Chapter 9
Instead, with slow, unyielding surrender, his knees gave out.
He dropped.
First to one knee, the impact of his weight echoing against the white marble floor. He did not brace himself against the edge of the wood; he remained there on the cold stone, head bowed, the dark crimson dripping from the hem of his coat to form a small, widening pool between his boots.
Slowly, his trembling right hand rose to the polished desk.
He did not raise the weapon. He laid the empty firearm flat beside her legal blotter.
Then, with his left hand, Lorenzo pulled the heavy gold signet ring from his finger—the ancestral Russo falcon, seventy years of syndicate terror and pride, slick with his own blood.
He placed the ring directly beside the tip of her fountain pen.
Lorenzo lifted his head.
All the cold cruelty, all the arrogant detachment that had defined his name in the streets of New York, was stripped away. His slate-grey eyes locked onto hers with absolute, terrifying vulnerability.
"Two years ago I called you an embarrassment," Lorenzo whispered, his voice trembling as a thin line of blood welled at the corner of his mouth, "because if I slipped that ring onto your finger, my uncle’s snipers on the cathedral roof would have torn you open before the vows finished. I took the shame, and I gave you the world. Now my life, my family, and thirty years in a federal cell are sitting beneath your nib. Ruin me or rule me, Talia—just let me bleed at your feet while you decide."
Outside the high glass windows, the municipal clock tower began its deep midnight chimes.
*Bong.*
The first chime vibrated through the steel bones of the tower.
Talia’s hand rested on the vellum. Her brass fountain pen hovered exactly a fraction of an inch above the final line as the municipal clock begins its midnight chimes.
