Part 2
Emma forgot how to breathe.
The office around her seemed to narrow until there was only Roman Callahan’s face, Lily’s small sleeping body beneath his jacket, and the name caught between them like a lit match in a room full of gas.
Caleb.
Roman said it as if it belonged to a grave.
Emma remembered it as a laugh in a kitchen at midnight. A man with oil under his fingernails and flour on his cheek because he had tried to make pancakes from a box and somehow ruined even that. A man who had pressed his hand against her stomach before Lily had been more than a secret flutter and whispered, “She’s going to be stubborn. I can tell.”
She had asked him how.
He had smiled.
“Because she’s yours.”
Now the most feared man in Chicago was standing three feet away from her, saying that same name with a brother’s grief hidden beneath a crime lord’s voice.
Roman noticed the change in her face.
“What?” he asked.
Emma swallowed. Her mouth had gone dry.
“Nothing.”
His eyes sharpened. “Emma.”
The way he said her name made lying feel dangerous.
She looked toward Lily, still asleep, her cheek pressed against Roman’s shirt. The sight should have frightened her. Maybe it did. But beneath the fear was something worse: recognition. Lily had the same dark sweep of lashes as Roman. The same stubborn crease between her brows when she dreamed. The same small, serious fist.
Emma had never noticed it before because she had never seen Roman Callahan this close.
“Caleb,” she said carefully. “What was his last name?”
Roman went still.
For the first time since Emma had met him, the room seemed to lose him. His presence did not fade, but it changed. The predator became the man before the weapon. His hand shifted gently over Lily’s back, almost instinctively, as if shielding her from what he already feared she might say.
“Callahan,” he answered.
Emma’s heart struck once, hard.
“That wasn’t the name he gave me.”
Roman’s jaw tightened. “What name did he give you?”
She could have stopped there. She could have said she misunderstood. She could have picked up Lily, walked out, and prayed Roman never looked her way again.
But Lily stirred under his jacket, making a small sound, and Emma thought of seventeen months of rent paid late, groceries counted by the dollar, nights spent wondering why the man who once cried over their unborn child had walked out without leaving so much as a note.
“Caleb Price,” she whispered.
Roman’s face did not move.
But something in him did.
A silence fell so deep that Emma heard the muffled music from the restaurant upstairs, the clink of glasses, the muted laughter of people who had no idea that the floor beneath them held secrets sharp enough to cut lives open.
Roman looked down at Lily again.
“How old is she?”
“Fourteen months.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
When he opened them, there was no softness left. Not exactly. There was control, but it had been dragged over something raw.
“Was Caleb her father?”
Emma’s hands tightened around each other. “Yes.”
Roman turned away, but only halfway, as if he could not bear to look at her and could not bear to stop looking at the child.
“Did he know?”
“Yes.”
“He knew you were pregnant?”
“Yes.”
Roman’s breath left him slowly.
Emma hated that part of her wanted him to be angry. Anger she understood. Anger had edges. Anger had a direction. But grief from a man like Roman Callahan felt like watching a building crack from the inside.
“He left two weeks after I told him,” she said. “No warning. No message. I thought he changed his mind.”
Roman looked back at her. “He didn’t.”
The words struck harder than she expected.
Emma shook her head once. “You don’t know that.”
“I knew my brother.”
“Maybe not as well as you thought.”
The moment she said it, she regretted it.
Roman’s eyes turned colder.
But Lily shifted in his arms, her tiny mouth opening in a sleepy sigh, and whatever response he might have given died before it reached his tongue.
He carried her to the leather sofa and lowered himself carefully, as if handling something fragile and unfamiliar. Lily did not wake. She tucked herself deeper into his jacket, one little hand grabbing the edge of his shirt.
Roman stared at that hand.
Emma had seen men tremble in front of him upstairs. Men twice his size. Men who carried guns and debts and lies. Yet now he looked unsettled by a sleeping baby’s fingers.
“What did he tell you about himself?” Roman asked.
Emma sat across from him slowly.
“That he had no family worth mentioning.”
Roman’s mouth twisted, not quite a smile. “That sounds like Caleb when he was trying to be dramatic.”
“He said he worked at a garage near Pilsen.”
“He did, for a while.”
“He said he didn’t want trouble.”
“That was a lie.”
Emma looked up.
Roman’s voice remained flat. “Caleb always wanted trouble. He just wanted to be the one choosing it.”
She felt an old ache open. “He wasn’t like that with me.”
“No,” Roman said quietly. “Maybe he wasn’t.”
For a while, neither of them spoke.
The office felt too warm. Emma could smell Roman’s cologne, faint smoke, old paper, and Lily’s baby lotion from the diaper bag at her feet. The combination made the moment feel impossible, as if two worlds had collided and neither knew which one was supposed to survive.
Finally, Roman said, “When did you last see him?”
Emma remembered it too clearly.
A Thursday morning. Frost on the window. Caleb standing in her doorway with his coat collar turned up, his face pale beneath a week’s worth of stubble. He had kissed her forehead, then crouched to press his lips to her stomach.
“I’ll be back before dinner,” he said.
He smelled like gasoline and rain.
He had not come back.
“February ninth,” she said.
Roman’s eyes lifted sharply.
“What time?”
“Early. Around seven.”
His face closed.
Emma leaned forward. “What?”
Roman did not answer.
“What happened on February ninth?”
Roman looked toward the office door. When he spoke, his voice had dropped. “That was the day Caleb came to me.”
Emma’s pulse quickened. “You saw him?”
“Yes.”
“After he left me?”
Roman nodded once.
“And you never looked for me?”
“I didn’t know you existed.”
The answer came too quickly to be false.
Emma sat back, feeling suddenly cold.
Roman shifted Lily slightly when she made a soft fussing noise, his palm spreading across her back with surprising ease.
“He came here that morning,” Roman said. “Covered in blood. Not all of it his.”
Emma’s stomach turned.
“He said he had made a mistake. That he had taken something from people worse than me.”
“Worse than you?” she said before she could stop herself.
Roman gave her a look.
Even now, fear should have silenced her.
It did not.
He continued. “He had stolen a ledger. Not money. Not drugs. Information. Names, routes, payments, judges, cops, aldermen. A record that could burn half the city if it landed in the right hands.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I asked him the same thing.”
“And?”
Roman’s eyes moved to Lily. “He said he needed out.”
The words slipped into Emma like a blade.
Out.
Caleb had once told her he wanted a small house with a blue door. Nothing fancy. Just a yard, a kitchen, a lock that belonged to them. She had laughed because men like Caleb did not talk like that. But he had looked serious.
“I want ordinary,” he had said. “I want so ordinary it bores people.”
Emma pressed her fingers against her lips.
Roman noticed.
“What else?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Emma.”
“I’m trying to understand what any of this means.”
“It means my brother stole something powerful enough to get him killed, then disappeared. And now I find out he had a child no one told me about.”
“You say that like I hid her from you.”
“I’m saying someone hid all of it.”
His tone was not accusing, but Emma’s spine stiffened anyway.
“I was alone,” she said. “Pregnant, broke, and alone. I didn’t know his real name. I didn’t know you. I didn’t know anything except that he was gone.”
For a second, Roman looked as if he might answer sharply. Instead, he lowered his gaze to Lily.
“You’re right,” he said.
Those two words surprised her more than any threat could have.
Before she could respond, Lily began to stir.
Her face scrunched. Her mouth opened. A small unhappy cry filled the office.
Emma stood at once.
“She’s hungry.”
Roman looked down at the child in his arms as if someone had handed him a bomb with a heartbeat.
Emma almost laughed. The sound caught in her chest and came out broken.
“Give her to me.”
Roman did.
Carefully.
Too carefully.
Lily woke fully as Emma settled her against her hip, rubbing her back and murmuring nonsense into her curls. Roman watched the whole thing with an expression so unreadable it unsettled Emma more than his anger had.
Emma took a bottle from the diaper bag and fed Lily on the sofa. The baby drank sleepily, one hand opening and closing against Emma’s collar.
Roman moved to his desk, but he did not sit. He picked up the phone again.
“Find Dominic,” he said. “Now.”
Emma looked up.
Roman hung up before she could ask.
“Who’s Dominic?”
“My cousin.”
“Is he dangerous?”
Roman’s mouth twitched faintly. “Everyone in my family is dangerous. Dominic is useful.”
“That doesn’t comfort me.”
“It wasn’t meant to.”
Despite herself, Emma felt the corner of her mouth move.
The almost-smile vanished when the office door opened.
The man who entered was lean, sharp-eyed, and dressed like he had walked out of a wedding and into a knife fight. His hair was slicked back, his tie loosened, his expression amused until he saw Emma and the baby.
Then his face changed.
Not much.
But enough.
“Roman,” he said slowly. “Tell me that isn’t what I think it is.”
Roman’s voice was quiet. “Caleb had a daughter.”
Dominic’s eyes snapped to Lily.
Emma held her tighter.
Dominic noticed and lifted both hands slightly. “Easy. I’m not the baby-snatching cousin.”
“Not tonight,” Roman said.
Dominic ignored him. “Who’s the mother?”
Emma raised her chin. “I am.”
He studied her with unsettling focus. “Name?”
“Emma Hart.”
Something flickered through his eyes.
Roman saw it. “What?”
Dominic looked from Emma to Roman. “We have a problem.”
Roman’s face darkened. “Speak.”
Dominic stepped inside and closed the door.
“I heard that name before. Emma Hart. It came up in a call we pulled from Novak’s people last year.”
Emma frowned. “Novak?”
Roman went very still.
Dominic’s voice lost all humor. “They were looking for her.”
The bottle slipped slightly in Emma’s hand.
Lily fussed.
Roman crossed the room in one step, not toward Emma, but between her and the door.
“Why?” he asked.
Dominic hesitated.
Roman’s stare hardened. “Why?”
“Because they thought Caleb gave her something.”
Emma shook her head. “He didn’t give me anything.”
“Think,” Roman said.
“I am thinking.”
“Something small. A key. A note. A drive. A book. Anything.”
“He didn’t.”
Dominic looked at Lily. “Maybe not to her.”
The room turned silent.
Emma’s blood went cold.
Roman’s voice was deadly soft. “Choose your next words carefully.”
Dominic swallowed. “I’m saying Caleb knew he might be followed. If he wanted to hide something where no one would look—”
“No,” Emma snapped.
Both men looked at her.
She stood, Lily in her arms.
“No. You do not get to turn my daughter into one of your mysteries.”
Roman’s expression shifted. “Emma—”
“No. I don’t care who Caleb was to you. I don’t care what he stole. She is a baby.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Her voice cracked. “Because men like you say things like that, and then people like me end up buried under them.”
Dominic looked away.
Roman did not.
For a moment, Emma thought he would remind her who he was. What he could do. How little choice she truly had in his office, in his restaurant, in his city.
Instead he said, “No one touches her.”
The words were simple.
Dominic’s eyebrows lifted.
Roman did not look at him. “No one.”
Emma wanted to believe him.
She hated that she almost did.
A knock came at the door.
Dominic turned slightly, hand near his jacket.
Roman’s eyes narrowed. “Who is it?”
A voice from outside answered, “Marco.”
Roman opened the door himself.
Marco stood in the hallway, pale beneath the golden light. He was one of the bartenders upstairs, a nervous man with a thin mustache and a habit of wiping glasses until they squeaked.
“There’s someone asking for Emma,” Marco said.
Emma’s heart dropped.
Roman did not move. “Who?”
Marco glanced past him toward her. “Man says he’s her brother.”
“I don’t have a brother,” Emma whispered.
Roman’s face became something terrible.
“Where is he?”
“By the coat check.”
Dominic smiled without warmth. “That was fast.”
Roman turned to Emma. “Stay here.”
“No.”
His eyes cut to her.
She took a step back with Lily. “I’m not staying in a room underground while strange men ask for me upstairs.”
“You’ll be safer here.”
“I have spent almost two years being told what was safer by men who disappeared.”
Roman absorbed that.
Then he looked at Dominic. “Take the back stairs. Quietly. See if he came alone.”
Dominic nodded and left.
Roman turned back to Emma. “You stay behind me. You do exactly what I say.”
Emma almost argued.
Then Lily hiccupped against her shoulder, warm and trusting.
Emma nodded.
Roman led them out.
The corridor beyond the office was dim, lined with dark wood and framed photographs of men who looked like they had never smiled without permission. Emma had passed the entrance to this hallway for months and never wondered what lay beyond it. Now every step felt like walking deeper into someone else’s war.
They climbed a narrow staircase that opened near the private dining rooms. Music swelled as Roman pushed through a service door. The restaurant was alive above them—laughter, candles, silverware, wine poured into crystal, women in velvet dresses, men with expensive watches.
And near the coat check stood a man Emma had never seen.
He was tall, with sandy hair and a pleasant face that did not belong in a place like this. He wore a gray overcoat and held a folded newspaper beneath one arm.
When he saw Emma, he smiled.
The smile chilled her.
“Emma,” he called warmly, as if they were old friends. “Thank God. I’ve been looking everywhere.”
Roman stopped.
The man’s eyes moved to him, and the smile did not falter.
“Mr. Callahan,” he said. “Didn’t expect personal service.”
Roman said nothing.
The restaurant seemed to sense the change. Conversations softened. A waiter paused mid-step.
The man looked back at Emma. “I’m sorry to bother you at work. It’s about Caleb.”
Emma’s fingers dug into Lily’s blanket.
Roman’s voice was low. “You don’t say that name here.”
The man sighed. “Then I’ll say another. Caleb Callahan. Your brother. Her lover. The baby’s father.”
A woman at a nearby table gasped.
Roman did not turn.
Emma’s face burned. Fear and fury tangled in her chest.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
The man reached into his coat.
Every Callahan man in the room moved.
The man froze, then slowly withdrew a white envelope between two fingers.
“Just a messenger,” he said. “And a polite one, for now.”
Roman took the envelope.
The man’s eyes remained on Emma.
“He told me you’d have her eyes,” he said softly.
Emma went cold. “Who told you?”
The man smiled again.
“Caleb.”
Roman stepped forward.
The man did not step back.
“He’s alive,” the stranger said.
The words tore through Emma so violently that she almost lost her grip on Lily.
Roman caught her elbow.
For one second, she let him.
The stranger glanced at Roman’s hand on her arm, then at the baby.
“He wants to see his daughter.”
Roman’s voice was barely human. “Where is he?”
The man tapped the newspaper under his arm. “That depends on what Emma gives us.”
“I don’t have anything,” Emma said.
“You do.”
“I don’t.”
The man’s pleasant expression thinned. “Caleb was always sentimental. That was his weakness. He trusted love to keep secrets better than fear.”
Roman’s grip on the envelope tightened.
“Leave,” he said.
The man looked around the room, noting the watching faces, the silent guards, the waiters pretending not to listen.
Then he bowed his head slightly. “Twenty-four hours.”
“For what?” Emma asked.
“To remember what he left behind.”
“I told you, he left nothing.”
The man’s eyes dropped to Lily.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he said. “He left everything.”
Roman moved so fast Emma barely saw it.
One moment the man was standing. The next, Roman had him by the throat against the wall near the coat check, the newspaper crushed between them.
The room erupted in startled cries.
Lily began to wail.
Emma stepped forward, panicked. “Roman!”
He heard Lily.
That was what stopped him.
Not the stranger’s choking sound. Not the witnesses. Not the danger.
Lily’s cry cut through him.
Roman released the man, who bent forward coughing, still smiling through it.
“Twenty-four hours,” he rasped.
Then he walked out into the snowy Chicago night.
No one stopped him.
Roman turned slowly to the room.
“Dinner is on the house,” he said.
The conversations did not resume until he had guided Emma and Lily back through the service door.
By the time they reached the office, Emma’s hands were shaking so badly she could barely hold Lily. Roman noticed and took the baby without asking. This time Emma did not resist.
Lily sobbed against his chest, angry and frightened.
Roman walked with her, slow circles across the rug, one hand supporting her head, the other patting her back in an awkward rhythm that somehow worked. His face remained hard, but his voice changed when he spoke to the child.
“Enough now,” he murmured. “You’re safe.”
Lily cried louder.
Roman frowned. “That usually works on grown men.”
A shaky laugh escaped Emma before she could stop it.
Roman looked at her.
For a second, the room changed again.
Then Dominic entered through the side door, breathing hard.
“He had two cars outside,” Dominic said. “We tailed both. Lost one near Halsted.”
Roman handed him the envelope. “Open it.”
Dominic did.
Inside was a photograph.
Roman took it first.
Emma watched his face.
Whatever he saw made him stop moving.
He gave the photo to her.
Emma looked down.
Her knees nearly failed.
Caleb stood in the picture, thinner than she remembered, with bruises along his jaw and a beard grown rough across his face. He was alive. Older somehow. His eyes looked hollow, but it was him.
He held a newspaper dated two days ago.
Behind him was a wall painted blue.
On the back of the photograph, written in black ink, were six words:
Ask Emma about the silver lamb.
Emma stared.
Roman watched her. “What silver lamb?”
“I don’t know.”
Dominic leaned closer. “You sure?”
“Yes.”
But even as she said it, a memory stirred.
A baby shower that had not really been a shower because she had only known three people well enough to invite. Mrs. Alvarez had brought arroz con leche. A coworker had brought diapers. Caleb had been gone by then, vanished into silence. But one package had arrived by mail with no return address.
Inside was a small silver lamb charm on a thin chain.
Emma had thought it was strange. Too delicate for a baby, too personal from no one. She had cried over it that night because it felt like the only proof that maybe Caleb had remembered.
She had put it away.
Then forgotten it.
Her expression must have betrayed her.
Roman’s eyes narrowed. “Emma.”
She sat down slowly. “There was something.”
Dominic exhaled. “Here we go.”
Roman silenced him with a look.
“What was it?” he asked.
“A necklace. A tiny silver lamb. It came before Lily was born. No note. I didn’t know it was from him.”
“Where is it now?”
“At my apartment.”
Roman reached for his coat. “We go now.”
Emma stood. “No.”
He turned.
“I’m going,” she said. “Not one of your men. Not without me.”
“You and Lily stay here.”
“No.”
His patience visibly strained. “Emma, the man who came here tonight knew your name, your child, Caleb, and something hidden in your home. You are not walking into that apartment.”
“That apartment is all I have.”
“It may already be compromised.”
“Then I need to see it.”
Roman looked as if he wanted to argue.
Lily, exhausted from crying, hiccupped against his chest.
Emma reached for her daughter. “And I’m not leaving her either.”
Roman studied her for a long moment.
Then he said, “Fine. But we do it my way.”
His way involved three black cars, six armed men, Dominic muttering into a phone, and Roman sitting beside Emma in the back seat with Lily asleep between them in her car seat.
The city slid past in black glass and white snow.
Emma had never felt so visible and so hidden at the same time.
Her apartment was on the third floor of a brick building where the heat knocked in the pipes and the hallway always smelled faintly of onions and laundry soap. Roman’s men cleared the building first. Emma waited in the car, every second stretching until she thought she might scream.
When Roman finally opened the door, he said, “No one inside.”
She carried Lily up herself.
Roman followed.
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