Chapter 4 - The Shadow RisesBut before Lily could sign anything else, a heavy oak chair scraped loudly against the floor behind me.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. The silence in the restaurant deepened, turning into something heavy and absolute. Every heartbeat in the room seemed to stop.
I slowly stood up, turning around to face the head of the table.
Marcus Blackwood was standing.
The most dangerous man in Chicago towered over me, his broad shoulders filling my field of vision. His dark suit was immaculate, his silver-streaked hair brushed back sharply, and his cold, piercing eyes locked directly onto mine.
I braced myself for the explosion. I waited for the guards to drag me away, or worse. I waited for the cold, dead fury of a mob boss whose privacy had been breached.
Instead, Marcus didn't move.
He wasn't looking at me with anger. He wasn't looking with suspicion or malice.
He was staring at me with something far more terrifying.
Shock.
His breath hitched slightly, his jaw tightening as his dark eyes darted from my face down to my hands, and then back up to my eyes. It was the look of a man who had just seen a ghost walk out of a nightmare.
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Because in that single, frozen fraction of a second, he had just discovered a secret nobody in that room was supposed to know.
And as I stood there beneath his heavy gaze, I realized with a sickening lurch in my stomach: the moment I signed to his daughter, I had just changed my life forever.
