Chapter 2: Into the Storm
The cold night air hit us like a physical blow the moment we slipped past the dazed security guards and out into the sweeping marble portico of the D’Angelo Foundation center. Behind us, the muffled chaos of the gala sounded like a distant thunderstorm, but out here, the harbor wind was raw and biting, carrying the sharp scent of salt water and diesel. I clutched Lily tighter against my chest, her little body shivering beneath a thin wool blanket Roman’s personal assistant had thrust into my hands before scurrying away. My boots clicked frantically against the stone steps as I headed toward the dimly lit gravel parking lot, desperate to melt into the shadows before the police or the press caught up with us.
“Wait,” a deep voice called out from the darkness beside the towering stone pillars.
I spun around, my heart hammering against my ribs, half-expecting more guards or Helena’s lawyers. Instead, it was Roman. He had shed his suit jacket, leaving him in a stark white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, exposing lean, corded muscles and skin pale under the sodium vapor lights. He moved with a quiet, deliberate caution, keeping his hands visible, as if he were approaching a feral animal.
“You can’t just walk out into the city with her tonight,” Roman said, his voice level, stripped of the terrifying fury he had unleashed in the ballroom. “The reporters are already swarming the side gates. Helena’s people will be looking for every exit.”
“And what are you going to do?” I fired back, my voice sharp, defensive adrenaline keeping the exhaustion at bay. “Lock us in a guest room? Hand us over to your mother’s legal team the second the cameras stop rolling? I kept her alive for three years while you were supposedly dead, Mr. D’Angelo. I didn't survive on scraps in a basement apartment just to trade one cage for another.”
Roman stopped a few feet away. In the dim light, the harsh angles of his face looked exhausted, the lines around his eyes carved deep by years of grief and deception. He looked at Lily, who had buried her face back into my neck, her small fingers clutching my collar.
“My mother told me the child was stillborn,” Roman said quietly, the words tasting like ash in the cold air. “She showed me certificates. Medical reports. She told me the hospital bill was paid, the funeral handled. She told me everything was taken care of.” He looked back up at me, his eyes dark and unwavering. “For three years, I thought I had lost everything that mattered. Every month, I wired fifty thousand dollars into a restricted trust managed by her foundation, believing it was going toward a memorial fund and supporting families in need, the way she claimed.”
A bitter laugh escaped my lips. “Fifty thousand a month? We lived off stale bread and tap water in a leaking trailer forty miles outside the county line. The only thing I ever saw from the D’Angelo Foundation was a warning letter taped to our door threatening eviction if I didn't stop asking questions about my birth certificate.”
Roman’s breath caught. He closed his eyes for a long, agonizing second, his chest rising and falling beneath the white cotton shirt. When he opened them, the cold fury was back, but it was directed inward, cold and focused like a blade.
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“Get in the car,” he said, pointing toward a nondescript black sedan parked near the shadows of the loading bay. “You’re coming with me. Not to a hotel, not to the estate. To my private townhouse in the city. It’s the only place my mother’s reach doesn't cover completely.”
I hesitated, weighing the terrifying unknowns. But looking down at Lily, who was shivering against my chest, and feeling the biting autumn wind cut through my tattered dress, I knew we had no other choice. Without a word, I opened the heavy rear door of the sedan and slid inside the leather-scented interior, pulling the child into my lap as Roman closed the door behind us and slid into the driver's seat.
