Chapter 9 - THE DEAD LINE
Nico pressed the phone to his ear, his knuckles white against the dark titanium casing, his broad chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow heaves.
Ring.
He waited for the familiar cadence of her soft, melodic voice to answer, ready to demand where she was, ready to tell his drivers to bring her back, ready to order her into the car like he ordered everything else in his life.
Ring.
The connection did not go to voicemail.
Instead, a sharp, three-tone automated frequency pierced his eardrum, followed by the flat, mechanical voice of an operator:
“The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check the number and try your call again. Announcement 4-1-8.”
The line clicked into dead, buzzing static.
Nico slowly lowered the phone from his ear. His jaw was slack, his pupils dilated until the dark brown of his irises was almost entirely consumed by black.
No longer in service.
She hadn't just ignored him. She hadn't turned her ringer off in a fit of petulant anger to make him worry.
She had severed the line. She had destroyed the connection. She had erased herself from his digital empire with the clinical finality of an assassin wiping a hard drive.
A cold, sickening vertigo swept through Nico’s gut, making the floor beneath his polished shoes feel suddenly weightless. In thirty-eight years of life, Nico Blackwood had never been left. People didn't walk away from him; they begged for his favor, they negotiated for his mercy, or they died trying to escape his reach.
He had believed, with absolute certainty, that Norah depended on him for her very survival. He had convinced himself that her soft smiles, her gentle touches, and her quiet presence were the grateful offerings of a woman who had been rescued from mediocrity.
Now, looking at the untouched diamonds and the empty drawer, the truth crashed down upon his shoulders like a falling cathedral:
She had never stayed for the penthouse.
She had never stayed for the cars, the couture, or the black card.
She had stayed because she loved him. And the moment he had declared that love worthless, the penthouse had become nothing more than an empty, glass cage that she didn't hesitate to abandon.
Nico stumbled backward a half-step, catching himself against the leather island in the center of the closet. His breath was coming in ragged, ragged gasps, his vision swimming as the silence of the apartment pressed in on his eardrums like deep water.
May you like
"Norah..." he whispered into the empty air, the syllable tasting like ash on his tongue.
The dressing room offered no answer. Only the cold, brilliant glitter of forty carats of diamond ice, staring back at him from the dark safe.
