Chapter 2 - The Man She Feared
Roman stopped breathing.
The boarding announcements, engine noise, passengers, and flight attendants seemed to disappear.
He looked at Norah.
Then at the 2 children.
The calculation took less than a second.
12 months since she disappeared.
The babies could not have been older than 3 months.
Norah settled the second child onto her lap and exhaled raggedly. She wiped perspiration from her forehead and finally looked across the aisle.
Her eyes met Roman’s.
Every trace of color vanished from her face.
Her hazel eyes widened with raw terror.
Her mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
She pulled the child on her lap closer.
Instinctive.
Protective.
Roman sat there like a ghost that had materialized from the past.
His anger disappeared.
Something colder replaced it.
She had been pregnant when she left.
Pregnant with his children.
For a long, agonizing minute, neither moved.
Only 2 feet of carpeted aisle separated them.
Norah trembled visibly. The carrier against her chest shook with the movement. Her knuckles whitened around the yellow blanket covering the second twin.
She looked like an animal calculating the distance to the nearest exit.
But there was nowhere to go.
Passengers continued boarding around them.
“Sir, are you in 2B?”
A large man in a garish Christmas sweater stood beside Roman, holding a boarding pass and looking impatiently toward the empty seat.
Roman did not look away from Norah.
“No.”
The man frowned.
“But you aren’t sitting there either.”
“Excuse me?”
“My ticket clearly says—”
Roman finally looked at him.
There was no anger in the expression.
Only the detached look of a man accustomed to deciding whether other people continued breathing.
“I suggest you find a seat in the back.”
Roman reached inside his jacket, removed a thick money clip, peeled away 10 $100 bills, and pressed them against the man’s chest.
“Merry Christmas. Walk away.”
The man looked at the cash.
Then at Roman.
He swallowed and disappeared toward coach.
Roman stood.
Norah immediately pressed herself against the window.
“Don’t.”
Her voice cracked.
“Roman, please don’t make a scene.”
Roman crossed the aisle.
He unbuckled the empty car seat occupying the aisle seat beside her, moved it across to his row, and sat down in 2C.
The seat barely contained him.
His broad shoulders intruded into her space. The familiar scent of cedar, cold air, and the metallic trace of gunpowder he never seemed able to wash away surrounded her.
“Look at me.”
Norah closed her eyes and shook her head.
“Leave us alone. I’m begging you. I don’t have anything you want.”
“Look at me, Nora.”
She opened her eyes.
They were wet.
Exhaustion had sharpened her face. Dark shadows sat heavily beneath her eyes. The luxury Roman once wrapped around her had disappeared, replaced by the visibly worn life of a single mother hiding from him.
Roman lowered his gaze toward the baby in the carrier.
A girl.
A thin wisp of dark hair matched his own.
Then he looked toward the boy sleeping in Norah’s lap.
His son.
Sleeping while his father looked at him for the first time.
“Mine.”
It was not a question.
Norah’s jaw tightened.
“Mine.”
“Don’t play word games with me right now.”
Roman leaned closer, keeping his voice low enough that only she could hear him.
“You left exactly 1 year ago. These children are what, 3 months old? You were pregnant. You were carrying my children, and you packed a bag in the middle of the night and disappeared.”
“I had to.”
A tear escaped.
Norah wiped it away angrily.
“You know why I had to.”
Roman’s jaw twitched.
“I know I tore Chicago and New York apart looking for you. I know I put men in the hospital interrogating them about where you went. And I know I am looking at my flesh and blood while you act like I’m a monster.”
“You are a monster, Roman.”
The truth remained between them like a blade.
Roman did not flinch.
He knew what he was.
He had never lied to her about the family business.
But knowing it and hearing the word from her while she held their children as though he might consume them were different things.
“I never hurt you.”
“You brought the blood into our home.”
Her voice shook, but her conviction did not.
“The night I left. Do you remember it? Do you even remember whose blood you were washing off your hands in the kitchen sink while I was in the bathroom staring at a positive pregnancy test?”
Roman remembered.
A lower-level enforcer had stolen from the pension fund.
The punishment had become messy.
Roman remembered the sound before he remembered the man's face. The kitchen faucet had been running. Thomas Pell had begged him to look at the withdrawal orders, and Roman had hit him instead. Twice, hard enough that Thomas went down beside the refrigerator. Roman had called Carlo to collect him and had washed the blood from his hands while Norah stood beyond the kitchen door. Thomas was alive when Carlo took him away. That fact had been Roman's entire defense ever since. Hearing himself remember it made him sick.
"I remember," he said.
"Then don't tell me you never hurt me. You made me watch what you could do to someone who asked a question. I took a pregnancy test while you washed his blood down our sink." Norah adjusted the boy's blanket without taking her eyes off Roman. "I couldn't tell whether our children would grow up frightened of you or taught to be you. Neither was a life I could give them."
A flight attendant approached with a calm, practical expression and explained that the approved infant car seat needed to be installed at a window, not left across the aisle. Roman stood and made room. Norah secured the boy in the restraint by the window while keeping the girl in her arms, following the attendant's instructions. For several minutes they were simply two exhausted adults arranging straps and blankets. Roman noticed the girl's mitten had come loose and offered it back without touching her. Norah accepted the mitten, not his hand.
"Their names?" he asked when the attendant left.
"You'll earn the right to hear them when you can listen without making threats."
His phone vibrated. Carlo had sent a picture taken through the terminal glass: a man in a navy coat, wearing a small silver Christmas-tree pin, standing at the end of the jet bridge. Below it, Carlo had typed: He asked the gate agent whether a woman with two infants had boarded. I did not send him.
May you like
Roman looked at Norah. She was studying the same man through the narrowing gap between passengers. She knew him. Her face told Roman that much before she whispered, "That's why I couldn't stay in New York."
Then the cabin door closed.
