Chapter 6 - The Shadows of the Past
The nor'easter slammed into the coast of Maine with the force of an artillery barrage.
The cedar shingles of the cottage groaned under the relentless pressure of eighty-mile-per-hour gusts that hurled frozen Atlantic spray against the walls.
Inside, the electricity had failed two hours ago, plunging the tiny room into a cavernous, freezing gloom.
The only illumination came from three stubby white candles Isabella had found in a rusted tin beneath the sink.
She lay on her side on the small sofa, her knees pulled toward her chest as another wave of labor pain washed over her body like molten lead.
She bit down hard on the sleeve of her wool sweater to keep from screaming into the dark.
She could feel the baby descending, pressing with relentless weight against her cervix.
The prepaid phone lay on the floor three feet away, its screen dark and lifeless once more.
The battery had died twenty seconds after the signal had connected to the coastal tower, long before she could dial the local emergency dispatch in Havenport.
She was truly, entirely cut off from the human race.
Outside, the gravel road had vanished completely under a two-foot drift of packed, blowing snow.
Even Martha Finch’s heavy four-wheel-drive farm truck across the lane was buried up to its wheel wells in white drifts.
Through the howling roar of the wind, Isabella thought she heard the deep, rhythmic drone of heavy diesel engines vibrating through the frozen bedrock.
She opened her eyes, blinking through tears of pain and fever.
She told herself it was a hallucination brought on by exhaustion and the agonizing rhythmic tightening of her womb.
Nobody could drive through a Maine blizzard at night.
The state police had closed the interstate six hours ago; the radio had confirmed it before the power lines were ripped from the telephone poles.
Yet the rumble grew louder, vibrating the floorboards beneath the thin rag rug.
Twin beams of piercing halogen light suddenly cut through the driving snow outside the front window, sweeping across the pine-paneled ceiling of the cottage.
Isabella froze, her breath catching in her dry throat as a contraction seized her midsection with brutal intensity.
The heavy thud of a vehicle door slamming shut echoed through the storm, followed by the crunch of heavy boots breaking through the crust of frozen snow.
Her heart began to race with a mixture of suffocating dread and a desperate, traitorous hope that made her chest ache.
Had Vanessa’s mercenaries tracked her down to finish the job before Adrien could intervene?
Or had the demon she ran from finally caught up to her?
She reached blindly behind the sofa cushion, her fingers closing around the cold wooden handle of an eight-inch kitchen knife she had hidden there two days ago.
The wooden front door of the cottage rattled violently under two heavy, authoritative blows.
"Clara?" a woman's voice shouted over the wind.
It was Martha Finch, breathless and muffled through the thick cedar wood.
"Clara, open up, girl!"
"There’s men out here in military trucks who claim they know your real name!"
Isabella tried to stand, but her legs gave out beneath her, and she crashed to her knees on the cold floorboards with a cry of pain.
The door burst inward with a splintering crash as the rusted brass latch gave way under a massive shoulder strike.
A swirl of freezing white snow and sub-zero air rushed into the room, instantly blowing out two of the three flickering candles.
Framed in the doorway stood the towering silhouette of a man in a black wool coat, his broad shoulders coated in a layer of driving white snow.
His face was shadowed by the storm, but the sheer, overwhelming presence that filled the small room could belong to only one man on earth.
Adrien Moretti.
His hair was wild and damp with melted ice, his jaw covered in several days of dark, rough stubble.
His gray eyes swept the room like searchlights until they dropped to the floor, finding Isabella huddled beside the overturned rag rug.
For three long seconds, the storm raged behind him, yet the room felt as silent as a cathedral crypt.
Adrien’s chest heaved as if he had just run ten miles uphill through the drifts.
He did not speak.
He dropped to his knees on the freezing floorboards, the heavy impact vibrating the timber, and threw his arms around her trembling body.
Isabella gasped, the knife slipping from her numb fingers and clattering harmlessly against the stone hearth.
His coat was freezing cold and smelled of diesel fuel, gun oil, and winter rain, but the body beneath it was burning with an incandescent, desperate heat.
He buried his face in the crook of her neck, his broad shoulders shaking with violent, silent sobs that shocked her to the core of her soul.
Adrien Moretti, the man who had watched rival crime bosses beg for their lives without blinking an eye, was weeping into her collarbone like a broken beggar.
"Bella," he choked out, his voice cracked and raw from days of endless screaming and shouting into the void.
"Bella, please."
"I found you."
"God help me, I found you."
Isabella tried to push his heavy chest away, her hands finding the soaked wool of his lapels, but she had no strength left in her arms.
"Don't... don't touch me," she whispered, her voice trembling with a mixture of fury and agonizing exhaustion.
"Go back to your alliance, Adrien."
"Go back to Vanessa."
Adrien pulled back just far enough to look into her pale, sweat-streaked face, his gray eyes bloodshot and drowning in genuine agony.
"There is no alliance, Bella," he pleaded, his large, calloused hands gently cupping her frozen cheeks, his thumbs wiping away her tears with infinite gentleness.
"Vanessa is in a federal holding cell in Philadelphia."
"Her family is bankrupt, their docks are seized, and Thomas Vance paid with his life for forging that document."
He pulled the crumpled, blood-stained original contract from his inner coat pocket and thrust it into her lap.
"Look at it!" he begged, his voice breaking.
"Read the forensic audit!"
"I never signed away our life, Isabella."
"I would burn the entire world to ash before I let another woman take your place."
Another contraction tore through Isabella’s abdomen, so violent and sudden that she threw her head back against his shoulder, letting out a piercing scream that cut through the roar of the blizzard outside.
Adrien’s face went completely white with terror.
He looked down at her swollen belly, seeing the visible, rigid spasm rippling across her sweater.
"Marcus!" Adrien roared toward the open doorway, his voice shaking the timber rafters of the ceiling.
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"Get the medical team in here now!"
"She's in labor!"
