Chapter 2 - The Ride to Northwestern
The interior of the Suburban was ice-cold, the climate control humming at a quiet, steady blast that chilled the damp hair at the back of Naomi’s neck. The moment Adrian climbed in beside her and pulled the heavy door shut, the chaotic noise of the Chicago morning vanished, replaced by the dead, insulated quiet of an armored vault.
The driver, a thick-necked man named Roman who had worked as Adrian’s personal security chief for six years, didn't ask for a destination. He simply checked his side mirror, pulled away from the curb, and merged into the lakefront traffic heading north toward Streeterville.
The second and third SUVs fell into position behind and ahead of them, creating a moving pocket of black steel through the morning commute.
Naomi pressed her shoulder against the door, putting as much distance between herself and Adrian as the broad bench seat allowed. She stared out the dark, tinted glass at the passing blur of Michigan Avenue—the high-end boutiques, the tourists taking photos near the water tower, the normal people living normal, predictable lives where divorce meant arguing over a house in Evanston rather than being abducted from a courthouse plaza.
"Drink this," Adrian said.
She didn't turn her head. "I don't want anything from you."
A small bottle of mineral water appeared in her peripheral vision, the cap already twisted open so she wouldn't have to strain her fingers.
"Your skin is dry," he said, his tone flat, instructional. "If you faint in the elevator, I will have to carry you, and you will hate me even more than you do right now."
Naomi snapped her head around, her dark eyes flashing. "I don't hate you because you carry me, Adrian! I hate you because you treat me like a piece of property that needs to be maintained! You don't ask me how I am. You don't ask me what I want. You just... execute commands!"
"I am executing the only logical action available," he said, holding the bottle steady between them. "You are incapacitated. You refused to seek medical attention yourself. Therefore, I am providing it."
"I was not incapacitated! I was nervous!"
"You were vomiting under a tree," he pointed out. "In front of six strangers and two off-duty bailiffs."
"Because I was about to sign away three years of my life!"
Adrian looked down at the water bottle in his hand. For a split second, his thumb tightened against the clear plastic until the thin material groaned under the pressure.
"Three years," he repeated softly.
"Yes. Three years of sitting in that giant house in Lake Forest while you spent sixteen hours a day at the docks, or in Detroit, or in meetings with men who look like they keep body bags in their trunks!"
"I built that business so you would never have to ask anyone for a single dollar for the rest of your life," he said, his voice dropping into a register so low it was almost lost beneath the engine hum.
"I didn't want your dollars, Adrian! I wanted a husband! I wanted a man who came home for dinner on our anniversary! I wanted a man who didn't look at his watch during my sister's wedding because he was waiting for a freighter from Rotterdam to clear customs!"
The silence returned, heavier and colder than the air coming from the vents.
Adrian did not look back at her. He set the water bottle in the central cup holder, turned his head, and stared out his own window at the blue expanse of Lake Michigan stretching toward the horizon.
"The Calumet terminal," he said after nearly two miles of total silence, "was raided by the Federal Maritime Commission at eight o'clock that evening."
Naomi stopped. Her hand, which had been adjusting her sweater, went still.
"What?" she whispered.
"The three-anniversary dinner," Adrian continued, his face turned away from her so she could only see the sharp, unforgiving profile of his cheekbone and jaw. "Two of my regional managers had accepted three hundred thousand dollars in cash to let six unmanifested containers onto the spur line. The federal agents were waiting at the gate with federal search warrants and three tactical teams."
Naomi stared at the side of his head, her chest tightening in a completely different way. "You... you never told me that."
"If I told you," Adrian said, turning his head back to face her with a slow, terrifying coldness in his blue eyes, "you would have been named as an officer of Vale Maritime in the grand jury subpoena. They were looking for any connection to the family. They were looking for an excuse to put a wire on my home phone."
He leaned closer to her, his large frame towering over her in the cramped, shadowed space of the rear compartment.
"I spent six hours in a basement office in South Chicago with three federal prosecutors and five lawyers while they threatened to freeze every account I owned," Adrian said, his voice dropping to an icy whisper. "I didn't come home to eat your chicken, Naomi, because if I had come home, three federal marshals would have followed me up the driveway and served you with a court order before you could finish your wine."
Naomi felt the air leave her lungs. The memory of that night—the cold candles, the thick, heavy silence of the dining room, her own bitter tears falling into the untouched salad—suddenly felt distorted, like a photograph exposed to too much light.
"You... you could have called," she stammered, though her voice lacked its earlier fire. "You could have sent a message."
"My phone was in an evidence bag on a desk in the Federal Building," Adrian said. "And when I walked into the house at midnight, bruised and exhausted, you didn't ask me if I was all right. You handed me a napkin, told me I was late, and said you were moving into the guest room."
Naomi swallowed hard. The nausea threatened to return, rising from the cold center of her chest.
"You still forgot," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the tire noise. "You forgot before the raid even happened. You didn't order flowers. You didn't say happy anniversary when you left that morning."
Adrian looked down at his own long, broad fingers resting on his knee.
"I didn't forget," he said softly. "The flowers were in the back of my car. They stayed there until the morning, when Roman threw them in the dumpster behind the precinct."
The Suburban banked smoothly to the right, turning into the private covered driveway of the Prentice Women’s Hospital at Northwestern Memorial.
Roman brought the heavy vehicle to a stop directly beside the glass entrance doors. Before the tires had even stopped rolling, two security guards in silver-buttoned blazers stepped out from the shade, standing at attention to clear the pathway.
Adrian didn't move immediately. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and unlocked the screen with his thumb.
"We are going up to the sixth floor," he said, his tone returning to its familiar, iron-clad efficiency. "Dr. Helen Vance is waiting in Suite 602."
May you like
Naomi’s brow pulled together. "Dr. Vance? Is she... related to Judge Vance?"
"She is his sister," Adrian said, pushing the door open and stepping out into the warm lake breeze before turning to hold his hand out to her. "And unlike her brother, she doesn't require a ten o'clock court docket to tell me what is happening inside my own family."
