Chapter 12 - Dry Clothes and Whiskey
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An hour later, as the gray light of dawn broke over Massachusetts Bay, the fires at the Charlestown pier warehouse had been extinguished by the harbor fireboats—with Enzo’s port lawyers telling the Fire Marshal and the corrupt precinct captain that an accidental propane tank leak in the garage had set off the vehicles during the storm, after Enzo’s surviving guards had already loaded the bodies of Grigori Volkov and his strike team into weighted steel drums aboard a deep-sea scallop trawler bound for the Georges Bank trench.
Three miles away, in the quiet, tree-lined historic district of Beacon Hill, Enzo’s backup Maybach pulled into the subterranean heated carriage house of his personal nineteenth-century brick townhouse—a fortress completely separate from the harbor compound that not even Rocco had possessed the security codes to enter.
By the time Enzo carried a half-frozen Jade up the private oak staircase to the second-floor master suite, her lips were tinged pale blue from the forty-eight-degree harbor swim and the blood loss in her arm, her teeth chattering so hard she could barely speak.
"I'm f-fine," Jade protested weakly as Enzo kicked the bathroom door shut and turned on the oversized marble walk-in rain shower at full steaming heat. "Just give me a towel and let me read the back of that ledger—"
"If you don't get your core temperature up in the next five minutes, you’re going into cardiac arrhythmia, and I didn't blow up a three-hundred-thousand-dollar truck tonight just to watch you freeze to death on my bathroom floor," Enzo growled, stripping off his soaked waistcoat and ruined white dress shirt, tossing them onto the heated tiles.
He reached for the hem of her wet, bloodstained diner blouse.
Jade’s cold hand caught his wrist automatically, her green eyes wide and guarded as she backed an inch against the marble vanity.
Enzo stopped instantly.
Standing shirtless in the clouds of white steam filling the marble room—his broad chest and lean, muscular torso etched with old silver bullet scars and fresh bruises across his ribs from where she had thrown him onto the diner floor—he didn't force her hand away.
Instead, he looked down into her eyes with a quiet, unshakeable steadiness that disarmed her more completely than any weapon ever could.
"The door doesn't lock from the outside, Anya," Enzo said softly, using her real name like a vow rather than a threat. "Get under the hot water until you stop shaking. There’s a clean wool sweater and sweatpants on the warming rack. I’ll be right on the other side of this door with a glass of scotch and the ledger unopened until you come out."
He stepped back, pulled the heavy frosted-glass door shut, and left her alone in the warm steam.
Jade stood frozen for five seconds, staring at the closed door. Then, with trembling fingers, she peeled off her freezing, harbor-soaked clothes and stepped under the scalding spray of the rain shower.
As the hot water washed the dried blood, diner grease, gun smoke, and Atlantic salt from her skin, she leaned her forehead against the warm marble wall and let her eyes close—realizing that for the first time in eighteen years, someone was standing guard outside a door to keep her safe instead of locking her inside.
Fifteen minutes later, wrapped in one of Enzo’s oversized black cashmere crewneck sweaters that hung halfway down her thighs over soft gray sweatpants, with her damp chestnut hair tumbling loose around her shoulders and the fresh white bandage over her tricep, Jade pushed open the bathroom door.
In the master bedroom, a massive fire was roaring in the marble hearth.
Enzo had changed into dark gray lounge trousers and a black henley shirt, sitting in a leather armchair in front of the fire with two crystal tumblers of amber Macallan and the rusted olive-oil tin sitting untouched on the low oak table between them.
He looked up as she walked barefoot across the thick wool rug and curled her legs underneath her on the leather chesterfield sofa beside the fire.
He handed her one of the tumblers. "Drink half of that."
She took a long swallow. The aged scotch burned a path of liquid fire straight down into her stomach, chasing away the last of the chill.
May you like
Then she reached out and picked up the black leather pocket notebook from the table, flipping past the pages of 2008 financial wire transfers from Don Salvatore Bellini until she reached the final three pages at the very back of the book—the pages Grigori Volkov had mocked her about with his dying breath on the pier.
As Jade translated the tiny, cramped Russian Cyrillic handwriting aloud by the light of the fireplace, the glass of scotch nearly slipped from her hand.
