Chapter 6 - The Unspoken BondSpring arrived in New York with a sudden, violent burst of green, melting away the last remnants of the winter snow and transforming the forty private acres of DeLuca House into a blooming paradise of dogwoods, azaleas, and manicured lawns.
A lot had changed in four months.
The Mercer family had declared bankruptcy and quietly relocated to Europe, their name erased from the polite society pages as quickly as ink fading in the rain. The syndicate that had preyed on my father had been quietly dismantled by federal authorities—prompted by an anonymous, highly detailed dossier delivered to the Department of Justice by Roman’s legal team.
And me?
I was no longer working in the service hall.
When Roman discovered that I had a degree in architectural history from NYU—a dream I had abandoned when my father fell ill and the debts began to pile up—he didn't offer me charity. He offered me a position as the chief historical archivist and estate manager for the DeLuca family trust, tasking me with restoring the oldest sections of the historic Long Island limestone mansion.
My office was now a sunlit turret room on the third floor, overlooking the sparkling waters of the Sound.
On a warm Friday afternoon in late May, I sat at my drafting table, sketching out the restoration plans for the east wing library, when a soft knock sounded at my open door.
Roman stood in the doorway.
He had changed over the months. The sharp, untouchable edge of the "Ice King" of Wall Street had softened around the edges—at least when he was around me. He still wore his tailored suits, but he rolled his sleeves up more often, and the dark shadows beneath his eyes had long since vanished.
"You're working late again," Roman observed, leaning against the doorframe with a faint smile.
"I'm just finishing up the ceiling moldings for the conservatory," I said, putting down my charcoal pencil and wiping my hands on a cloth. "How was the board meeting in Manhattan?"
"Tiresome," Roman said, walking across the hardwood floor and peering down at my sketches. "As usual, my partners care more about quarterly margins than architectural heritage. But they deferred to my judgment in the end."
He reached down, tracing the clean, elegant lines of my drawing with a warm finger. His touch still sent a quiet, electric current straight to my chest—a reminder of the night he had carried me through the blizzard.
Over the past few months, our relationship had shifted in ways neither of us had explicitly named. We shared dinners in the private dining room instead of the massive banquet hall. We walked the grounds together on Sunday mornings, talking about art, literature, and Lily’s miraculous progress in Zurich—she was already taking her first assisted steps in the therapy pool.
We hadn't crossed the line from employer and confidante into lovers, but the space between us felt charged with an inevitable, magnetic gravity.
"Lily called me this morning," I said quietly, looking up at him.
Roman’s eyes softened instantly. "How is she?"
"She’s walking ten minutes a day without a brace," I smiled, tears of joy stinging my eyes. "And she asked when she could fly back to New York to meet the man who bought her a Swiss clinic."
Roman chuckled, a rich, deep sound that made my heart skip a beat. "Tell her whenever she's ready, the south wing of this house has an open suite with her name on it."
"You've done too much for us, Roman," I murmured, my voice dropping to a whisper as he stepped closer, closing the distance between us until I had to tilt my head back to meet his gaze.
"I haven't done enough," Roman replied, his voice husky and intense.
He reached out, his warm fingers gently cupping my cheek, his thumb brushing across my cheekbone. The air in the sunlit turret room suddenly felt thin, heavy with everything we had left unsaid since that freezing Christmas Eve.
"When I found you in the snow," Roman whispered, his eyes searching mine with raw, unfiltered vulnerability, "I realized something terrifying, Claire. For thirty-four years, I thought I was invincible because I didn't care about anything. But holding you in my arms while you were freezing to death... I realized I had never been more vulnerable in my life."
May you like
My breath hitched. "Roman..."
"I don't want to be your boss, Claire," he murmured, his gaze dropping to my lips before rising back to meet my eyes. "And I don't want you to be my employee. I want you to stay right here. In this house. By my side. For as long as you'll have me."
