Chapter 4
The elevator opened directly into the penthouse.
It wasn’t the gaudy, gold-plated palace Dora might have expected from a crime boss. It was a massive open space constructed of dark hardwood, exposed brick, and floor-to-ceiling glass that offered a panoramic, unobstructed view of the Boston skyline. It was minimalist, cold, and impeccably clean.
“Take off the shirt,” Victor said, walking toward a sleek black kitchen island.
Dora froze near the entryway, her hands tightly gripping the lapels of his suit jacket. “Excuse me?”
Victor paused, looking back at her. He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. For a second, the terrifying mob boss looked almost entirely human. “You’re soaked in gin, Dora. You’re going to catch pneumonia. There’s a guest bathroom down the hall to the left. Towels are in the cabinet. I’ll leave something dry by the door.”
He turned away, opening a refrigerator that seamlessly blended into the cabinetry.
Dora hesitated, then walked down the hallway. The bathroom was larger than her entire apartment. She peeled off the wet, foul-smelling polyester shirt and dropped it straight into the trash can. She stood in front of the heated mirror in just her worn gray undershirt and Victor’s heavy suit jacket, studying her reflection.
She looked like a war refugee who had wandered into a magazine shoot.
There was a soft knock at the door. “Clothes are on the handle.”
Dora opened the door a crack. A black cashmere sweater and a pair of dark gray sweatpants hung there. She pulled them inside.
The sweater was huge on her, the hem falling halfway down her thighs and the sleeves completely covering her hands. The cashmere was impossibly soft against her skin, a stark, painful contrast to the scratchy uniform she had worn for the last ten hours. She rolled up the sleeves and walked back out to the living area.
Victor was sitting on a low leather sofa. A polished wooden box rested on the glass coffee table in front of him. He had rolled up the sleeves of his black shirt, revealing a sprawling canvas of dark, intricate tattoos creeping up his forearms.
“Sit,” he said, gesturing to the space beside him on the couch.
Dora walked over slowly. She sat down, keeping a careful foot of distance between them. Victor opened the wooden box. It was a high-end first aid kit.
“Give me your hand.”
“It’s just a scratch. I deal with worse chopping onions.”
“Hand. Now.”
The command was soft, but it left no room for negotiation. Dora reluctantly extended her right arm. Victor took her hand. His grip was entirely different from the rough, careless way men usually handled her. It was firm, but incredibly gentle. He examined the small, jagged cut on her index finger where the broken stem of the martini glass had bitten into her skin.
He soaked a cotton pad in rubbing alcohol. “This will sting.”
“I know how alcohol works,” Dora muttered.
He pressed it to the cut. Dora didn’t flinch. She kept her face blank, staring at the side of Victor’s face. He was focused intensely on the small wound.
“I remember your hands,” Victor said quietly, discarding the bloody cotton pad and opening a small tube of antibiotic ointment. “In the diner, when you were sewing up my side, your hands were steady. You didn’t shake. Most people would have panicked with that much blood.”
“Panic is a waste of time.” Dora’s voice was flat. “It doesn’t stop the bleeding.”
Victor looked up, his gray eyes catching hers. “No. It doesn’t.”
He smoothed a small black adhesive bandage over the cut. He didn’t let go of her hand immediately. His thumb brushed over the rough calluses on her palm.
“You work too hard for too little.”
“I work for what I can get. It’s honest.”
“Honest?” Victor scoffed lightly, releasing her hand and leaning back. “Look where honesty got you today. On your knees in front of people who aren’t worth the air they breathe. The world doesn’t reward honest people, Dora. It grinds them into the dirt.”
“And your world is better?” Dora shot back, her cynical edge returning. “You take what you want with threats and violence. You enforce your will because people are terrified of you. That’s not a better world, Victor. That’s just a different kind of bullying. You just have a better suit than Jessica Trent.”
The silence that followed was heavy.
Anyone else in the city would have been checking for exits after speaking to Victor Romano that way. Victor just stared at her. A slow, genuine smile spread across his face. It transformed him. The coldness vanished, leaving something remarkably handsome and deeply dangerous in its wake.
“You really don’t fear me, do you?” he asked softly.
“I don’t have anything worth stealing, and I’m too tired to be afraid.” Dora pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping the oversized sweater around her legs. “So, what happens now? You’ve played the white knight. You’ve paid your debt. Can I go home?”
“You’re not going back to South Boston.”
“I have rent due on Tuesday.”
“Your reality is changing.” Victor closed the first aid kit. “Tomorrow, you will have a bank account with five million dollars in it. You will have a new apartment in a secure building. If you want a job, I will buy you a restaurant and you can run it. If you want to do nothing, you can do nothing for the rest of your life.”
Dora stared at him, waiting for the punchline. When none came, a cold, hard knot formed in her stomach.
“No.”
Victor frowned. “No?”
“No.” Dora’s voice was firm. “I don’t want your money. I don’t want a fake restaurant, and I definitely don’t want to be your kept charity case. I know how men like you operate. A gift is never just a gift. It’s a leash. I’ve spent my entire life scraping by to keep my independence. I am not selling it to you for a bank account.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed. “It’s not a leash. It’s what I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything.” Dora snapped, standing up from the couch. The sudden movement made her dizzy, but she planted her feet. “I saved your life. You saved my dignity. The ledger is clean. We are even. I’m leaving.”
She turned and marched toward the door, her bare feet padding against the hardwood floor.
She didn’t make it five steps.
The heavy oak door to the penthouse didn’t just open. It flew inward, bouncing hard against the rubber stop on the baseboard. Dora gasped, taking a sharp step backward.
A man stood in the doorway. He was built like a freight train, wearing a leather jacket and breathing heavily. Blood was smeared across his left cheekbone, and his knuckles were wrapped in white gauze that was rapidly turning red.
Victor was off the couch in a fraction of a second. The relaxed, conversational man vanished instantly. In his place stood the apex predator—a gun materializing in his right hand, seemingly out of thin air, leveled directly at the intruder’s chest.
“Leo!” Victor barked, lowering the weapon slightly but not holstering it. “What the hell is this?”
Leo stepped into the apartment immediately, kicking the heavy door shut behind him and throwing the deadbolt. He looked at Dora, his eyes narrowing in calculation before turning his full attention back to his boss.
“The Moretti family.” Leo’s voice was a rough growl. “We hit the warehouse on the docks ten minutes ago. Burned two of the shipment trucks.”
Victor’s face turned to stone. “Casualties?”
“Three of our guys are in the hospital. Carmine took a bullet to the shoulder, but he’ll live.” Leo wiped the blood off his cheek with the back of his hand. “They’re moving fast, Vic. But that’s not the worst part.”
Victor’s grip on the gun tightened. “Spit it out.”
“Word is already on the street about the Aster Hotel.” Leo gestured a bloody finger toward Dora. “Everyone knows you crashed the gala for a waitress. Rumor is she’s your weak spot. Lorenzo Moretti put out a bounty. Fifty grand to anyone who can grab the girl and bring her to him.”
Dora’s breath hitched in her throat. Her heart slammed against her ribs like a trapped bird.
Fifty grand. In her neighborhood, people had been killed for fifty dollars.
Fifty grand meant every junkie, every low-level enforcer, and every desperate street thug in Boston would be hunting her by sunrise.
Victor didn’t look at Dora. He kept his eyes locked on Leo. The terrifying calmness had returned to his face, but it was a dead, empty calm—the eye of a hurricane.
“Where is Lorenzo right now?”
“Hunkered down at his club in the North End. He’s got ten guys on the door.”
“Get the cars ready. Pull everyone from the south side. If Lorenzo wants a war, we bring it to his front door tonight.”
“Done.” Leo turned to leave, his hand on the deadbolt. “What about the girl?”
“She stays here.” Victor’s voice was absolute. “Nobody comes up this elevator. If anyone tries, you kill them and leave the body in the lobby as a message.”
Leo nodded once and slipped out the door, locking it behind him.
The silence that rushed back into the penthouse was entirely different from the quiet in the car. This silence was loaded. It hummed with violence and impending death.
Victor finally turned to look at Dora. She was standing frozen in the middle of the room, the oversized cashmere sweater suddenly offering zero warmth. Her cynical armor, the tough exterior she had spent years building, was entirely useless against this. This wasn’t a rich girl pouring a drink on her shirt. This was a death sentence.
“Are they going to kill me?” Dora whispered. Her voice shook. She hated that it shook, but she couldn’t stop it.
Victor walked toward her. He holstered the gun at the small of his back and stopped inches away from her. “No one is going to touch you.”
“Because of you!” Dora suddenly shouted, pushing her hands against his chest. It was like pushing a brick wall. He didn’t budge an inch. “Because you had to play the hero. You couldn’t just let me clean up the damn glass, could you? You had to make a scene. And now I have a bounty on my head.”
Tears of sheer frustrated terror pricked her eyes. She pushed him again.
“I survived on my own. I don’t bother anyone. I just wanted to pay my rent.”
Victor reached out and caught her wrists. He didn’t squeeze hard, but his grip was absolute. He pulled her slightly closer, forcing her to look up into his gray eyes. They were dark, stormy, and fiercely possessive.
“You’re right,” Victor said softly. “I did this. I put the target on your back by touching you in public. I dragged you into my world.”
“Let me go.” She choked out, trying to pull her hands away. “I need to get my things from my apartment. I have to leave the city.”
“You go back to that apartment, you’ll be dead before you unlock the door.” Victor’s voice was blunt. “You run, they will find you. You don’t know how to hide from these people, Dora. But I do.”
He released her wrists and brought his hands up to frame her face. His calloused thumbs brushed gently across her cheekbones. The intimacy of the gesture, paired with the lethal reality of the situation, made Dora’s head spin.
“You said earlier that you don’t want to be my kept charity case.” Victor murmured, stepping into her space so completely that all she could smell was his cedarwood scent and the metallic tang of gunpowder. “You said a gift is a leash. Fine. No gifts.”
He leaned down, his face inches from hers.
“But you are staying here because the ledger isn’t clean anymore. I owe you my life, and now I owe you your safety. You’re going to stay in this penthouse until I wipe the Moretti family off the map.”
“And if they kill you?” Dora asked, her voice trembling.
Victor smiled. It was a cold, brutal expression. “They won’t. I have something to come back for now.”
May you like
He dropped his hands from her face, turned, and walked toward the door. He didn’t look back as he threw the deadbolt, stepping out into the hallway and leaving Dora entirely alone in the glass tower, surrounded by a city that was suddenly hunting her.
The lock clicked into place with a heavy metallic finality.
