Chapter 5 - The Only Ledger That Matters
The rain was coming down in sheets, blurring the neon signs of the downtown industrial district into bleeding streaks of red and yellow.
Leo's black Maybach slid violently to a halt outside a dingy, weather-beaten apartment building in the Narrows—a fourth-floor walk-up where the streetlights flickered and the stairwells smelled of old rust and despair.
Leo didn't wait for the driver. He shoved open the door, ignored the pouring rain, and sprinted up the concrete steps three at a time. His lungs burned, but he didn't slow down. He reached the fourth floor and threw his weight against the battered wooden door marked 4B.
Crash.
The flimsy deadbolt splintered, and the door flew inward, slamming against the peeling wallpaper inside.
Mave spun around from where she was packing a cardboard box on a rickety kitchen table. Her eyes widened in absolute shock as Leo filled the tiny apartment, his dark overcoat dripping water onto the linoleum floor, his face pale and wild with a desperate fury she had never seen before.
“What the hell are you doing?” Mave gasped, dropping a stack of folded sweaters.
Leo closed the distance between them in two massive strides. He grabbed her by the shoulders, his fingers gripping her coat as if he were afraid she would evaporate into thin air if he let go.
“You left,” he breathed, his voice cracking slightly—a sound he had never let any human being hear. “You packed a box and you left me a note like a ghost.”
“I told you in the note, Leo,” she said, her voice trembling, though she tried to stand her ground. “I don't belong in your world. I saw what happened in that study. I saw how easily someone could die in your house. I can't live waiting for the day a bullet comes through the window.”
“You think I brought you into my house to put you in danger?” Leo's voice rose, raw and desperate. “Mave, look at me.”
She looked up, her brown eyes swimming with unshed tears.
“From the moment you fell asleep in my bed, nothing in my life has been mine,” Leo confessed, the confession tearing out of him like jagged glass. “I don't care about the shipyards. I don't care about the unions or the territory wars. All I could think about for three days was that you weren't walking down my hallway. You are the only clean thing in my entire miserable existence.”
Mave stared at him, her chest rising and falling rapidly. “You're a mob boss, Leo. People like you don't get happy endings.”
“Watch me,” he whispered.
Before she could answer, Leo pulled her against his chest, crushing her in an embrace so fierce it knocked the breath out of her lungs. He buried his face in her damp hair, breathing in the scent of rain and vanilla soap that had haunted his empty mansion for years.
Slowly, hesitantly, Mave’s arms came up around his waist. She gripped the back of his wet overcoat, burying her face against his shoulder as the walls she had built around her heart finally shattered completely.
“I'm not going back to the estate as a maid,” she murmured against his neck, a watery smile breaking through her tears.
Leo pulled back just enough to look into her eyes, his thumb gently wiping a tear from her cheek.
May you like
“You were never a maid, Mave,” he said softly, a fierce, possessive warmth lighting up his dark eyes. “You were the only person in this city who ever managed to own me. Now pack the rest of your things. You're coming home.”
Outside, the rain began to clear, parting the clouds over the city to reveal a sharp, brilliant dawn. The war was over. The ledger was balanced. And for the first time in his life, Leo Castiglion had won the only prize that mattered.
