Chapter 5 - Whispers in the Dark
The penthouse was cloaked in shadows when we returned past midnight.
Sadie was sound asleep down the hall. I had checked on her immediately, finding her sprawled across her massive lavender bed, her arms wrapped around a new, enormous plush teddy bear Mrs. Gable had bought her, breathing soft and steady. For the first time in two years, her brow wasn't furrowed in her sleep. She looked safe.
I had slipped out of the heavy velvet gown and into a simple silk robe, washing the layers of cosmetic armor from my face. Yet, sleep refused to come. The adrenaline from the ballroom, the look on Marcus Voss’s choking face, and the ghost of my father's memory kept my mind spinning like a centrifuge.
I walked down the dark corridor toward the glass-walled study at the far end of the penthouse.
The door was slightly ajar, spilling a slice of amber lamplight across the dark floorboards. Soft, melancholic classical piano music drifted from within.
I pushed the door open quietly.
Ryan was sitting behind a massive desk of reclaimed black walnut. His tuxedo jacket was draped over the back of a leather armchair; his shirt sleeves were rolled up to his forearms, displaying corded muscle and intricate black tattoos. He wasn't looking at spreadsheets or weapons manifests.
He was staring at an old, faded photograph.
"You should be resting," Ryan said without looking up, his voice low and weary. He had heard my footsteps before I even reached the threshold.
"I couldn't sleep," I said, stepping inside. "Too much adrenaline."
He didn't order me out. He simply picked up his glass of scotch, took a slow drink, and gestured toward the leather chair opposite him. I walked over and sat down, pulling the silk robe tighter around my collarbones.
On the desk between us lay a thick, leather-bound notebook with yellowed pages filled with tight, meticulous numerical columns.
"That's my dad's handwriting," I gasped, leaning forward.
"Yes," Ryan said quietly. "Arthur’s personal journal. Not the official books he kept for the syndicate, but his private thoughts."
"Where did you get that?"
"I pulled it from the wreckage of your parents' car before the corrupt precinct detectives could burn it," Ryan said, turning the photo on the desk toward me.
It was a picture taken fifteen years ago on a fishing pier in Montauk. In it, a much younger Arthur Harper had his arm around a teenage boy with dark hair and a fierce, brooding scowl. The boy was holding up a striped bass, and my father was laughing, his arm draped affectionately around the boy's shoulders.
The breath caught in my throat. "That's... that's you."
"My father was a brutal man, Diane," Ryan said, his voice dropping into a tone I had never heard from him before—quiet, stripped of arrogance, tinged with a deep, haunting pain. "He believed fear was the only way to rule. If I brought home a ninety-five on an exam, he beat me with a belt for missing five points. If I hesitated in combat training, he locked me in the cellar for two days without food."
Ryan looked down at the photo, his jaw tightening.
"Your father was the only adult in my life who ever treated me like a human being. When my father was away on business, Arthur would sneak me out to the pier. He taught me how to tie a blood knot. He helped me with my calculus. He told me that just because I was born into darkness didn't mean I had to be a monster."
A tear slipped silently down my cheek. "He never told me. He never mentioned the Greer family. Ever."
"Because he was protecting you," Ryan said softly, his stormy eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that made the room feel suddenly ten degrees warmer. "He kept his home life completely walled off from the syndicate. He knew that if my father or Voss ever saw you, you would become targets. When Arthur realized Voss was skimming and planning a coup, he came to warn me. He died because he was loyal to me."
Ryan reached across the desk. His large, warm fingers gently closed over mine. His thumb traced the curve of my wrist, right where my pulse beat fast and erratic.
"I didn't bring you here just to use you as a political pawn, Diane," he whispered, his voice thick with raw emotion. "I brought you here because the moment I saw you in that ballroom—the moment you kissed me with that desperate fire in your eyes—I realized Arthur’s daughter was drowning, and I had sworn an oath on his grave that I would protect his blood with my life."
The realization hit me like a tidal wave.
The dare. The kiss. The five thousand dollars.
It wasn't a coincidence. It was fate violently colliding two shattered worlds together.
"You... you let Catherine think she humiliated you," I whispered, my heart aching with an overwhelming mixture of grief and gratitude. "You let me kiss you because you already knew who I was?"
"I recognized your eyes the second you stepped into the light," Ryan murmured, standing up from behind the desk. He walked around the mahogany wood until he stood directly over my chair. He reached down, his fingers gently catching my chin, lifting my face toward his.
"You have his courage," Ryan said, his eyes burning into mine. "And your mother’s grace. I let you kiss me because for the first time in ten years, Diane, someone touched me who didn't want my power, my money, or my blood. You were just fighting for your sister."
He leaned down. My breath hitched. For a second, I thought he was going to kiss me—really kiss me, not like the frantic dare in the ballroom, but with the simmering passion that had been building between us all night.
His lips hovered a fraction of an inch from mine. The scent of cedar and scotch wrapped around my senses like a fever.
"Ryan..." I breathed against his lips.
He stopped, his jaw clenching as if fighting an internal war. With incredible restraint, he pulled back an inch, his thumb sweeping gently over my cheekbone to wipe away a stray tear.
"Go to bed, Diane," he whispered hoarsely. "Before I forget that our arrangement is supposed to be business."
I stood up on trembling legs, my entire body humming with an electric longing I had never experienced before. I backed out of the study, but as I reached the door, I turned back to look at him.
Ryan Greer was standing by the glass window, looking out over the sleeping city, his hand resting on my father's old journal.
And for the first time, I didn't see the city's most feared mafia boss.
May you like
I saw a lonely man who had been waiting half his life for someone to save him from the dark.
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