Chapter 7 - The Prisoner of My Heart
The safehouse was not a manor.
It was an old stone hunting lodge built into the granite bluffs overlooking the Apostle Islands, forty miles south of the Canadian border. The property was heavily wooded, surrounded by high chain-link fencing topped with razor wire, and monitored by thermal cameras hidden in the pine boughs.
Inside, a massive stone fireplace dominated the living room, throwing orange heat across heavy timber furniture and wool rugs.
Nenah sat on a deep leather sofa, a thick wool blanket wrapped around her shoulders, holding a mug of hot mint tea that Jonas had prepared for her thirty minutes prior.
Jonas was in the rear study, speaking into an encrypted satellite phone in low, urgent tones, managing the tactical deployment of loyal Kincaid units back in Cook County.
Reed stood by the window, staring out into the dark forest.
He had showered. He had washed the blood and slush from his skin, shaved his beard, and put on a clean black sweater and dark trousers. But he still looked fragile—like glass that had been struck by a hammer and was holding together only by surface tension.
“You should eat something,” Nenah said from the sofa.
Reed turned his head slightly. A faint, self-deprecating smile touched his lips.
“You’re still doing it,” he said softly.
“Doing what?”
“Worrying about whether I’ve eaten,” Reed said, turning away from the window and walking toward the hearth. “Even after everything I brought to your door.”
He sat down on the stone hearth, six feet away from her, keeping a respectful distance. He looked into the flames, the orange light dancing across his sharp, exhausted features.
“Carolyn’s father has four captains in his pocket,” Reed said quietly, keeping his voice level. “They’re moving fifty million dollars out of our shipping accounts tonight through Zurich. Victor thinks I’m still in Grand Marais, chasing an irrelevant ghost.”
“And what are you going to do?” Nenah asked.
Reed looked at her.
“I’m going to kill them, Nenah,” he said, not with rage, but with a terrifying, clinical finality. “Victor. Carolyn. The four captains who took their money. All of them.”
Nenah looked down into her tea. “And then what? Another alliance? Another family to replace the Davenports? More men at your table smiling while they measure your coffin?”
“No,” Reed said.
The word was quiet, but it carried the weight of an anchor dropping into deep water.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, looking directly into her dark eyes.
“I’m done, Nenah.”
Nenah frowned. “Done with what?”
“With all of it,” Reed said. “The Kincaid family. The territory. The shipping docks. The boardroom. The eight years I spent being the monster my father wanted me to be.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a gold signet ring—the heavy, engraved crest of the Kincaid syndicate that his father had worn for forty years before him.
He held it over the open hearth.
“This ring killed my mother,” Reed said, his voice flat, devoid of sentimentality. “It turned my father into a paranoid lunatic who died screaming at shadows in a hospital room. And it almost made me lose the only person who ever looked at me and saw a human being.”
With a flick of his fingers, Reed dropped the gold ring into the white-hot embers of the fire.
The gold didn't melt immediately, but it sank into the ash, blackened and buried beneath the burning birch logs.
Nenah stared at the fire, her heart hammering against her ribs.
“You can’t just walk away from an empire like that, Reed,” she whispered. “Men like you don't retire. They get buried.”
“They get buried if they try to hold onto both,” Reed replied, his gaze unwavering, fixed entirely on her face. “If they try to keep the money and the peace. If they try to keep the crown while asking for grace.”
He slid off the hearth and moved across the floor, stopping right in front of her sofa. He didn't touch her, but his presence was warm, overwhelming, filling the entire room.
“I’m leaving the entire organization to Jonas,” Reed said. “Jonas knows how to run it. He has the respect of the old guard, and he doesn't have the blood debt to the Davenports that I have. Jonas will take the assets, reorganize the logistics into legitimate holding companies, and retire the street crews.”
Reed leaned closer, his voice dropping into a tender, desperate whisper.
“And I am going to take whatever money my father earned legally before he built the syndicate, buy a house three thousand miles from Chicago, and spend the rest of my life learning how to slice onions without dropping them on the floor.”
Nenah looked at him.
She saw the raw, naked truth in his eyes—the same truth she had seen on the kitchen floor at three in the morning.
For two years, she had guarded her heart with walls made of silence and self-reliance. She had survived foster care, poverty, and loneliness by never allowing herself to need anyone.
And yet, looking at this broken king who had just thrown his empire into a fireplace for her, the last wall inside her chest crumbled into dust.
She set her tea mug down on the coffee table.
She reached out, took his hands in hers, and pulled them toward her stomach.
Reed went still.
His breath caught in his throat as her fingers pressed his large, calloused palms against the soft curve of her abdomen beneath the flannel shirt.
He looked down at his hands.
He looked up at her face, his eyes widening in sudden, staggering comprehension.
“Nenah…” he breathed, his voice barely a gasp. “Is it…”
“Seven weeks,” Nenah whispered, a tear finally escaping her eye and rolling down her cheek. “Since the blizzard.”
Reed stopped breathing entirely.
The color drained from his face, replaced by a shock so profound, so overwhelming, that he began to tremble from head to foot.
He looked down at his hands resting on her belly—hands that had held guns, signed death warrants, and commanded armies of killers.
And then, with a sound that was half-laugh and half-sob, Reed Kincaid buried his face in her lap.
He wept.
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He wept like a child, his arms wrapping around her waist, holding her with a gentleness that was almost painful, pressing his cheek against the life growing inside her while Nenah stroked his dark hair, the fire crackling in the hearth, burning away the last remnants of an eight-year-old nightmare.
***
