Chapter 5 - When the Golden Boy Breaks
When Adrian slowly drew back from the kiss, his arm didn't fall away. Instead, he wrapped his right arm loosely, protective and heavy, around the small of Claire’s back, drawing her half an inch closer to his side. His left hand remained lightly resting against the wooden handle of her cart, right beside her slender fingers.
Across from them, the silence felt like an unexploded bomb.
Nathan was frozen in place. The patronizing smirk had been violently wiped from his face, replaced by a gray, sickly pallor that made his expensive tan look like cheap makeup. His right hand, still holding the fanned hundred-dollar bills, hung uselessly in the air between them, trembling with a microscopic, involuntary tremor that he couldn't control.
His throat bobbed once. Twice. He tried to swallow, but his mouth had gone completely dry.
Beside him, the blonde fiancée had taken two frantic steps backward, her high heels nearly tangling in the hem of her tailored pantsuit. Her manicured hand gripped the strap of her quilted Chanel bag so tightly that the leather groaned. Her eyes darted from the tattooed viper on Adrian’s neck to the three silent, mountain-like men standing guard at the end of the produce display.
She lived in Manhattan’s high society; she knew who attended charity galas, and she knew whose names were whispered in hushed, terrified tones in private executive dining rooms when shipping contracts mysteriously disappeared or rival developers were pulled from the East River.
"N-Nathan...?" the blonde stammered, her voice shaking, all trace of her haughty amusement obliterated. "Who is that?"
Nathan didn't answer her. He couldn't. His gaze was locked onto Adrian Moretti’s face, his pupils dilated with raw, unadulterated dread.
In the city's commercial sector, Nathan was a rising star in his father's maritime logistics firm. But two weeks ago, at a private dinner at the Harvard Club, his father had spent an entire hour warning the board of directors about a single entity: the Moretti family had just acquired forty-nine percent of the port authority's shipping bonds. His father had explicitly stated that crossing Adrian Moretti was equivalent to walking into a propeller blade.
And now, here stood the head of that syndicate, wearing a five-thousand-dollar suit, kissing a five-months-pregnant framing shop clerk over a basket of honeycrisp apples.
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The hundred-dollar bills slipped from Nathan’s numb fingers. Two of them fluttered downward, landing face-up in the cedar shavings beneath the produce bin.
"Moretti...?" Nathan whispered, the word barely audible, scratched raw by panic.
