Chapter 31 - the debt of blood
The interceptor knifed through six-foot whitecaps at forty-five knots, spray hammering against the reinforced polymer windshield. Roman pulled a pair of heavy tactical gloves over his knuckles, watching Clara inspect the chamber of a compact SIG Sauer Vance had provided her. She handled the weapon with quiet, lethal precision.
"You never asked me why my father died," Roman said abruptly over the roar of the engines.
Clara paused, looking at him through the dim red cabin lights. "Julian said Eleanor funded him before he was killed. I thought your father was an enforcer."
"He was an accountant," Roman said, the memory carving lines of iron into his face. "He ran the legitimate arm of the waterfront unions. Thirty years ago, he discovered that millions in union pension funds were being siphoned through foreign shipping lanes. He refused to look the other way. He went to your father first, not knowing Eleanor was already intercepting the family mail."
Clara held her breath. "What happened?"
"Eleanor invited him to dinner," Roman replied, his voice colder than the dark lake outside. "My father left the house on a Tuesday night. Three days later, they pulled his car out of the Calumet River with three rounds through the driver's side window. The police ruled it a mob execution. They whispered that the Mercer family was crooked. I was eight years old when my mother drank herself to death from the shame."
A heavy silence settled inside the boat, broken only by the thrum of the twin turbos.
Clara took a step toward him, laying her hand over his gloved knuckles. "You didn't step in at the gala just to protect me, did you? You knew from the start that the dress, the humiliation, the eviction... it was all tied to the woman who killed your father."
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"At first, yes," Roman admitted, his thumb gently brushing across Clara's cheekbone, catching a stray drop of lake water. "I wanted to draw Eleanor out of the dark. I wanted to see who held the strings." He paused, his dark eyes locking onto hers with an intensity that made the floor feel weightless. "But the moment I saw you refuse to bow your head while those vultures tore your dress apart... it stopped being about my past. It became about your future."
Vance’s voice cracked over the intercom. "Visual contact in five hundred yards. Kill the running lights."
