Chapter 6 - A Glimpse of Daylight
By the fourth week, the snow had come.
It fell over Chicago in heavy, wet blankets, burying the gray concrete of Lake Shore Drive under six inches of pristine white. From the third-floor terrace, the city looked silent, almost innocent, like a miniature village under a glass dome.
Luca had developed a fever on Tuesday—a routine ear infection—and he had spent three days refusing to take his antibiotic syrup from anyone except me.
"It tastes like old cherries," he grumbled, sitting on the counter in the massive marble kitchen while I measured five milliliters into a plastic dropper.
"It tastes like getting better," I told him, tapping his nose with the tip of the syringe. "Open up, dinosaur boy."
He made a dramatic face of absolute revulsion, swallowed the pink sludge, and immediately wiped his mouth on my apron. I had taken to wearing an apron again—not the cheap black server’s nylon, but a thick, gray linen one Mrs. Gable had given me. It made me feel useful. It kept my hands from shaking when I thought about what lay outside the gates.
"Can we go outside?" Luca asked, pointing through the bay windows toward the lawn. "The snow is wet enough to make a fort. Papa said wet snow is the best because the blocks don't crumble."
"Papa is busy today, sweetheart," I said, glancing toward the courtyard where two black Suburbans were idling, their tailpipes puffing white steam into the freezing morning air.
"He's not busy," a voice said from the doorway.
Damian stood there, wearing a heavy charcoal wool overcoat, leather driving gloves, and a gray scarf tucked neatly into his collar. He looked rested for once, though his eyes remained constantly moving, cataloging the perimeter of the room before resting on us.
"The meeting in Evanston was cancelled," Damian said, stepping into the kitchen and pulling off his gloves. "The alderman caught the same flu Luca had."
Luca scrambled down from the counter. "Papa! The snow fort! You promised!"
Damian looked at me, an eyebrow arched. "Is the nurse cleared for outdoor activities?"
"The nurse is bored out of her skull," I replied, setting the syringe in the sink. "And the doctor said cold air is good for circulation."
"Twenty minutes," Damian commanded, though there was a softness in his eyes that he couldn't entirely scrub away. "Bundle him up, Emma. If he comes back with wet socks, Mrs. Gable will have both our heads."
Ten minutes later, we were in the rear garden.
The garden was enclosed by twelve-foot stone walls topped with decorative wrought-iron spikes that had been wired for high-voltage pulse detection. Two security guards stood at the garden’s north and south corners, hands tucked into their tactical vests, their breath steaming in the quiet air.
Luca was a blur of yellow Gore-Tex. He rolled snowballs with violent enthusiasm, his small boots churning through the drifts until he had assembled an oblong mound that looked less like a fort and more like a melted igloo.
"It's a defensive redoubt," Damian explained, standing beside me with his hands shoved deep into his overcoat pockets. He wore no hat, the snow catching in his dark, thick hair like silver dust.
"It's a pile of slush," I said, laughing softly. My breath joined his in the cold air, drifting together before dissipating into the sky.
"It has clear sightlines toward the terrace," he noted, a faint smile touching his mouth. "The boy has tactical awareness."
"He's six, Damian. He wants to throw a ball of ice at your face."
"Let him try."
As if summoned by the challenge, a compact, wobbly snowball struck Damian directly in the center of his chest, dusting the charcoal wool with white powder.
Luca stood twenty feet away, his mittens raised in triumph. "Direct hit! The king is dead!"
Damian looked down at the snow on his chest. Then he slowly, deliberately reached down and scooped up a handful of fresh powder, packing it between his bare palms with terrifying efficiency.
"Luca," Damian said, his voice dropping into mock-solemnity. "Run."
What followed was twenty minutes of pure, breathless joy.
I hadn't seen Damian run before. He moved with an explosive, effortless grace that reminded me of a big cat—fast, silent, terrifyingly athletic. He chased his son through the drifts, scooping him up by the waist just as the boy reached the base of a bronze fountain, swinging him through the air until Luca’s high, breathless shrieks echoed off the stone walls.
I stood by the path, my hands tucked into the pockets of my borrowed parka, my chest aching—not from my healing ribs, but from an overwhelming, terrifying warmth that had nothing to do with the sun.
They were a family. A broken, guarded, dangerous family, but a family nonetheless.
And for the first time in my twenty-four years of scrounging for rent and calculating the price of milk, I felt like I was standing on ground that wasn't going to collapse beneath me.
Luca eventually collapsed into a snow drift, red-faced and panting, his triceratops poking out of his coat pocket. "I surrender! Papa, I surrender!"
Damian dropped him onto his back, kneeling beside him, his own cheeks flushed with color, his dark hair disheveled. He looked twenty-five. He looked human.
Then he turned and looked at me.
The laughter died out of his face, replaced by that heavy, magnetic stillness that always made my breath stall. He rose to his feet, leaving Luca to make snow angels in the drift, and walked slowly toward me across the trampled white lawn.
"You're cold," he said, stopping inches away.
"I'm fine," I whispered. My teeth were chattering, but not from the temperature.
He reached out with his bare hand, his fingers warm despite the snow, and brushed a flake of ice from my cheekbone. His touch lingered, his thumb tracing the curve of my jaw, sliding down to rest against the warm skin of my throat beneath my scarf.
"You look beautiful, Emma," he murmured.
The word hung between us, crystalline and clear in the frozen air.
"Damian..."
"I know," he said softly, stepping closer until the heavy wool of his coat pressed against mine. "I know who I am. I know what this house is. But when you are in it, the rooms don't feel like cells anymore."
Before I could answer, before my racing heart could find words to build a wall against him, he leaned down.
His mouth found mine.
It wasn't rough. It wasn't the violent claim of an underworld boss taking what he wanted. It was slow, hesitant, tasting of winter and salt, carrying a depth of hunger that made my fingers curl into the lapels of his heavy coat. I leaned into him, my body remembering his heat from the dark library, my healing side forgotten in the sudden, blinding rush of blood to my head.
He groaned softly into my mouth, his arm wrapping around my waist, pulling me flush against his chest with a protective ferocity that took the breath straight out of me.
For five seconds, the snow, the guards, the bulletproof glass, and Victor Brand ceased to exist.
Then Luca’s voice broke through the fog.
"Ew! Papa is eating Emma’s face!"
Damian broke the kiss slowly, his forehead resting against mine, his breath ragged against my lips. A low, wicked chuckle vibrated in his chest.
"Tactical error," Damian whispered against my cheek. "We lost our situational awareness."
May you like
I laughed, my cheeks burning hotter than the winter air could cool, my hands lingering on his chest where I could feel his heart hammering just as violently as mine.
***
