Chapter 22 - The Scars We Carry
When the private elevator descended with the traitors, the boardroom grew dead silent once more. Salvatore remained standing by the wall, his old eyes looking down at the empty chairs with a heavy, melancholic expression. Betrayal from within was a wound that never truly healed, even when cauterized by absolute power.
“You handled that with remarkable restraint, Mr. Moretti,” Salvatore murmured, pushing himself off the wall and walking slowly toward the door. “Many men in your position would have settled that dispute in an alley with a silenced pistol.”
“A bullet is too quick for accountants who steal from the family, Salvatore,” Roman replied flatly, pouring himself a finger of neat bourbon from the crystal decanter on the sideboard. “Let them live out the rest of their days in quiet obscurity in a remote villa in Tuscany, with no money, no access, and no power. That is a fate far worse than death for men like them.”
Salvatore offered a grim, respectful nod, turned on his heel, and walked out of the boardroom, leaving Roman and me alone in the sprawling, sunlit space.
I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking down at the microscopic ants of traffic crawling along the streets of downtown Chicago. The skyline looked breathtaking under the autumn sun, but the ghosts of the past—the ruined companies, the stolen legacies, the blood shed to build this monument of steel and glass—felt closer than ever.
Strong, familiar arms wrapped around my waist from behind, pulling me back against his solid chest. Roman rested his chin on my shoulder, his breath warm against my neck.
“Are you alright?” he asked softly, his voice stripped of all its corporate hardness, leaving only the deep, tender devotion he reserved for me alone.
“I’m just realizing how deep the roots of this city go,” I whispered, leaning my head back against his shoulder. “Every building, every street, every dollar—it’s all built on blood and compromises.”
“Not all of it,” Roman corrected, turning me gently in his arms so I was facing him. He cupped my face with both hands, his dark eyes searching mine with fierce intensity. “What we are building, Harper... what you and I are creating together... it’s clean. It’s real. We purged the rot today. The house is finally ours, completely and unconditionally.”
I looked up into his face, seeing the raw, unshakeable truth in his eyes. The last lingering shadow of the old Vanguard era, the final hidden stitch of the corrupt syndicate that had bound our families in tragedy five years ago, had been finally and permanently cut away.
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“Then let’s leave this room,” I whispered, a small, genuine smile touching my lips. “I think we’ve spent quite enough time auditing the past.”
Roman smiled back, his expression softening into something warm and devastatingly handsome. He took my hand, intertwining his fingers with mine, and led me out of the boardroom toward the private elevator that would take us back to our sanctuary in the sky.
