Chapter 8 - THE DAM OF SILENCE BREAKS
The question was the final fracture in the dam.
Clara Bennett let out a strangled, shuddering gasp. The strength went out of her legs, and she dropped to her knees on the cold marble floor, her black skirts pooling around her like shadow.
Tears—hot, thick, and unrestrained—spilled over her lower eyelids, tracking down her pale, porcelain cheeks, dripping off her trembling chin onto the white linen of her apron. She buried her face in her hands for two seconds, her shoulders shaking with the silent, agonizing release of four years of terror.
She did not deny it. She could not.
“She was born in March,” Clara whispered, her voice cracking, each word torn from her chest like shrapnel. “Seven months after… after the bridge in Weehawken.”
Adrian’s eyes closed for a fraction of a second, his head bowing slightly under the sheer, physical weight of the revelation.
March.
James had died in August.
When James had climbed into that black sedan, when he had driven out into the stormy night to face the Marcone ambush, Clara had already been carrying his child.
“Why?” Adrian asked, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that vibrated against the stone floor. He opened his eyes, looking up at the weeping woman, his dark gaze burning with an agony of incomprehension. “Why didn't you come to me? Why did you hide her in the staff quarters? I would have given you half of this city, Clara! I would have given her an army!”
Clara lifted her tear-streaked face. Her hazel eyes, usually so submissive and lowered, met his with a sudden, fierce maternal fire that silenced the Don.
“That’s why!” Clara wept, her voice rising, shaking with four years of buried defiance. “An army, Adrian! Bodyguards with guns! Armored cars! Bulletproof glass! Look at this house! Look at what it did to James!”
She pointed a trembling hand toward the high vaulted ceiling, toward the guards standing silent by the doors.
“James loved you, Adrian. He worshipped you. But he hated this life. The last night I saw him… the night he gave me that watch… he sat on the edge of my bed in Brooklyn and cried like a baby. He told me he was going to meet with you, that he was going to tell you he was getting out. He said he had bought three tickets to California. One for him. One for me. And one for the baby.”
She choked on a sob, pressing her fist against her sternum.
“And three hours later, your men called me to say his car was in the river. He was twenty-six years old, Adrian! Burned to cinders because someone wanted a shipment of narcotics at the docks!”
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She looked down at Nora, who was watching her mother with wide, bewildered eyes, sensing the deep pain in the room.
“James made me swear,” Clara whispered, her voice dropping into a sacred, ragged cadence. “Before he walked out that door, he put that watch in my hand and said, ‘If they come for me, Clara, you run. Don't go to Adrian. Adrian will put a gun in my child’s hand before she can even walk. Keep her clean. Keep her away from the blood.’”
