Chapter 2 - The Weight of Concrete and Bone
The biting Chicago wind screamed down the alleyway, carrying the sharp, metallic tang of approaching snow, but Cole Ashworth felt none of it. His blood had turned to liquid nitrogen.
He dropped to his knees on the filthy, salt-crusted pavement, ignoring the expensive wool of his tailored coat soaking into the slush. His large hands, usually steady when signing death warrants or shifting millions across offshore accounts, shook violently as he reached out.
Beneath the thin, threadbare winter coat lay his mother, Martha Ashworth.
Her face was translucent, the skin stretched so tight over her cheekbones that she looked like a polished skull. Her lips were cracked and blue, her breathing a shallow, rattling gasp that barely moved the fabric of her chest. She weighed nothing—less than a child.
“Ma,” Cole whispered, a sound tearing from his throat that didn't sound like him at all. It sounded like the terrified boy he had been eight years ago, before he built an empire out of blood and concrete. “Ma, open your eyes. Look at me.”
Beside him, the young woman—her hands raw, red, and bleeding from where she had been desperately rubbing Martha’s frozen fingers—sobbed softly, pulling her own ragged coat tighter around her shivering shoulders.
“I tried... I tried to keep her warm,” the girl choked out, her voice cracking with exhaustion. “She... she fell outside the deli three blocks down. Everyone just walked past her. I dragged her into this alcove... I gave her my scarf... but she was getting too cold...”
Cole didn't look up at her yet. He slipped his arms beneath his mother’s frail, skeletal frame, lifting her effortlessly against his chest. As he stood, the towering bulk of Moose, his massive Neapolitan mastiff, stepped in close, pressing his warm, heavy body against Cole’s legs to shield them both from the driving wind.
Cole turned his cold, storm-gray eyes toward the young woman. For a fraction of a second, the terror in her tired brown eyes flared anew as she looked up at the towering, heavily armed mafia boss holding an old woman in his arms.
“What’s your name?” Cole demanded, his voice low, vibrating with a terrifying, contained fury.
“N-Nora,” she stammered, shrinking back slightly. “Nora Miller.”
May you like
Cole looked at her raw, bleeding hands—hands that had spent the last hour sacrificing her own body heat to save a stranger everyone else had left to die.
“Nora,” Cole said, his voice dropping into an absolute, unyielding command. “Get into the sedan. Right now.”
