Chapter 3 - I have a debt.
I don’t have a death sentence.
Take me back to my shop.”
Gabriel leaned closer, the leather seat creaking softly under his weight.
“Your shop is completely exposed.
It has a plate-glass front window and hollow wooden doors.
The men who just hit my docks know who was on the manifest roster.
If they do their homework, they will find out you run the heavy fleet.
I am not leaving you in a glass box.”
“You dragged me into this.”
Frankie fired back, turning her body to face him, her hands clenched into fists in her lap to hide the shaking.
“I fix engines.
I don’t dodge bullets.
You told me I was collateral on a ledger.
You didn’t tell me I was going to be target practice for a rival syndicate.”
“I didn’t anticipate an open strike during daylight hours,” Gabriel replied, a muscle feathering in his jaw.
“That was a miscalculation on my part.
It won’t happen again.”
“A miscalculation?” Frankie let out a harsh, incredulous laugh.
“A guy almost blew my head off.
Dominic’s knee is shattered.
And you call it a miscalculation?”
“I call it a problem that is currently being eradicated.”
He reached across the console, his large hand wrapping around her wrists, forcing her fists to uncurl.
His touch was warm — an anchor in the freezing chaos of her mind.
“You are alive.
Dominic will keep his leg.
Stop fighting me, Francesca.
Just for tonight.
Stop fighting me.”
The fight drained out of her all at once.
She slumped back against the seat, turning her head to watch the rain-slicked city streets blur past the tinted window.
They arrived at the stone estate.
This time, the driver took them to the front entrance.
Gabriel led her through the massive oak doors into a foyer that looked like a modern art museum.
High ceilings.
Brushed steel accents.
Stark white walls.
Frankie stood on the welcome mat, hyper-aware of the mud dripping from her clothes onto the immaculate marble floor.
Gabriel didn’t call for a maid.
He didn’t call for security.
He took off his ruined trench coat, tossed it over a velvet chair, and looked at her.
“Upstairs.
Guest wing.
First door on the right.”
Frankie didn’t argue.
She followed him up a sweeping glass staircase, her boots squeaking embarrassingly with every step.
The bathroom was larger than her entire apartment.
A study in gray slate and glass, centered around a massive freestanding tub.
“Take off the jacket.”
Gabriel opened a mirrored cabinet and pulled out a white towel and a first aid kit.
Frankie managed to peel the heavy, wet canvas off her shoulders, letting it drop to the floor with a wet slap.
Underneath, she wore a simple white tank top, now clinging to her skin and smeared with engine grease.
She stood by the marble sink, crossing her arms over her chest as a shiver racked her frame.
Gabriel wet a hand towel with warm water.
He stepped into her personal space, his imposing frame blocking out the overhead light.
“Look at me,” he murmured.
Frankie raised her chin.
He gently pressed the warm, damp towel to her cheekbone.
She hissed, flinching backward.
“Hold still,” he commanded softly.
“The bullet hit the trailer.
A fragment of the paint sheared off and cut your face.”
Frankie forced herself to stay perfectly still as he carefully wiped the mixture of grease, rainwater, and dried blood from her cheek.
His touch was shockingly gentle for a man who had just executed two people without a second thought.
The contrast was terrifying.
He had killed without hesitation.
And now he was cleaning a scratch on her face with the focus of a man defusing a bomb.
“I could have lost you,” he said.
The words were barely audible.
He wasn’t looking at her face anymore.
He was looking at the cut on her cheekbone, his thumb tracing the edge of it with devastating tenderness.
“You don’t have me to lose,” she whispered.
“I’m a mechanic.
I’m a debt.”
He looked up.
His obsidian eyes met hers in the mirror.
“You stopped being just a debt the moment you stood on my rug and called me a dead octopus in my grandmother’s language.”
He didn’t move away.
His hand remained on her face, his thumb resting against the curve of her jaw.
The towel hung forgotten in his other hand, dripping warm water onto the marble floor.
Frankie’s breath came shallow.
The mirror reflected them — a man who had killed for her and a woman who had fought for strangers.
She was still shaking.
Not from the cold anymore.
From the proximity.
“Why do you care?” she asked.
Her voice cracked.
“You don’t know me.
You bought my debt.
I’m a line item on your ledger.
Why do you care if a bullet hits me?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
He looked at her in the mirror, his dark eyes tracing the lines of her face — the grease she hadn’t fully washed off, the bruise forming on her cheekbone, the wild, tired defiance that she refused to let go of.
“Because you didn’t run,” he said finally.
“When the bullets started flying, you didn’t hide.
You grabbed a breaker bar and you fought.
Not for me.
Not for the debt.
For a man who leaves coffee on your toolbox.”
Her throat tightened.
“You knew about the coffee.”
“I know everything that happens in my organization.”
A pause.
“I didn’t know about the coffee.
But I know Dominic.
And I know he wouldn’t have had a chance today if you hadn’t been there.”
“He would have done the same for me.”
“Yes.
That’s exactly the point.”
He set the towel down on the edge of the sink.
He turned her gently, so she was facing him directly, no mirror between them.
“You’re not a line item, Francesca.
You stopped being a line item the moment you looked me in the eye and told me my blood was mud.”
She stared at him.
The exhaustion was pulling at her, heavy and insistent, but she forced herself to stay present.
“What happens now?”
“Now you sleep.
Tomorrow, I deal with the remnants of the syndicate that thought they could touch what’s mine.
And you —”
He paused.
“You decide what you want.”
“What I want?”
“You have a choice.
You can go back to the garage.
You can go back to the docks.
You can walk away from the debt entirely — I’ll consider it settled.”
He said it like it cost him something.
“Or you can stay.”
“Stay where?”
“Here.”
His voice dropped.
“With me.
Not as a mechanic.
Not as a debt.
As someone who looks at me the way you did in my office and doesn’t flinch.”
She searched his eyes.
The cold CEO was gone.
The monster was gone.
What remained was a man who had spent his entire life surrounded by people who feared him, and had just discovered that fear was not the same as loyalty.
“I don’t know who you are,” she said.
“I don’t know what you’ve done.
I don’t know if I can live with the things you’ve done.”
“Neither do I,” he admitted.
“But I’m willing to find out if you are.”
She stood in the bathroom of a crime lord’s estate, wearing a wet tank top and a borrowed towel, with a bruise on her face and a breaker bar’s weight still fresh in her memory.
She had every reason to walk away.
Every reason to take the deal and never look back.
But she looked at him.
At the way he held himself — the rigid tension of a man who had never learned how to ask for something without taking it.
“I’m not promising anything,” she said.
“I’m not asking for a promise.”
“I’m still angry about the garage.”
“I know.”
“And I’m keeping the Mustang’s timing adjustment as leverage.”
A slow, genuine smile spread across his face.
It was the same smile from the penthouse — the one that transformed him from a predator into something almost human.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
She let out a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding.
It wasn’t trust.
It wasn’t surrender.
It was a door, left slightly ajar, with the light of something new bleeding through the crack.
“Goodnight, Mr. Costa,” she said.
“Goodnight, Francesca.”
She walked to the guest room and closed the door.
She stood in the darkness, listening to the rain against the windows, her hand pressed to her chest where his thumb had traced her jawline.
In the garage below, the Mustang sat waiting for a part she would order in the morning.
The engine was cold.
But the timing — the timing was almost perfect.
She didn’t know if she could trust him.
She didn’t know if she could forgive him.
May you like
But she knew, with a certainty that settled in her bones like the weight of a well-balanced wrench, that she was not done with Gabriel Costa.
And he was not done with her.
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