“For most of my life.”
“And now?”
“Now I think never loving anyone is a more pathetic weakness.”
Mabel’s fingers moved across the table and covered his.
The contact nearly undid him.
“You don’t have to tell me everything tonight,” she said. “But don’t make me regret trusting you.”
“I would rather cut out my own heart.”
“That sounds dramatic.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
She smiled, and he lifted her hand to his mouth.
The kiss he pressed to her knuckles was restrained.
The one she gave him moments later was not.
Weeks of tenderness, curiosity, and fear broke open between them. He kissed her beneath the café’s dim light, one hand cradling her face as though she were something sacred. When he pulled away, she followed him, catching his torn coat in her fists.
That night she went with him to the rented room.
There were no diamonds, no silk sheets, no servants waiting beyond the door. Only rain against a cracked window and a narrow bed beneath a flickering lamp.
He asked her twice whether she was certain.
She answered by touching his face.
What passed between them was gentle, chosen, and real.
For a few stolen hours, Adrien Cain possessed no empire, and Mabel Hart carried no crushing burden.
They were simply two lonely people holding each other against the dark.
Three mornings later, Bishop called.
The Rourke family had attacked a Cain facility near the harbor. Three men were in critical condition. More importantly, Adrien’s mother had received photographs of herself leaving church, accompanied by a message promising that the next photograph would show her body.
A black sedan stopped outside Rossi’s.
Adrien stood on the sidewalk with Mabel’s scarf around his neck.
“I need ten minutes,” he told Bishop.
“You do not have ten minutes.”
“She will think I abandoned her.”
“If Rourke learns she matters to you, abandonment will be the kindest thing they do to her.”
Adrien looked toward the restaurant.
Through the glass, he saw Mabel tying her apron.
She turned as though sensing him.
Their eyes almost met.
Bishop opened the rear door.
“Choose,” he said quietly. “Tell her and make her a target, or leave and give her a chance to remain invisible.”
Adrien entered the car.
It was the hardest decision he had ever made, and before the vehicle reached the next intersection, he knew it was also the most cowardly.
Mabel came outside carrying two coffees.
The wall was empty.
He did not return the next day.
Or the day after that.
She waited for two weeks before admitting that he was gone.
The blow that followed came from Coraline.
During a crowded Saturday dinner, Coraline screamed that her diamond bracelet had disappeared. She accused Mabel in front of the entire restaurant.
Mr. Foster searched Mabel’s handbag.
The bracelet lay beneath her wallet.
Mabel stared at it, unable to breathe.
“I didn’t put that there.”
Coraline folded her arms. “Of course you didn’t.”
Diners watched with eager contempt.
Foster’s face sagged. “Mabel, I have to let you go.”
“You know me.”
“I know what was found.”
“You know me,” she repeated.
But fear of wealthy customers mattered more than years of loyal work.
Mabel removed her apron while Coraline smiled.
She walked through the dining room with her head high, although every step felt like glass cutting into her feet.
Within a month, Evelyn Hart missed two dialysis treatments.
Within two months, Mabel had been rejected from eleven jobs because Rossi’s listed theft as the reason for her dismissal.
Within three months, morning sickness forced her to accept the truth she had been avoiding.
She sat on the bathroom floor holding a pregnancy test while the apartment heater rattled uselessly.
Two pink lines stared back at her.
Her hand moved over her stomach.
The child’s father had vanished without a goodbye.
For one terrible minute, despair whispered that she could not carry another life when she was already failing the people she loved.
Then she thought of the man outside Rossi’s, alone in the cold.
She remembered telling him that everyone deserved to be treated as human.
Her child deserved no less.
