Chapter 2 - The Shadow of the PastMarco Bellini returned to the penthouse within forty-eight hours, carrying a digital tablet that looked like a death warrant.
"Talk," Roman commanded, sitting behind his massive mahogany desk. He hadn't slept in two days. The manila folders from the nursery were spread out before him like a roadmap to his own execution.
"You’re not going to like this, Boss," Marco said, setting the tablet down. "We checked the bank records, the public registries, the real estate transfers. Celeste didn't just leave three months ago. She spent those three months systematically dismantling our corporate firewall."
Roman’s eyes narrowed. "Explain."
"Three years ago, when the FBI tried to pin the shipping dock smuggling ring on you, remember how the federal prosecutor's star witness suddenly recanted and disappeared?" Marco asked, watching Roman’s reaction closely.
"The witness took a payoff and fled to South America," Roman said dismissively.
"No," Marco corrected softly. "The witness was hidden by a boutique corporate compliance firm called Vanguard Legal Consulting. We never found out who owned it. Today, running the registry through a back-channel contact in Washington, we found the majority stakeholder."
Marco tapped the screen, sliding it across the desk.
Roman looked down. The name on the incorporation papers, signed and notarized seven years ago—just six months before he and Celeste met—was Celeste Alarie Vascari.
The blood drained from Roman's face.
"She... she's a corporate lawyer?" Roman breathed, the words tasting like ash. "She represented the syndicate's biggest rivals? She investigated us?"
"She didn't just investigate you, Boss," Marco said grimly. "She’s the one who funneled the evidence against the Chicago Outfit to the feds two years ago, crippling your biggest competitor. She’s the ghost everyone in the underworld calls The Architect. Nobody knew what she looked like. Nobody knew her name. They just knew that if The Architect took an interest in your empire, you were already dead."
Roman stood up so fast his chair crashed backward against the wall.
"Why?" he roared, his voice shaking the glass frames in the study. "Why marry me? Why spend six years playing the submissive wife in this penthouse?"
"Because," a calm, chilling voice echoed from the doorway.
Both men whipped around.
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Standing in the study doorway was a man Roman hadn't seen in a decade—Victor Vance, the former head of the rival Outfit, whom Roman had supposedly left ruined and powerless in a federal penitentiary five years ago.
And standing right beside him, looking cool, composed, and devastatingly calm in her pale gray maternity dress, was Celeste.
