Chapter 10 - A New Dawn and the Unexpected Ending
Small footsteps padded across the Persian rug.
We both turned.
Emma stood in the doorway, wearing an oversized silk bathrobe that swallowed her small frame, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. Behind her stood Oliver, looking just as sleepy, clutching his dead phone—now fully charged and glowing faintly with a cartoon wallpaper.
“Mommy?” Emma mumbled, her voice thick with sleep. “Is breakfast ready yet? My tummy is rumbling.”
Adrian let out a real, genuine laugh—the first I had heard in six years—and stood up, pulling a fresh shirt over his shoulders. He walked over, scooped Emma up into his arms effortlessly, and lifted Oliver with his other arm, balancing both children against his chest.
“Princess, your mother and I were just discussing that very important matter,” Adrian said, kissing the top of Emma’s head. “How do you feel about pancakes with extra strawberries?”
“Can we have chocolate chips too?” Oliver chimed in, suddenly wide awake.
“Only if you ask your mother,” Adrian grinned, looking over at me with those familiar gray-green eyes, completely free of the shadows that had haunted him for a decade.
I walked over, pulling both of them—and the dangerous, reformed mafia boss who had finally found his way home—into a single embrace.
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Outside the tall french windows, the sun crested over the Hudson River, burning away the last remnants of the winter mist.
What neither of us knew, as we stood there in the warmth of the Alpine estate, was that miles away in a sterile warehouse in Brooklyn, a burner phone was buzzing on a concrete floor. A single text message lit up the dark screen, addressed to the new council chairman: Vasiliev is dead, boss. But his younger brother just landed at JFK.
