Chapter 8 - The Reunion of Fire and Ice
Nina froze. The pen she was holding slipped from her fingers, clattering softly against the metal desktop. For three long seconds, the entire universe seemed to hold its breath. Then, she turned around slowly, her posture straight as a steel rod, her dark eyes flashing with a dangerous, untamed defiance that made her look more like a mafia queen than a fugitive mother. "You took your time finding me, Luca," Nina said steadily, her voice entirely devoid of fear. "I expected better from the man who controls half the import terminals on the East Coast." Luca closed the distance between them in two giant strides, his large hands reaching out as if to grab her shoulders, but stopping an inch away when Nina raised a single, warning palm. "Don't," she warned. "Don't you dare touch me until you've heard how this plays out."
Luca dropped his hands, his chest heaving as he drank in the sight of her. She was thinner than she had been at Mount Sinai, but she radiated an absolute, terrifying power. "You ran," he choked out, the raw pain bleeding through his usual iron-clad composure. "You vanished with my son. Do you have any idea what I went through tearing this city apart looking for you?" "I had to run," Nina shot back, stepping closer so she could look straight up into his tortured eyes. "Because the moment the Conti family fell, three other ambitious syndicates tried to fill the void by putting a bounty on a Trevisi heir. You couldn't protect us from inside your gilded cage, Luca. So I built my own fortress. I trained. I bought informants. I turned this entire underground network into a perimeter defense system around our son." She walked over to a heavy filing cabinet in the corner, unlocked the top drawer with a brass key, and pulled out a thick leather-bound ledger. She tossed it onto the desk right in front of him. "Open it."
