Chapter 8
I jerked my hand away from his, pulling it back against my chest as if I’d been scalded. I pressed myself back into the deep button-tufted red leather of the booth, my breath catching in ragged, audible gasps.
"Oh God," I whimpered, letting genuine panic color the edges of my performance. "He thinks I saw everything. He thinks I’m going to go to the police. He’s going to kill me, isn't he? He’s going to send men to kill me!"
"Clara, look at me!"
Renzo rose half out of his seat. He reached across the table, his large hands reaching out to catch mine, but stopping short of grabbing me forcefully. His eyes were wide, panicked, stripped entirely of the cold, unfeeling arrogance of a mafia enforcer.
"Look at my eyes. Right here. Look at me."
I forced myself to meet his gaze, trembling violently, letting a single tear spill over my lashes and trace a path down my pale cheek.
"I won't let them," Renzo swore, his voice cracking with a fierce, possessive agony. "Do you hear me? I will burn this entire goddamn city to the ground before I let Silvio or any of his dogs lay a finger on you."
"Renzo, you don't understand..." I cried softly, shaking my head. "Dante told you this morning—you have rules. You have a family. You took an oath!"
"Fuck the oath."
The words dropped between us like twin blocks of lead.
I froze. The performance momentarily faltered, swallowed by the sheer shock of what he had just uttered.
In the Chicago Outfit, *omertà* was not a suggestion. It was a baptism of blood. A made man who spat on his oath was a dead man walking; his name was scrubbed from the ledgers, his family was ostracized, and his body was fed to the incinerators in Gary, Indiana. Men did not say *fuck the oath*. Not to their lieutenants. Not to their mistresses.
And certainly not to a shivering civilian they had known for less than forty-eight hours.
Renzo sank back down into the leather booth, his shoulders heavy, his chest rising and falling in harsh, ragged strokes. He looked down at the white linen tablecloth, staring at the scarred knuckles of his right hand.
"Silvio gave me a direct order this afternoon," Renzo confessed, his voice dropping into a dark, hollow whisper that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. "We were in his private study at the estate in Highland Park. Just me, him, and two bodyguards with submachine guns behind the curtain."
He looked up, his amber eyes burning into mine with an intensity so raw it felt like an open wound.
"He told me that Sal’s death broke the peace with the West Side families. He said the only way to avoid a full-scale war is to claim Sal went rogue and had to be put down for kidnapping a civilian. But to make that story stick..." Renzo’s voice hitched, a muscle jumping violently in his cheek. "...there can’t be any civilian left to tell the FBI what really happened."
"Renzo..." I breathed, parting my lips.
"He ordered me to take you out to the marshlands near Calumet," Renzo said, each syllable carved from jagged glass. "Two rounds to the base of the skull. Roll you into a trench. Cover you in lime."
A profound, suffocating silence descended over the booth.
Outside, a streak of lightning illuminated the stained-glass transom above the curtain, casting a fractured mosaic of crimson, gold, and deep blue across Renzo’s devastated face.
He looked at me as if I were a sacred relic he had been ordered to smash with a hammer.
"He gave me until midnight tonight to bring him your necklace," Renzo said, his voice trembling—the first time I had ever heard a tremor in that lethal, commanding baritone. "The silver chain you're wearing right now. As proof."
I reached up with a shaking hand, touching the delicate silver chain resting against my collarbone.
"And... what did you tell him?" I asked, my voice barely audible above the hum of the rain.
"I told him it was done," Renzo whispered.
My breath hitched.
"I lied to the Don’s face," he continued, a dark, desperate smile touching his lips. "For ten years, I’ve been Silvio’s weapon. When he pointed, I shot. When he said cut, I bled them dry. I never asked questions. I never hesitated. I thought... I thought this was all I was good for. A monster built to live in the dark."
He reached across the table again. This time, he didn't hesitate.
His broad, warm hands cupped my face, his calloused palms cradling my cheeks with an intimacy so profound, so devastatingly tender, that my pulse leaped in my throat. His thumbs gently brushed away the damp trails of my tears.
"And then I found you," Renzo murmured, his gaze tracing every line of my features as if he were memorizing a masterpiece he would never see again. "Sitting in that puddle of filth, shaking like a bird with a broken wing. When you threw your arms around me... when you buried your face in my neck... you didn't see the blood on my hands, Clara. You just held onto me."
His amber eyes shone with an emotion so pure, so completely unguarded, that a sudden, sharp ache bloomed beneath my ribs.
It was genuine.
This brutal, soulless executioner—the man who had severed Sal Valenti’s windpipe without blinking an eye—was completely, hopelessly in love with a ghost named Clara Vance. He was willing to throw away his rank, his power, his territory, and his very life to preserve a girl who didn't even exist.
"Renzo," I said softly, the name tasting heavy and sweet on my tongue. "If you don't do what he asks... he’ll hunt you down. Dante will come for you. The whole family will come for you."
"Let them come," Renzo said, his voice hardening into granite. "They can send every gun in Cook County. They won't touch you. Not while there’s blood in my veins."
He released my face, his hands dropping to the breast pocket of his tailored charcoal suit jacket.
From inside the silk lining, he pulled out a thick, unmarked leather travel folio and a set of heavy brass keys attached to a nondescript fob.
With deliberate, agonizing care, Renzo slid the items across the blood-red tablecloth, stopping them right in front of my trembling fingers.
"What is this?" I asked, looking down at the embossed leather.
"Your life," Renzo said softly.
He reached out, his thumb flipping the folio open.
Inside rested a brand-new Canadian passport under the name *Evelyn Cross*. Next to the passport were three sealed manila envelopes thick with banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills—easily fifty thousand dollars in cash—and a high-limit black credit card tied to an untraceable offshore trust in the Cayman Islands. Tucked beneath the currency was a private aviation charter manifest stamped for a midnight departure out of an executive airfield in Gary.
"There’s a Gulfstream idling on the tarmac at Runway 4 right now," Renzo explained, his amber eyes never leaving my face. "The pilot is paid in full. He doesn't ask questions. In three hours, you’ll be in Montreal. By tomorrow afternoon, you’ll be in a private villa on the coast of Vancouver Island. Nobody in the Castiglione family knows the property exists. It’s registered under an anonymous holding firm I established five years ago."
