Promises

by Aleatha Romig

  My tired smile grew. “I’d like that.” I reached up and kissed his cheek. “I’ll pour you a glass of wine—not my sweet stuff—and you can meet me in the kitchen.”

  “Sunshine, after today, I think I want something stronger. I have it in the office.” After another kiss to my forehead, he went on, “I’ll be out as soon as I can.”

  For a moment, I stood and watched as Sterling walked toward his office. He was still wearing the clothes from our trip to Cambridge, his long legs covered in worn denim. On his toned torso and strong arms was the fitted t-shirt he’d worn all day. His steps were determined, his shoulders broad and straight. No matter what was happening, he was still Sterling Sparrow, the ruler of Chicago. With that title came the weight of the concerns of not only this city, but of our friends, and yet there was still something powerful and regal in his presence. At the same time, I sensed a chink in his armor, something I would never have seen had I not been granted the privilege of knowing the man behind the mask.

  That instinct made me want to go to him and comfort him in a way only we could comfort one another. I started to follow him down the hall when the office door closed behind him.

  You’re being silly, I told myself.

  He was just worried about Lorna.

  Agreeing with my own reasoning, I changed direction and made my way to the kitchen, content to complete our meal.

  Sterling

  The call was complete. Carlos from the cartel in Denver wanted to speak directly to me. He’d sent a scouting crew to South Chicago as well as some of the best areas within the city proper for heroin sales. His scouts claimed that there was another racket in the city, one I didn’t disclose. My mind was a total blur, yet I sent the info to a couple of capos and promised to get back to Carlos with more information, assuring him our deal was secure and soon he’d have a valuable heroin network here in Chicago.

  I stared around my home office, seeing none of it, thinking instead about the lockbox. I’d been mostly honest with Araneae—completely honest with all I’d said. The data on the CDs was encrypted and Reid was having difficulty with the old formats. If they’d been created more recently, he would have had their information right away. It seemed like it should be the opposite—newer should be tougher—but it wasn’t. The obsolete programs, the one McCrie had used, were no longer compatible with today’s technology.

  Hell, Reid’s technology wasn’t today’s. It was tomorrow’s.

  Getting the information from them was like trying to read Egyptian hieroglyphs with an iPad. That may be a bad example as there was probably an app for that. The point was that Reid was having difficulty making the old data work with the new technology.

  We hadn’t tried the floppy disks yet to see what they contained. That was an entire lower level of technology.

  The information I hadn’t talked to Araneae about—the omitted contents of the lockbox—were the documents in the envelopes. They contained account and transfer numbers/information for overseas accounts set up with shell companies, as well as stock certificates in McCrie’s name with his beneficiaries named as first his child or children. In the case of no children, the assets of the stocks were to be bequeathed to his wife, Annabelle Landers.

  Technology was Reid’s specialty.

  Finances were my and Patrick’s repertoire.

  While he’d been gone rescuing Lorna, I was the one discovering the details on Daniel McCrie’s investments.

  At various times before Araneae was born, Daniel McCrie invested over $250,000 in Apple stock and $300,000 in Walmart—a strange yet successful combination. The stock matured—split, grew, fucking multiplied exponentially—remaining untouched for over twenty-five years. If Araneae was able to prove that she was the daughter of Daniel McCrie, in the stock investment alone, his due diligence and financial expertise will yield her over five billion in wealth.

  That amount doesn’t include the money he also hid in the offshore accounts. Those investments could be more difficult to access; nevertheless, in those accounts there too was certain to be a fortune.

  I found myself torn between being happy for her and the reality that once she knew of her wealth, she would no longer need me to stay safe. Though she would forever be mine, Araneae could hire her own fucking security team. She could build her own secure fortress. She could hire investors to turn her newfound wealth into trillions.

  She could choose to leave me and go on with her life.

  It didn’t matter what she decided; Araneae would always be under the protection of Sparrows. I’d made that declaration and I would honor it—a man’s word is either his most valuable tool or his most respected weapon. Even if she chose to go her own way, I’d keep my word.

  The idea of losing her ripped at my soul, preparing me for a loss I wasn’t confident I could survive.

  Since the moment of my discovery, my mind had been reeling with what that money could do for her as well as for her and Louisa’s investment in Sinful Threads. Their profits now were decent, but nothing like that kind of wealth could provide in expansion and exposure.

  The reality of my find gnawed at my gut, reminding me of my mother’s warning. Genevieve Sparrow told me not to find Araneae, to leave the dead as they’d been. She warned me that doing so would bring harm to more than my goal—Rubio McFadden. It would obliterate our world.

  With her warning running through my consciousness, I went to the highboy, opened a cupboard door, and found a crystal decanter of whiskey—Charbay Release III. Pouring two fingers in the tumbler, I listened as my mother’s warning rang like a clanging bell in my head.

  She’d been fucking right.

  Fucking king of Chicago.

  I could take a man’s life and not blink an eye. I could take a company’s money or evict them from their property. I could stop small two-bit drug dealers and open my streets to a Denver cartel. Politicians came to me for support. I greased their hands and they greased mine. My realm had given me all I needed, but I’d wanted more.

  I’d wanted revenge.

  For years, I’d anticipated that Araneae would lead me to the evidence. I’d prepared myself for what that discovery would bring, how to release it—leak it to the press—and then I’d watch McFadden fall from his fucking pedestal.

  I’d lusted after the woman who’d been mine for nearly two decades.

  I’d planned on claiming her, taking her, and making her mine. My plan was fucking perfect. The only annihilation would be the destruction that I controlled—McFadden.

  And then my plan changed.

  Lifting the crystal tumbler, I took a stiff drink, downing both fingers of whiskey.

  Pouring myself another, I continued my train of thought.

  Araneae was to be my acquisition, possession, the queen born to this world to fit upon my arm. She was to be at my disposal for my desires and to sit on a shelf when I was busy.

  That fucking arrangement was blown to oblivion the moment I stared into her chocolate eyes, the night I had her body pinned against the wall of the office in that dingy distribution center. The fuse had been lit, the explosion imminent, yet I was too enthralled to notice.

  Some fucking king of Chicago.

  Araneae McCrie wasn’t my possession or my acquisition.

  Yes, I’d claimed her.

  That didn’t matter.

  In every fucking way, Araneae McCrie had me, all of me—including a heart I didn’t know I possessed. I’d even promised to follow through on her plans with the evidence—letting her decide. I’d said that. I stood by my word. I wouldn’t take it back.

  The reality was that if the evidence was there and she chose to, Araneae could watch both McFadden and Sparrow fall. She could do that and walk away wealthier than she ever imagined.

  I’d done that—through my persistence I’d given her that ability.

  With the bait dangled for years in front of me, I’d entered my father’s trap, been snared, and now was about to fall, sinking to the depths of my own doing
. Allister’s plan to kill me in the war didn’t work. His plan to destroy me with the Sparrow underground didn’t succeed.

  His dying words were to tell me that he wasn’t done—there was a plan in motion.

  * * *

  Six years ago~

  * * *

  “You can’t kill me,” Allister Sparrow said, his back straight and shoulders squared. “I’m your father.”

  “This ring you’ve created has to go. I warned you to close it down or I would.” My words were strong and my jaw clenched although my blood was circulating at untold speed, threatening my nerve as the anticipation within me grew.

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s bigger than you. You can’t stop it.”

  I was finally here. I’d arrived at the day that I’d imagined since I was a teenager.

  The Chicago wind blew around us, highlighting our precarious positions.

  “You’re still a boy,” he sneered. “You think my men will follow you? You’re lying to yourself. Sparrow is made up of my men—ones I handpicked. They’ll revolt if anything happens to me.” His dark gaze narrowed. “Now, back away, boy, and stop playing men’s games.”

  He’d made the mistake of meeting me at a construction site for a building going up under the supervision of Sparrow Enterprises. A recent deluge of rain and a thundering downpour had left the fresh concrete shiny and the skeleton frame of the birthing skyscraper slippery.

  The message, relayed in person, not via technology, had asked him to meet three floors up. There was a concern with the rivets, alarm over the use of inferior supplies, someone skimming from Sparrow. He couldn’t resist a chance to tell me that I was overreacting, that I didn’t know what I was talking about. I counted on his superior attitude, knowing it would be his downfall.

  Allister was older and he’d say wiser, but with youth, I had strength on my side. There was more than that, I possessed a hatred for the man whose DNA I held, a hatred that had been suppressed for too long. As I stared into his dead eyes, I recalled the photos on his computer and the abuse he’d inflicted. I heard his laughter at the plights of those who couldn’t defend themselves. I remembered my mother’s tears. Twenty-six years of memories flooded my mind.

  As a child, I’d suffered under his hand and his words.

  I was never a victim.

  I was patient.

  As years passed, I was confident that my revenge would come and when it did, it would be sweet.

  The time had arrived. Allister Sparrow had recently announced the possibility of running for mayor of Chicago. With my mother’s connections and her status as an alderman on the City Council and my father’s business success, word on the street was that he’d be a shoo-in.

  Allister Sparrow didn’t want the office to help the city. He wanted the office because McFadden was in politics and he couldn’t stand the idea of Rubio having the upper hand in anything. When McFadden had only been an Illinois senator, Allister didn’t care. Now that Rubio McFadden was a US senator, my father wanted a piece of the pie. As mayor, he could grow the Sparrow outfit and conceal the illegal dealings.

  Allister turned away from me—fucking turned his back on me—and began to walk toward the construction lift we’d ridden up to this height.

  “Dad.” My one word caused him to turn back my way.

  I wanted him to witness his own demise, to observe its arrival.

  I wouldn’t shoot a man in the back.

  Allister Sparrow wouldn’t be killed from behind.

  My father’s chin jutted forward as he smugly waited for my next word, his long wool coat blowing in the wind. Instead of being intimidated by his stance, I moved forward. Defensively, he took a step back, his feet slipping as he wobbled on the steel beam nearly fifty feet above the ground. High enough to break a skull upon impact, yet not high enough on this closed site to catch anyone’s attention.

  With the blanket of nightfall and my man’s assistance in rerouting the security lighting, we two Sparrows were birds invisible to the rest of Chicago.

  In my imagination, I’d been the one to squeeze the life out of my father, to bring him to his knees, and to hear him finally acknowledge that I was capable of not only running Sparrow but doing it better. If time prevailed, I imagined him apologizing for the things he’d done, to my mother—his abuse, as well as his mistresses. To the children in the rings...

  Some fantasies were never meant to happen.

  As a gust of wind whipped up around us, his long coat became a sail. Allister’s hard-soled shoe slipped backward a split second before both of his feet came off the beam. With a grunt, he reached out. His long fingers grabbed ahold of the wet beam, suspending his body high in the air.

  “Sterling, help me.”

  It was the scene from Lion King and I was Scar.

  I knelt down and stared into his dark, dead eyes.

  My father was too old and weak to lift himself. Relief flooded his expression as I reached for his hand. Unlike the fictional lion brother, I didn’t pry Allister’s fingers from the horizontal beam. Instead, I took what was mine, utilizing a pair of sharp pliers I’d brought for the occasion.

  The old bone in his fourth finger of his right hand broke easily under my grasp with not much pressure from the pliers, its crack barely audible over the rush of blood through my ears.

  His scream echoed through the night sky before he growled his final words. “I’m not done, Sterling. I’ll win from the grave. Mark my words.”

  “From hell, Dad. From hell.”

  As my father fell to the shiny concrete below, I removed the golden family crest ring from his bloody digit before wrapping what remained of his finger in plastic and placing it in my pocket until I could dispose of it properly.

  A few hours later, two members of the Chicago police department met me in my office at Sparrow Enterprises to deliver the sad news. I didn’t normally work in the office that late; however, as I explained, I’d been waiting for my father. He’d asked to meet with me. Reid had the text message from my father as well as my image on Sparrow’s security footage throughout the entire evening.

  Twisting the golden ring on my right hand, I mustered all of the sympathy I could at the news of my father’s tragic accident and early demise.

  * * *

  Present~

  * * *

  I finished the second two fingers of whiskey and poured a third.

  “Fucking did it, didn’t you, Dad?” I looked down, not up. “You’re probably laughing at me now, you son of a bitch.”

  There was a light knock on the door as Araneae pushed it open, her chocolate eyes opened wide. “Sterling, are you all right?”

  My chest moved up and down with breaths as I tried to right the spinning room. “Long day, sunshine.”

  As if a dream, she came to me, placing her petite hands on my chest. “I know we’re under lockdown, but we need to go immediately.”

  The alcohol was making me fuzzy. I didn’t drink like this on a normal basis. I also hadn’t eaten. That wasn’t a great combination. “No,” I declared definitively. “We’re staying put. That’s what lockdown means.”

  “No, I called Patrick. He’s getting the plane ready.”

  Patrick. Fuck that.

  He took orders from me, not from her.

  Placing the tumbler on the highboy, I reached for Araneae’s shoulders. “Why can’t you do as I say just once?”

  “Sterling, Louisa is in labor.”

  Araneae

  Sterling’s gaze fluttered over me as if he were trying to comprehend my words.

  “What?” he asked, the scent of whiskey thick on his breath.

  “Louisa’s in labor.”

  He took a step back and ran his hand through his hair. “That food you said you made?”

  “It’s in the kitchen.”

  He looked around the office. “Shit, I’m sorry, Araneae. I thought we were here for the night.”

  “Sterling, tell me what’s wrong.” I s
aw the empty tumbler with the scant remnants of amber liquid. From the sight of his dark eyes, I could guess it wasn’t his first glass.

  His lips came to the top of my head. “Like I said, long day.” He inhaled. “And it sounds like it’s getting longer. Did you say you called Patrick?”

  I nodded. “Let’s eat first. A few minutes won’t make a big difference. Besides, Marianne needs to get back to the airport, and they need to refuel the plane.” When he looked at me like I was too full of information, I laughed. “Patrick told me that. I wouldn’t have known.”

  After a few deep breaths, he opened the cabinet door, revealing the small refrigerator and pulled out a water bottle. Removing the cap, he downed all of the contents, setting the empty bottle on the top of the highboy beside the empty tumbler. “Okay. First, your amazing cooking, and then we’re headed to Boulder.”

  I took his arm. “The hospital is in Denver.”

  “Is everything all right? There aren’t any effects from last Saturday, are there?”

  I was taken aback by his tone of genuine concern, as if the whiskey had removed a layer of his natural shield, the one that hid his true emotions in most circumstances.

  “As far as I know she’s fine. Her contractions are still about five minutes apart. Some are strong while others aren’t. She called me and as soon as we hung up, Winnie called.”

  We’d made it to the kitchen, where Sterling went to the refrigerator and removed another bottle of water before sitting at the breakfast bar. As I sat the plates down in front of him, I asked one more time, “Is something wrong? Is there something you haven’t told me?”

  His jaw clenched as he stared my way as if contemplating his response. After waiting for his answer that didn’t come, I turned and started walking back to get the food from the stove. As I did, he reached for my hand and pulled me back his direction landing me between his thighs.