Chapter 1 - The Lie She CarriedThe rain had been falling on Chicago for three days, and by the fourth it had stopped smelling like weather and started smelling like exhaust and wet asphalt and everything the city had failed to wash away.
Natasha sat on the edge of the bed in the penthouse, listening to it hit the glass.
The windows ran floor to ceiling across the whole eastern wall. Twenty-two floors up, the city lay under her like something she had been permitted to look at rather than something she lived in.
The glass was bulletproof.
Leo had mentioned that on her second night here, three years ago, while pouring two fingers of scotch.
She had found it reassuring then.
She found it suffocating now.
Leo Tomlin stood near the entryway, adjusting his watch.
It was the platinum Patek Philippe she had bought for his thirty-second birthday with money from the monthly allowance he gave her, which meant, technically, that he had bought it for himself.
He had not worn it much since the funeral.
"The car is waiting downstairs," he said.
His voice was low.
Cold.
Administrative.
"Donigan will drive you to the airport. The account in your name has two hundred thousand in it. Enough to start over."
A pause.
"Don't come back to the city."
Natasha stared at the back of his neck.
There was a pale scar just above his collar, a souvenir from a knife fight when he was twenty-two. She had kissed that scar a hundred times in the dark.
Now it looked like a target.
"I don't want the money," she said.
Leo turned.
His eyes were the ones he used for rival bosses.
Not lovers.
Not friends.
Not her.
"Take it."
"I said no."
"It's severance."
"Then keep it."
His jaw tightened.
"Natasha."
She stood.
Under her black sweater, eight weeks of pregnancy left almost no sign.
That was the only reason she was still calm.
She had known for six days.
Six days of nausea.
Six days of hiding the doctor's receipt in the bottom of her purse.
Six days of secretly calculating dates.
Six days of staring at the ceiling at night, wondering whether the tiny life inside her had already inherited the same dangerous blood that made men lower their voices when they said Leo Tomlin's name.
She had not told him.
She could not.
Not now.
Not while Chicago was tearing itself apart after Carlo Tomlin's death.
Not while Leo was preparing to take control of the family.
And certainly not after hearing what he had said to Donigan the night before.
"Wives are alliances," Leo had said.
"Mistresses are liabilities."
She had heard every word through the half-open car partition.
She had pretended not to.
Now she picked up her old canvas duffel.
Three pairs of jeans.
Five shirts.
Sensible shoes.
One battered paperback.
Nothing he had bought her.
"I packed what I came with."
Leo looked at the bag.
His expression shifted for less than a second.
"You leave the jewelry."
"Yes."
"The Porsche."
"Yes."
"The apartment in Lincoln Park."
"I don't want it."
"You could be comfortable."
"I was comfortable."
She lifted the duffel.
"That was the problem."
For the first time, something dangerous moved behind his eyes.
"Don't romanticize this."
"I'm not."
"You think I'm throwing you away?"
Her throat tightened.
"You told me not to come back."
"I told you to leave."
"Exactly."
Silence.
Rain struck the windows.
Leo walked toward her.
His presence changed the room. It always had. He never had to raise his voice. Men moved when he entered a room because they understood what happened when they did not.
Natasha forced herself not to step back.
"I have a meeting with the Colombians in an hour," he said. "My uncle's funeral is tomorrow. There is a war coming."
"There is always a war coming."
"Not like this one."
She almost laughed.
Of course there was something else.
There was always something else with Leo.
Always another locked door.
Another phone call.
Another room she was not allowed to enter.
Another bloodstain on a cuff he claimed came from a butcher shop.
He reached for the door.
Then he stopped.
"Take nothing of mine," he said coldly.
Natasha placed one hand over her stomach.
"I won't."
She walked into the hallway.
The elevator doors closed.
Twenty-two floors.
That was all it took for the life she had spent three years building to disappear.
When the elevator reached the lobby, the doors opened.
Natasha expected Donigan.
Instead, an unfamiliar woman stood waiting.
She was in her late fifties, elegant, silver-haired, dressed in a dark green coat.
"Natasha?"
Natasha froze.
"Who are you?"
The woman held out a photograph.
"Your mother."
Natasha's blood went cold.
She took the picture.
It showed a young woman standing outside a hospital in 1998.
Her mother.
And beside her stood a man Natasha had never seen before.
A man with Leo Tomlin's eyes.
"You need to come with me," the woman whispered.
"Why?"
The woman glanced toward the security cameras.
"Because Carlo Tomlin wasn't killed by the people Leo thinks killed him."
Natasha stared at her.
"What does that have to do with me?"
The woman leaned closer.
"Everything."
Then she looked down at Natasha's hand.
At the protective way Natasha was holding her stomach.
The woman's face changed.
"You told him?"
Natasha could barely breathe.
"Told him what?"
The woman went pale.
"God help us."
She stepped backward.
"Leo doesn't know."
The elevator behind Natasha suddenly chimed.
The woman looked toward it.
Then whispered four words.
"Your baby isn't safe."
The elevator doors opened.
A man stepped out.
And Natasha recognized him immediately.
May you like
He was one of Leo's soldiers.
He was holding a gun.
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