Chapter 14 - PRAYERS IN THE RAIN
The heat was suffocating.
Adrian shoved the flaming beam off his shoulders with a primal scream of rage.
His black suit jacket burned.
I rolled on top of him, smothering the flames with my wet overcoat.
"I have you," I sobbed, coughing from the thick black smoke.
"I have you, Adrian."
Across the burning platform, Vincent Wells was crawling toward an emergency ladder.
Adrian dragged himself to his feet.
His eyes were completely black with fury.
He walked through the flames like a demon emerging from hell.
He caught Vincent by the collar, dragging him backward across the burning wood.
Adrian threw Vincent flat onto his back.
He pressed the barrel of his Sig Sauer directly between Vincent’s eyes.
Vincent trembled like a wet dog, crying, sobbing into the rain.
"Please, Adrian," Vincent begged, his hands raised in surrender.
"Take my fortune. Take the Wells shipping lines. Take everything. Just let me live."
Adrian’s finger tightened on the trigger.
His knuckles turned white.
Twenty years of grief, pain, and isolation burned in his eyes.
"Adrian," I called softly.
I walked through the smoke and stopped beside him.
I placed my hand gently over his trembling gun hand.
"Don't," I whispered.
Adrian didn't look at me.
"He killed your father, Nora," he choked out, his voice shaking with raw agony.
"He took everything from us."
"And he will die in a concrete cage for the rest of his miserable life," I said.
My fingers intertwined with his, gently easing the barrel downward.
"Don't become the monster he wanted you to be."
I touched his bruised jaw.
"Remember who you were when you looked at that frame."
Adrian’s breath hitched in his throat.
He looked down into my hazel eyes.
The murderous storm in his gaze slowly shattered, replaced by an overwhelming wave of humanity.
He lowered the weapon.
Dozens of red and blue emergency lights flooded the pier from the access road.
FBI tactical vans, state police cruisers, and syndicate sedans boxed in the entire harbor.
Federal agents swarmed the pier with rifles raised.
Vincent Wells was hauled away in steel cuffs, weeping and disgraced.
Caroline Wells was dragged from the rubble, screaming obscenities as the cameras flashed.
The storm began to ease, turning into a gentle, cool rain.
Adrian turned to me.
His face was streaked with soot and blood, his clothes torn to shreds.
He looked exhausted, broken, yet utterly free.
Right there in the mud and ash of the burning pier, the most feared mafia boss in Philadelphia sank to one knee.
My breath caught in my throat.
"Adrian..."
He reached into his inner pocket.
He pulled out the battered pine frame.
It was scorched at the edges, water-stained, but completely intact.
"I thought my life was meant to be lived in the dark, Nora," Adrian whispered.
His voice broke with tears he didn't try to hide.
"Until you walked into that room with this frame."
He took my bruised, cut hand and pressed it against his heart.
"You are my conscience. You are my salvation."
He looked up at me with raw devotion.
"Will you be my Queen?"
A tear rolled down my cheek, hot and sweet.
"Yes," I breathed, falling to my knees in front of him.
May you like
"A thousand times, yes."
Adrian pulled me into his arms, kissing me under the falling rain as the sirens wailed into the dawn.
