Chapter 4
The mattress was too soft.
That was Chantelle’s first clear thought when she woke.
Her own bed was a 10-year-old coil-spring disaster that pressed into her lower back every night.
This mattress felt like memory foam and expensive down.
Then she saw the exposed ductwork overhead.
The gray acoustic panels.
The memory of the train returned at once.
Gunfire.
Bodies.
Tunnel.
Devlin Murphy.
Chantelle sat upright with a violent gasp.
Her hand pressed against her chest.
She was still wearing the diner uniform.
The fabric had dried stiff with sweat and tunnel water.
Her knee throbbed.
Devlin’s bandage remained secure.
At the foot of the bed lay folded clothing.
Black sweatpants.
Gray T-shirt.
Heavy socks.
Men’s clothes.
Far too large.
They smelled faintly of cedar and metal.
Devlin.
Chantelle stared at them.
Changing meant accepting that the situation was real.
Remaining inside her filthy uniform was worse.
Pragmatism won.
She stripped, changed into the oversized clothing, and folded the waistband of the sweatpants 3 times to keep them in place.
Then opened the bedroom door.
The main loft remained under harsh artificial light.
Devlin stood beside the steel kitchen island.
He had changed too.
His damaged black shirt was gone.
A white undershirt covered his torso, and thick gauze wrapped his shoulder.
He spoke rapidly into a burner phone.
Italian.
Short sentences.
Cold tone.
He looked less like a man who had survived an assassination attempt than a chief executive conducting an acquisition.
Chantelle watched him from the hallway.
Without the tailored jacket, she saw more scars.
The long white scar at his neck was only 1 mark among several.
A puckered burn on the left upper arm.
A pale line across his right forearm.
Devlin had spent much of his life inside the crosshairs.
He ended the call and dropped the phone on the counter.
He did not turn.
“There’s coffee.”
Chantelle crossed the kitchen and went instead to the sink.
Cold water ran over her wrists.
“I need to call my landlord.”
“No.”
She shut off the water and faced him.
“I have a cat.”
Devlin poured black coffee.
“He’s locked in my apartment. I have shifts at the diner. If I don’t show up, I lose the job. If I don’t pay rent by Friday, I lose the apartment.”
Her voice tightened.
“I am completely expendable to the world. I don’t have a trust fund or a criminal empire waiting underneath me.”
Devlin took a drink.
“Your landlord is fine. Your job is irrelevant.”
He met her eyes.
“Your old life paused the moment Lucian’s men saw your face.”
“So I sit here?”
Chantelle’s voice rose.
“For how long? 1 day? 1 week? Until you decide it’s safe for me to serve hash browns again?”
Devlin set the mug down.
“Until Lucian Bell is dead.”
The words emptied the room.
“You’re going to kill him.”
“I’m going to remove a threat to my organization.”
The correction was effortless.
“Until then, you do not exist.”
Chantelle stared.
“If you call your landlord, Lucian traces it. His men go to your building. They break your landlord’s fingers until he gives them the master key.”
Her face lost color.
“They find your cat.”
Devlin continued with the same flat tone.
“They kill it and leave it on your pillow. Then they sit in the dark and wait for you.”
Chantelle’s stomach twisted.
“You’re trying to scare me.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
He came around the island.
Stopped 1 ft away.
“Look at me.”
She did.
The exhaustion behind his eyes was immense.
For the first time, his impenetrable control cracked enough to show the pressure beneath it.
“I didn’t ask you to sit beside me.”
His voice had become rougher.
“I didn’t want a civilian inside my perimeter.”
Then:
“But you are here.”
Devlin held her gaze.
“And I do not let people under my protection die.”
Chantelle swallowed.
She hated the way he had taken her choices.
May you like
She believed him anyway.
“Who’s feeding my cat?”
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