Chapter 2 - Nearby, a wealthy couple abandoned half-eaten desserts, paid cash, and hurried out.
They recognized Roman.
Others followed.
By the time he finished his steak, approximately 3/4 of the restaurant had emptied.
Arthur dismissed the string quartet.
Roman pushed his plate away and looked toward the service station.
From his position, he should not have been able to see Sadie.
His eyes nevertheless settled on the exact darkness where she stood.
He raised 1 finger.
Arthur hurried over.
Roman spoke quietly, and Arthur produced the check.
Roman never examined it.
He removed a thick money clip and left a stack of $100 bills sufficient to cover the dinner and the price of a small car.
Then he stood.
Tommy followed him.
The brass doors opened.
Freezing air entered.
Roman disappeared.
The restaurant exhaled.
Sadie slid down the wall.
He had left.
Hope flickered.
Perhaps finding her had been the entire point.
Perhaps Roman had only wanted to prove that she had never truly escaped his reach.
“Sadi.”
Arthur stood over her.
“Get out.”
She looked up.
“I don’t care what you’re involved in,” he said. “And I don’t want to know. You brought the syndicate into my dining room. My staff is terrified. My best clients just abandoned $300 meals.”
He removed money from his wallet and dropped it into her lap.
“This is your pay for the week, plus a little extra. Get your things. Don’t come back tomorrow. Don’t ever come back here.”
Sadie did not argue.
Arthur was a civilian trying to survive the blast radius.
She took the money.
The employee exit opened into an alley smelling of rotting vegetables, stale beer, and frozen asphalt.
November wind cut through her thin polyester uniform.
She had not collected her denim jacket.
She wanted the subway.
If she could reach a crowded train, she could disappear beneath the city, return to the apartment, take the $3,200 from the shoebox, and board a Greyhound heading west.
Her shoes crossed approximately 10 yards of dirty ice.
“You always were stubborn, Nora.”
Sadie stopped.
A cigarette glowed in the darkness near the loading dock, briefly illuminating Tommy’s scarred face.
But Tommy had not spoken.
Roman emerged from the shadows.
His charcoal overcoat was draped over one arm.
“Did you think I left?”
He approached.
“Did you think I was going to make a scene in a restaurant, drag you out screaming in front of 50 civilians?”
Sadie stepped backward until brick met her spine.
At the far end of the alley, a black armored SUV blocked her escape.
“Stay away from me.”
Roman stopped approximately 2 ft away.
“3 years. I gave you 3 years, Nora. I let you play your game. I let you pretend.”
“You didn’t let me do anything. I escaped you.”
“You really believe that?”
He unfolded his coat.
“You think you’re a ghost? You think changing your hair and working for minimum wage made you invisible?”
Roman placed one hand against the brick beside her head.
“I knew exactly where you were the week after you left the penthouse. I knew when you rented that miserable box above the dry cleaner. I knew when you got the job serving food to stockbrokers. I know you buy cheap coffee at the bodega on Fourth Street every Tuesday.”
“You’re lying.”
“Why would I lie?”
Roman’s voice remained calm.
“If I wanted to drag you back kicking and screaming on day 1, I would have. But you needed to learn.”
“Learn what?”
“That out here in the real world, you are nothing but prey.”
He looked at her.
“You wanted to be normal, so I let you see what normal is. Normal is freezing in an alley. Normal is a boss who fires you because he’s a coward. Normal is eating toast for dinner and counting pennies so you don’t freeze to death in a broken apartment.”
His attention moved to her bloodstained uniform and bandaged finger.
“You spent 3 years trying to prove you didn’t need me. All you proved is that without me, you don’t know how to survive.”
“I survived fine.”
“You’re shivering.”
Roman placed the heavy cashmere coat over her shoulders.
The warmth was immediate.
It smelled of cedar and smoke.
He drew the lapels together beneath her chin.
“The game is over, Nora. You proved your point. Now it’s time to come home.”
“I’d rather freeze.”
“I won’t let you.”
He placed an arm firmly around her waist and guided her toward the SUV.
Sadie resisted.
“Roman, stop. Please. I don’t want this. I don’t want to go back to that life.”
He stopped beside the open door.
“You were never in that life, Nora. You were in my life. There’s a difference.”
He looked toward the car.
“Get in.”
Inside the Maybach, bulletproof glass separated them from the city.
Heat moved over Sadie’s numb legs.
She pressed herself against the far door while the neon city moved past the tinted windows.
They were traveling downtown toward the financial district.
Roman sat across from her.
He opened a concealed compartment and removed a black leather first-aid kit.
“Give me your hand.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s covered in cheap tape and dirt. Give me your hand or I’ll reach over there and take it.”
Sadie reluctantly extended her arm.
Roman held her wrist.
He removed the blood-soaked tape.
She hissed.
“I know.”
He cleaned away dried blood and gravy.
The antiseptic burned.
When she tried to pull away, he held her still.
Using tweezers, he removed a microscopic fragment of green glass from the cut.
Then he applied antibacterial ointment and wrapped her finger in clean gauze.
When he finished, he kept his thumb against the inside of her wrist.
Over her pulse.
“Why didn’t you just kill me?”
Roman looked up.
“Don’t ever ask a stupid question like that again.”
“It’s valid. You kill people for disrespecting you. I walked out on you. I took your pride. In your world, that’s a capital offense.”
He released her.
“You didn’t take my pride. You took my sanity. But you’re right. If anyone else had done what you did, Tommy would have buried them in a foundation in Queens 3 years ago.”
He looked toward the city.
“I don’t kill things that belong to me.”
Then he looked back.
“You were dying out here, Nora. I saw your bank statements. I saw the eviction notices you kept dodging. I watched you lose weight. I watched the light go out of your eyes.”
“The light went out of my eyes the day I realized what you actually do for a living.”
His jaw moved.
“You knew who I was the day you met me. You just didn’t want to look at it. You wanted the money, the safety, the dinners. You just didn’t want to see the butcher’s bill.”
Sadie could not entirely deny it.
At 22, naive and drowning in debt, she had watched Roman enter her life like a dark angel and erase every problem with money.
She had ignored the whispers.
The late-night telephone calls.
The men with broken noses visiting the penthouse.
“I grew up.”
“You woke up and you ran. Into poverty. Into misery.”
“It was honest.”
“Honesty doesn’t pay the heating bill.”
The Maybach descended into a private underground garage.
Roman turned toward her.
“You can hate me, Nora. You can resent me. You can scream at me when we get upstairs. But you are never, ever running away from me again. You are done serving food to ghosts. You are done freezing.”
He moved a strand of brown hair behind her ear.
“You are mine.”
Roman stepped out.
Tommy opened Sadie’s door.
The private elevator waited.
Sadie wrapped Roman’s coat more tightly around herself and stepped from the vehicle.
The elevator climbed 40 floors in silence.
Each number carried her closer to the life she had escaped.
When the doors opened, there was no corridor.
The penthouse began immediately.
Hand-scraped dark oak.
Fresh orchids.
Expensive wax.
Cedar.
Floor-to-ceiling glass opened the Chicago skyline beneath them.
Nothing had changed.
The Italian leather sofas remained where she remembered them.
The enormous abstract painting still dominated the wall.
The silence was still impenetrable.
“Take off the coat.”
Sadie let it slide from her shoulders.
Her cheap waitressing shoes were wet with slush and floor wax, leaving marks on a rug worth more than she had earned during the previous 2 years.
“You’re tracking mud, Nora.”
“I’m sorry.”
The apology emerged automatically.
Roman stopped pouring bourbon.
“Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“Apologizing for existing in your own home.”
He looked at her.
“You look like a beaten dog. That isn’t you.”
“You don’t know who I am anymore. I’ve been on my own for 3 years.”
“You’ve been surviving. There is a massive difference between living and surviving.”
Roman studied her.
“You lost 15 lb. Your hair is brittle from cheap shampoo. You have permanent bags under your eyes from working double shifts and sleeping on a mattress that is destroying your spine. Your hands are covered in burn scars from carrying hot plates.”
Sadie looked down.
“I was free.”
“Free to do what? Free to be screamed at by a manager who barely makes $40,000 a year? Free to freeze in an alley because you couldn’t afford a winter coat? Free to give 70% of your income to a slumlord in Queens who refused to fix your radiator?”
Her head lifted.
“How do you know about the radiator?”
“I own the building, Nora.”
Sadie stopped breathing.
“You own the building on Fourth Street?”
“I bought it 2 weeks after you signed the lease. The previous landlord was a degenerate. He was going to evict you the second you were late on rent. I bought the building through a shell company. I kept your rent artificially low. I ensured neighborhood patrols kept the junkies off your stoop.”
Roman paused.
“I let the radiator break because I wanted to see how long you would sit in the cold before you realized independence is a fairy tale sold to the working class to keep them docile.”
Sadie stared at him.
The life she had considered independent had existed inside a structure Roman secretly controlled.
“You’re a monster.”
“I am a realist. The world is entirely composed of predators and prey. You wanted to be out in the world. I just made sure the other predators couldn’t touch you while you learned your lesson.”
He took her face between his hands.
“Your little experiment is over. You fought the good fight. You proved you could take the punishment. But you don’t have to take it anymore.”
His thumbs moved across her cheeks.
“Surrender, Nora. Let me take care of you.”
The master bathroom was larger than Sadie’s studio apartment.
White vein-cut marble covered the room. Brushed brass fixtures reflected the light, and heat rose through the floor.
The enormous soaking tub was already filling with steaming scented water.
Roman left her at the doorway with 1 instruction.
“Wash the restaurant off.”
Sadie stood before the vanity mirror.
Under the unforgiving LED lighting, she examined herself.
Roman’s assessment had been accurate.
The brown dye was fading.
Her roots were dull and ashy.
Her cheekbones were too pronounced.
Exhaustion had bruised the skin beneath her eyes.
Her uniform was covered with sweat, wrinkles, dried blood, and gravy.
She removed the tape from her finger, unbuttoned the shirt, and let it fall.
Her rubber-soled shoes followed.
The heated marble against her bare feet was almost shocking.
She left the uniform on the floor and entered the tub.
Perfectly hot water rose to her collarbones.
The ache that had occupied her lower back for 3 years immediately began to loosen.
The relief was so intense that tears entered her eyes.
She hated Roman.
She hated his arrogance.
His control.
His absence of morality.
But beneath those feelings was another truth.
She was tired.
Tired of worrying about electricity.
Tired of calculating prices before ordering food.
Tired of being invisible.
She had run to protect her soul, but life outside Roman’s world had slowly exhausted her.
The bathroom door opened.
Roman entered without his jacket or tie. His white shirt was open at the collar, sleeves rolled to the elbows.
He carried a silver tray.
Toasted sourdough.
A bowl of thick bisque.
A glass of the Sancerre she had not consumed at Lombardi’s.
He placed it beside the tub.
“Eat.”
“I’m not a stray cat you can just feed.”
“You’re worse. A stray cat knows when to come inside out of the rain. You would have frozen on the fire escape just to prove a point.”
Sadie sat higher in the water and reached for the wine.
She drank.
Roman picked up a heavy sponge and submerged it.
“Turn around.”
Sadie hesitated.
The old Norah would have obeyed without thinking.
Sadie the waitress wanted to throw the wine into his face.
But the identity of Sadie had begun collapsing the moment Roman revealed that he owned the building she believed represented her independence.
Slowly, she turned.
Roman pressed the warm sponge against her back.
He washed away the grease and sweat of Lombardi’s, moving firmly across the knots in her shoulders.
“Why did you really let me go, Roman?”
The sponge stopped.
“If you knew where I was the whole time, if you controlled the building, why wait 3 years?”
“Because you looked at me with pure terror.”
His voice had changed.
May you like
“The morning you found out what happened to the Moretti crew, you looked at me like I was a monster. If I had forced you to stay, you would have spent the rest of your life terrified of me. You would have withered away in this penthouse.”
He resumed washing her back.
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