
“Absolutely.”
Dave studies me for a long moment. I hold his gaze, letting him see the conviction there. Whatever doubts might flicker at the edges of my mind, I refuse to give them purchase. Serena is not her father. She proved it when she chose to fight rather than submit.
Whatever he sees in my face must satisfy him, because he finally nods.
“All right. We need to bring her up to speed on what Nikolai found. Coordinate our next moves.” He stands, reaching for his jacket. “Let’s go.”
The four of us take elevator H down to the parking garage.
Our footsteps echo against the concrete as we cross to Dave’s armored SUV.
Tommy slides behind the wheel while Nikolai claims the passenger seat.
I settle into the back beside Dave, watching the Seaport District blur past as we head toward my penthouse.
Traffic crawls through the Financial District. Construction on Summer Street forces us onto a detour, adding a few minutes to the drive. I use the time to flip through Nikolai’s folder again, studying the evidence against Giovanni with fresh eyes.
The pieces fit together with sickening precision. Every shell company, every falsified manifest, every property deed leads back to the same source. Giovanni DiLorenzo has been running a trafficking operation under the Syndicate’s nose for years.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I pull it out, and my heart flutters when I read Serena’s name on the message notification. Maybe she wants to know when I’ll be home.
I unlock the screen, and three lines of text jump at me like fucking thieves in the dark.
I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry.
By the time you read this, I’ll be gone.
Please don’t try to find me.
I read the words once.
Twice.
Three times.
They refuse to make sense.
Twelve hours ago, we lay tangled together in paradise, planning our wedding and a future together. She told me she was falling in love. She said yes when I asked her to marry me again. She said she’d never leave.
And now this?
“Shelby?” Dave’s voice cuts through the fog. “What’s wrong?”
I hand him the phone without a word. My hand doesn’t tremble. I won’t let it.
He reads the message. His expression shifts from curiosity to concern to something harder, more guarded. When he looks up, his eyes hold a question I can’t answer.
Tommy glances in the rearview mirror. “What’s going on?”
“Serena.” Dave’s voice is flat. “She left.”
The SUV falls silent.
I stare out the window at the city streaming past. The same places I’ve driven by a thousand times, looking exactly as they did this morning. Yet everything has changed.
Maybe she got tired of living in the darkness. Maybe marrying a monster isn’t so appealing under the harsh light of reality. Or maybe blood is thicker than anything we were planning to build together.
Or maybe I never knew her at all.
The doubt Dave planted earlier spreads through my chest like slow poison.
I think of her whiskey eyes, her fierce intelligence, the way she looked at me like I was worth something.
Was any of it real? Or was I just another piece on her father’s chessboard, moved into position for a game I never understood?
Please don’t try to find me.
The words burn behind my eyes.
Tommy catches my gaze in the mirror. I read his question all over his face: What are you going to do?
I don’t have an answer.
My wife dumped me via text message. Either everything I thought we had was a carefully constructed lie. Or something is very, very wrong.
Right now, I can’t tell which possibility terrifies me more.
But the happiness I carried with me from Brazil? The certainty that I’d finally found something worth fighting for?
That’s already gone.