Chapter 6 - The Fall of the DonArthur Russo—Vanessa’s father—turned his head slowly, looking at Adrian on the stage with a look of pure, unadulterated fury. "Adrian... what is the meaning of this?! Who is this woman?!"
Adrian didn't look at Arthur Russo. He didn't look at Vanessa.
He stepped down from the stage, walking down the carpeted aisle toward me as if the surrounding three hundred guests didn't exist.
His storm-gray eyes were filled with an absolute, agonizing remorse.
He dropped flat onto his knees right on the red carpet before my midnight-blue gown, his hands reaching out toward the hem of my dress in total, groveling surrender.
"Claire..." Adrian wept, tears cutting clean tracks through his dark stubble. "Forgive me... My God, Claire, forgive me... Take the hotels... take the shipping terminals... take the entire empire... Just don't take my son... let me be his father..."
Vanessa shrieked in total, hysterical horror, backing away from the stage as news photographers snapped dozens of pictures of the most feared Don of Chicago groveling at the feet of his secret wife.
I looked down at Adrian kneeling on the floorboards with zero anger, zero bitterness, and zero hatred.
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"You had eight years to be a husband, Adrian," I spoke softly, my voice carrying cleanly across the silent room. "And you had twelve days to be a father. You chose the cameras instead."
I turned my back on him, walking slowly out through the high brass doors of the St. Regis Hotel into the bright evening air, leaving him to face the ruins of the empire he had built on lies.
