Chapter 3
When the SUV entered the underground garage, Dante finally turned toward her.
“Tommy will drive you home. You have the weekend off. Paid.”
“I have quarterly payroll reconciliations to finish.”
Dante frowned.
“Emily, you were nearly shot.”
“I was nearly shot because you brought me to a mob dispute under the guise of an audit.”
Her shock sharpened into anger.
“Payroll is due Tuesday. If I don’t run the numbers tomorrow, the offshore accounts won’t sync and the men won’t get paid. Unpaid men are angry men. I prefer them placated.”
She opened the door and headed for the elevator.
Dante followed.
The 42nd floor was empty.
Emily went directly to her desk and turned on her computer.
Her hands were still trembling.
“You’re shaking.”
“It’s adrenaline. Cortisol causes involuntary muscle tremors. It will pass.”
“Stop talking about cortisol, Emily.”
Dante crossed to the discreet wet bar and poured 2 glasses of Macallan. He placed 1 beside her keyboard.
“Drink.”
“I don’t drink on the clock.”
“You’re off the clock.”
Emily took a swallow.
The whiskey burned down her throat.
“Thank you.”
Dante leaned against her desk.
“I meant what I said. I shouldn’t have brought you.”
“Why did you?”
Emily looked at him.
“You have 20 men who could have held that iPad. You didn’t need me there to prove anything to Carlo. So why?”
Dante studied the whiskey.
“For 9 years, I lived in a vacuum. Everything was a calculation. Every person in this building was a variable in an equation.”
He looked at her.
“You broke the equation.”
He moved closer.
“I brought you because I wanted to know whether you could survive in my world. I wanted to know whether the woman who demanded a biohazard surcharge for a fresh corpse could look the devil in the eye and hold her ground.”
His gaze remained fixed on hers.
“You didn’t merely hold your ground, Emily. You backed Carlo into a corner using a spreadsheet. It was the most magnificent thing I have seen in a decade.”
“And when he decided to kill me for it?”
“I would have burned Chicago to the ground before I allowed a single drop of your blood to hit that floor.”
There was no theatricality in his voice.
Only certainty.
“You can’t do this, Dante.”
Emily’s voice trembled.
“You can’t wake up now. I can’t afford to be the reason you start feeling things again.”
“Too late.”
Dante took her trembling hand and pressed his thumb against her racing pulse.
“I’m awake, Emily. I’m not going back to sleep.”
The $800,000 arrived the next morning inside a steel briefcase.
Carlo Moretti had paid.
But humiliation remained.
Dante had broken one of Carlo’s men in front of him, and he had done it because the man touched Emily.
In their world, caring about someone created a weakness.
Emily had become a target.
On Tuesday evening, Emily returned to her modest apartment in Logan Square carrying groceries.
Her rent was cheap because the radiator knocked like a dying engine and the hallway permanently smelled of boiled cabbage.
The payroll had synchronized. The dummy accounts were funded. Oakridge had sent her a photograph of Leo smiling in the courtyard.
For the first time in months, Emily could breathe.
She unlocked the door.
The lights did not work.
Emily stopped.
The switch clicked loosely.
The breaker had been thrown.
A draft moved around her ankles.
The fire-escape window was open.
Emily slowly reached into her purse and closed her hand around the metal cylinder of pepper spray attached to her keys.
“I know you’re in here.”
A chuckle came from the darkness.
A flashlight switched on.
2 men stepped forward.
One carried a crowbar.
“You’ve got a smart mouth for a dead woman.”
“And you have a profound lack of tactical awareness.”
Emily squinted into the light.
“If Carlo wanted to send a message, he should have attacked a distribution center. Killing an administrative assistant just makes him look pathetic.”
“Boss doesn’t want you dead. Just broken. A message to Marino about disrespect.”
Emily calculated the room.
“Dante doesn’t care about me. He paid my brother’s medical bills as a tax write-off. If you touch me, you won’t send a message. You’ll force him to hire a temporary secretary. He hates the temp agency. He’ll kill you simply for the inconvenience.”
“We’ll take our chances.”
The man stepped forward.
The apartment door exploded inward.
Emily was thrown aside as groceries scattered across the linoleum.
Apples rolled through the darkness.
Dante Marino stood in the doorway.
He wore a dark Henley beneath a tactical jacket and held a suppressed pistol.
“I told your boss not to look at her again.”
The first man raised his weapon.
Dante fired twice.
The man dropped.
The second charged with the crowbar.
Dante caught his wrist and twisted until bone cracked. When the man fell to his knees, Dante struck him at the base of the skull with the grip of his pistol.
Less than 5 seconds had passed.
Silence returned.
Emily sat against the wall staring at the bodies.
Dante cleared his weapon and crossed the apartment.
He dropped to his knees.
His hands moved over her arms, neck, and face.
“Are you hurt? Did they touch you?”
“No.”
Emily looked at the blood spreading across the floor.
“Dante, my security deposit.”
He stopped.
He looked at the bodies.
Then at Emily.
And for the second time in 9 years, Dante Marino laughed.
This time it was not the explosive roar from his office.
It was helpless and breathless.
He pressed his forehead against hers.
“I will buy you the entire building, Emily. I will buy you the whole damn block.”
“I just wanted to make pasta.”
Her hands closed around his tactical jacket.
The shock finally reached her.
Dante wrapped both arms around her.
“Tommy is downstairs. He will clean this up. You’re coming with me. You are never sleeping in this apartment again.”
“I have work tomorrow.”
“You’ll work from my house tomorrow.”
Dante stood and pulled her to her feet.
He did not ask.
Emily did not argue.
She leaned against him and allowed the monster she had awakened to carry her into the darkness.
Dante’s private estate stood behind heavy security in Lake Forest, an architectural fortress of glass and slate surrounded by woods.
It was as sterile as his office.
No photographs.
No personal objects.
Only expensive, cold perfection.
Dante brought Emily into the enormous master bathroom and seated her on the edge of the marble bathtub.
“Stay here.”
He returned 2 minutes later carrying a first-aid kit.
Only then did Emily notice the blood on his knuckles.
The impact against the second attacker had split the skin across old scars.
“You’re bleeding.”
Emily took his hand.
Dante became still.
She soaked a cotton pad with alcohol and gently cleaned his knuckles.
“How did you know they were there?”
“I didn’t trust Carlo. He is proud, and I embarrassed him. I had Tommy place a security detail outside your building. They called the moment the Moretti car entered your alley. I was 3 blocks away.”
Emily paused.
“You were sitting in a car 3 blocks from my apartment?”
“I was doing paperwork on a tablet.”
“You are a terrifying micromanager, Dante.”
“I protect my investments.”
Emily discarded the bloody cotton pad.
She did not release his hand.
“I’m not an investment. I’m a secretary.”
Dante leaned closer.
“You haven’t been just a secretary since the day you ordered me to shoot Sal in the warehouse because of the rug.”
His free hand cupped her jaw.
“You broke the machine, Emily. You made me remember what it feels like to be alive. To be angry. To be amused.”
His thumb moved gently along her cheek.
“I spent a decade in the freezing cold. You are the only fire I have found, and I am entirely too selfish a man to let you go.”
Emily knew exactly what his world was.
She had managed its logistics for 3 years.
She knew the violence, the blood, the spreadsheets, and the paranoia.
But looking at the man in front of her—the man who had killed to protect her, who laughed at her cynical deflections—she realized she was tired of being cold too.
“If I stay, I handle the household accounts. Your offshore guy is sloppy. And you are buying a proper espresso machine for this kitchen. Not a drip brewer.”
Dante smiled.
A real smile reached his eyes and transformed his face into something startlingly human.
“Whatever you want, Emily.”
He leaned toward her.
The final remains of the boundary between them disappeared.
His kiss was not gentle. It was desperate, claiming, still charged with the adrenaline of the night.
Emily answered with equal intensity, her hands gripping his shirt and pulling him closer.
For 9 years, Dante Marino had been a ghost.
He had ruled an empire through absolute, terrifying silence.
Now, as he pulled Emily into his lap, the cold emptiness inside him finally closed.
May you like
Dante Marino was alive again.
And the Chicago underworld now knew exactly what would happen if anyone tried to take away the woman who had awakened him.
