Chapter 3
The November air hit Dora like a physical blow the second they crossed the threshold of the Aster Hotel.
Boston in late autumn didn’t care about bespoke suits or broken glass. It bit through the thin polyester of her gin-soaked uniform, sending a violent shiver down her spine. Victor didn’t slow down.
He led her down the sprawling granite steps to the curb where a matte black town car idled. It wasn’t flashy. It didn’t need to be. The sheer size of it, coupled with the dense, armored thickness of the windows, commanded a wide berth from the valet staff.
A driver in a dark suit stepped out instantly, pulling the rear door open. He didn’t look at Dora. His eyes scanned the street, professional and devoid of curiosity.
Victor guided her into the back seat. Dora slid across the leather. It was warm, soft, and smelled of rich mahogany. A second later, Victor slid in beside her, and the heavy door closed with a solid, airtight thud, instantly muting the chaotic sounds of the city traffic.
They were encased in absolute, suffocating quiet.
Dora stared at the partition separating them from the driver. Her hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her thighs, trying to force the adrenaline out of her system. It wasn’t working. The cold gin seeping into her skin felt like a miserable anchor to reality.
“Turn the heat up,” Victor commanded.
The driver didn’t speak, but a rush of hot air immediately flooded the cabin.
Dora looked at the man sitting inches away from her. The dim amber streetlights passing by outside cast harsh shadows across his face. He was staring out the window, his jaw set in a rigid line. The violent energy that had paralyzed the ballroom was still rolling off him in waves.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Dora said.
Her voice sounded raspy, foreign in her own ears. It broke the silence in the car like a dropped plate.
Victor turned his head slowly. The gray eyes pinned her. “Done what?”
“Any of it.” Dora’s cynicism fought its way through the shock. She wrapped her arms around herself. “You just fired my manager. You humiliated a woman who comes from a family that practically owns half the zoning board. You made a scene.”
“I corrected a problem.”
“You cost me my job.”
“You don’t need that job.”
“You don’t get to decide that.” Dora’s voice rose, the sheer exhaustion of her life finally cracking her composure. “You don’t know my life. You don’t know my rent or my electric bill or the fact that my car needs a new transmission. That double-time shift was going to cover my heating oil for the month. Pride doesn’t keep me warm, Victor. Money does. And you just burned my only source of it.”
She expected him to get angry. She expected the terrifying mafia boss to shut her down.
Instead, Victor just watched her. He took in the defiant set of her chin, the dark bags under her eyes, the stain on her shirt, and the trembling in her shoulders. He reached out and unbuttoned his suit jacket. He shrugged it off, leaving him in just the black dress shirt, and draped the heavy, warm wool over Dora’s shoulders.
The residual heat from his body enveloped her. It smelled like cedarwood and expensive dry cleaning.
Dora tried to shrug it off out of pure stubbornness, but he caught the lapels, holding them firmly together beneath her chin.
“I went back to the diner,” Victor said quietly.
Dora stopped fighting the jacket. She blinked. “What?”
“Two weeks after you stitched me up.” His hands still held the wool tight against her chest. “I was going to pay off your mortgage. Buy you a house. Whatever you needed. But the manager said you quit.”
“I was fired.” Dora corrected bitterly. “I stole a box of bandages and some antibiotics from the back office to keep your wound from getting infected. They noticed.”
A muscle in Victor’s jaw ticked. A flash of something dark and lethal crossed his eyes. “Tell me the name of the manager.”
“It doesn’t matter. The place closed down three months ago anyway.”
“It closed down because I bought the building and leveled it.”
Dora stared at him. The sheer casual scale of his destruction was hard to process. “You tore down a building because I got fired?”
“I tore it down because it was a roach-infested health hazard and they treated you like garbage.” Victor leaned back in his seat, leaving the jacket around her. “I’ve had men looking for you for eight months. You don’t leave a paper trail. No credit cards. No lease in your name.”
“I rent a room under the table. Cash only. It’s cheaper.” She pulled the jacket tighter around herself. “Why were you looking for me? I told you we were even. You gave me three thousand dollars in the storage closet.”
“Three thousand dollars?” Victor repeated, the words laced with heavy sarcasm. “For saving my life? You think my life is worth three months’ rent in a slum?”
“I think you were bleeding on the flour sacks and I wanted you out of my kitchen before the cops showed up.” Dora’s voice was honest, raw. “I didn’t do it to be a hero. I did it because calling an ambulance meant answering questions I didn’t want to answer.”
Victor’s mouth twitched into the ghost of a smile. It was a terrifying expression on a man like him. “You’re a pragmatist. I respect that. But you have a flawed understanding of how my world works, Dora. In my world, a debt of blood is absolute. I owe you my life.”
“So you crash a high society gala to kiss my hand.”
“I was at the gala because I had a meeting with the hotel owner. I saw you from the mezzanine.” His voice dropped, losing any trace of humor. “I saw that woman drop the glass. I saw the manager tell you to kneel. If I hadn’t stepped in, I would have broken his neck right there on the marble.”
Dora looked down at her hands. The adrenaline was fading, leaving a bone-deep exhaustion in its wake. “I appreciate the rescue. I do. But I’m going to wake up tomorrow with no job and no way to pay rent. You live in a different reality, Victor. When you break things, you can afford to replace them. I can’t.”
The car slowed to a smooth halt. Dora looked out the window. They weren’t in South Boston. They were in the Seaport District, parked in an underground garage that looked cleaner than most hospital operating rooms.
May you like
“Where are we?” Her guard snapped back up instantly.
“My home,” Victor said, opening his door. “You’re shivering. Your shirt smells like a cheap distillery and your hand is bleeding. You’re going to come upstairs, get warm, and let me look at that cut. And then we are going to fix your reality.”
