Rain hammered my Chicago window like a police battering ram, each drop slamming against the glass with the same restless rhythm as my thumb against my phone screen.

The tiny one-bedroom I rented on the North Side had always felt cozy—brick walls, thrift-store furniture, a secondhand rug from a Logan Square flea market—but tonight it felt like the walls were inching closer with every second that ticked by. The smell of instant coffee clung to the air, tangled with the damp scent of laundry I’d hung over the radiator to dry. Outside, the downtown skyline glowed through the storm, the Willis Tower and the rest of the high-rises smeared into streaks of light by the heavy Illinois rain.

“Stupid. Stupid. Stupid,” I muttered, the words barely audible over the storm.

The message glared up at me from the screen, a bright little bomb I’d detonated twenty minutes earlier.

Miss me yet?
Dinner at your place was unforgettable.
Maybe next time I’ll bring dessert.
– Emma

Sent. Delivered. Read.

Sent to a number saved in my contacts under three very clear, very important words:

DO. NOT. CONTACT.

I’d written that label myself the night I added it, a warning I’d promised I’d never ignore. Apparently two glasses of cheap grocery-store wine and my best friend Tina were enough to blow right past that.

“He probably won’t even see it,” Tina had said earlier at O’Malley’s, some dive off Clark where the beer tasted like regret and all the TVs were tuned to a Bulls game. Her eyeliner was already smudged, her laugh too loud as she’d nudged my arm. “Guys like that have people to filter this stuff. Relax. He’s forgotten all about you.”

I hadn’t forgotten him.

How could I forget a man like Luca Valente?

I’d only met him once, a month ago, at the Riverside Foundation Gala—a fundraiser in a glittering hotel ballroom off Michigan Avenue where I’d picked up an extra bartending shift because my rent and my student loans didn’t care that Chicago winters were cruel and tips were unpredictable.

Everyone knew who he was, even if they pretended they didn’t. The whispers slid under the music, under the clink of glasses.

Valente. That Valente.
The youngest head of the family.
You don’t cross him.
You don’t owe him.

He’d walked in wearing a tailored charcoal suit that probably cost more than I made in three months of double shifts. Dark eyes that missed nothing. A watch that looked like it belonged in a glass case on Oak Street, not on the wrist of a man who negotiated in shadows. He hadn’t said much that night. He hadn’t needed to.

When I set a glass of single-malt in front of him, he’d looked up once. Just once.

“Thank you, Miss…?”

“Emma,” I’d said, because my brain apparently forgot how to function in the presence of crime royalty.

His attention had landed on me like a physical weight. Cool. Assessing. Curious.

“Emma,” he’d repeated, as if he was testing how my name felt in his mouth. “If you ever need anything…”

He’d slid a small, cream-colored card across the bar. No logo. No title. Just a name and a number in neat black type. LUCA VALENTE. A local Chicago area code.

I’d almost thrown it away that night.

Instead, I’d saved it. Then labeled it DO NOT CONTACT in all caps, because even drunk-me had a survival instinct.

Sober-me had managed to ignore it for thirty days.

Drunk-me, tonight, had not.

Now sober-me was paying the price, heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. I’d called Tina three times since she’d shoved me out of the Uber and stumbled off to another bar. No answer.

I was alone with my mistake.

My phone buzzed violently in my hand.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

My mouth went dry. I stared at the screen until the vibration stopped, then started again three seconds later.

Answer it or don’t answer it, Emma. Pick a lane.

With fingers that wouldn’t quite obey me, I swiped.

“H–hello?” I hated the little hitch in my voice.

Silence. Just the muffled sound of rain hitting asphalt somewhere far below my third-floor walk-up. And…breathing. I thought I heard breathing.

“Hello?” I tried again, steadier this time.

“Open your door, Emma.”

The voice slid through the speaker like silk over steel. Smooth, controlled, low. The faintest trace of an accent—Italian, maybe—stretched his vowels just enough to make them dangerous.

I’d only heard that voice once, thanking me for a drink at the gala, but my body recognized it before my brain did.

“I…” My tongue stumbled. “What, Mr. Valente? I’m so sorry about that text, my friend—”

“I’m outside your door,” he said calmly. “Open it.”

The line went dead.

For two heartbeats, I forgot how to breathe.

He can’t be here.
How would he even—
No. No, I’m imagining this.

But I was already moving.

The hallway outside my apartment was quiet midwestern anonymity—peeling beige paint, dim lighting that hummed faintly, the distant blare of a TV from 3B where Mr. Johnson watched late-night talk shows. This was not the kind of place that men like Luca Valente visited. Men like him belonged in black SUVs and glass penthouses overlooking the Chicago River, not in a tired building between a laundromat and a taqueria.

My heart hammered as I pressed my eye to the peephole.

He was there.

Not with a crew, not with a wall of security. Alone.

Black wool coat dusted with raindrops. Dark hair damp at the temples. Broad shoulders filling the narrow hallway as if it were built around him. His head was bent slightly as he studied something on his phone, the screen’s cold light carving sharp lines into his profile.

As if he sensed me, his gaze lifted.

He looked straight into the peephole, into me. My breath hitched.

I could pretend not to be home. I could call 911 and tell the dispatcher there was a known Chicago crime boss outside my door. I could bolt the locks and hide in the bathroom like a coward.

Instead, my hand moved on its own, unlatching the chain, turning the deadbolt.

I opened the door.

“Mr. Valente,” I managed, every nerve in my body screaming that this was insane. “I can explain, it was—it was just a stupid—”

He didn’t answer.

He stepped forward, and I stepped back automatically, letting him cross into my life as easily as he crossed my threshold. The smell of rain and expensive cologne followed him, swallowing up the scent of my cheap coffee and damp laundry.

He closed the door behind him with a soft click that felt more final than any slam.

“You shouldn’t open your door without asking who it is first,” he said mildly, his gaze sweeping my apartment in a quick, efficient scan that made me feel like I’d been stripped bare. “Especially in this neighborhood.”

“I did check,” I said, surprised at the small streak of defiance in my voice. “I saw it was you.”

A flicker of something like amusement passed over his face. Gone as fast as it came.

“And yet you still opened.” His eyes returned to me. “Interesting.”

He shrugged off his coat, hanging it neatly on the hook by the door like he owned the place. Underneath, he wore a perfectly cut charcoal suit, the soft white of his shirt a stark contrast against his tan skin. A silver watch glinted at his wrist as he ran a hand through his damp hair.

“Sit,” he said, nodding toward my old couch with its threadbare arm.

“I’d rather stand,” I replied before my survival instinct could gag me.

His eyes darkened, just a shade. “Emma,” he said, my name turning into a warning in his mouth. “Sit. Please.”

The please sounded less like politeness and more like a final courtesy before he stopped asking.

I sat.

He took the mismatched chair opposite me, not slouching, not sprawling. He leaned forward slightly, resting his forearms on his knees, as if this cramped little living room were a negotiation room and I was the only item on the agenda.

“Your text,” he said. “Explain.”

I swallowed hard, forcing myself to meet his gaze.

“It was a joke,” I said. “A stupid, drunk joke. My friend Tina and I were drinking and she dared me, and I didn’t think you’d actually see it or…or remember me.”

“I remember everyone,” he said simply. “Especially those who catch my attention.”

The way he said it made heat crawl up my neck.

“Look, I’m really sorry. It was inappropriate. I never meant to—”

“What interests me,” he cut in, “is how you still have my number at all.”

I blinked. That wasn’t the direction I expected this to go.

“You—you gave it to me,” I said. “At the Riverside Foundation Gala. Last month? I was working the bar. You said, ‘If you ever need anything.’”

His gaze sharpened, then softened with recognition.

“Ah,” he said. “Yes. I remember now.”

Of course he did.

“And do you need something now, Emma?” he asked. “Is that why you sent the message?”

The way he said my name made it sound less like an identity and more like something he owned.

“No,” I said quickly. “I told you, it was just a stupid dare. I don’t need anything. I never planned to use your number. It was—”

“Lies don’t suit you,” he said quietly. “You’re not very good at them.”

Anger flared through my fear.

“You don’t know that,” I snapped. “You don’t know anything about me.”

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his phone.

“Don’t I?” he murmured.

He tapped the screen a few times, then turned it toward me.

My blood ran cold.

On the display was a photo of me and Tina leaving this building earlier that evening. My hair up in a messy knot, my denim jacket zipped to my throat, Tina’s arm hooked through mine as we laughed at something she’d just said. The angle suggested distance, like it had been taken from across the street.

“We took this two hours ago,” he said calmly. “You were headed to O’Malley’s on Clark. Your friend had three vodka sodas. You drank cheap wine. You tipped well. You came home alone.”

I stared at the photo, then at him.

“You’ve been having me watched,” I said, hearing how thin my voice had become. “That’s—that’s stalking.”

“That’s protection,” he corrected, his tone cool but not unkind. “My security team monitors anyone I give my personal number to. Standard practice, especially in Chicago.”

A city where people disappeared into alleys and never resurfaced.

He slipped the phone back into his pocket.

“When your text came through, I was in a meeting downtown,” he continued. “Ten blocks from here. I came myself, rather than sending someone, because I needed to know why you sent it.”

“How do you even know where I live?” I whispered.

His eyes met mine steadily.

“Emma,” he said, “nothing about you is unknown to me anymore.”

The room seemed to tilt slightly.

“I don’t need your protection,” I said, crossing my arms over my faded Northwestern T-shirt like armor. “I don’t need anything from you. I didn’t ask you to watch me.”

“You didn’t have to ask,” he replied. “The night at the Crimson Room was enough.”

I frowned. “What?”

He ignored the question, as if he’d already decided it wasn’t the time.

“You think this is about your text?” he asked. “You think I’m here because my ego was bruised or because I am offended by a joke?” His tone cooled even more. “You have no idea how much danger you put yourself in the moment you pressed send.”

“Danger from who?” I demanded. “You?”

He studied me for a long moment, then shook his head once.

“From them,” he said. “From the men who watch the people I care about in order to hurt me.”

My laugh came out too high, too thin.

“The men who what?”

“The Constantine family,” he said simply. “Victor Constantine, specifically. You’ve heard the name, yes?”

Even I, who tried very hard not to know anything about Chicago’s underbelly, had heard it. Constantine. Valente. Names you didn’t say loudly in public places. Names that floated through news articles and late-night rumors about raids and investigations that never quite seemed to stick.

“This is insane,” I said. “I’m just a bartender who works two jobs and sends money to her mom in Seattle. I’m not part of your—your world. Why would anyone from their side care about me?”

“Because my men have been too obvious,” he said, and for the first time there was a hint of irritation—not at me, but at himself. “They saw my interest. They made assumptions. Your text confirmed their suspicions you might be important to me.”

“Important?” I echoed, incredulous. “I poured you one drink.”

Dark eyes held mine, steady as a pulse.

“And yet,” he said softly, “here we are.”

Before I could fire back, his phone buzzed. His gaze flicked to the screen, then sharpened.

“Of course,” he said into the receiver in Italian, the smooth syllables sliding past me too fast to catch. He listened a moment longer, then hung up.

“We’re out of time,” he said, already rising.

“What does that mean?”

He moved to the window, parting the cheap blinds with two fingers. The rain-slicked street below glowed under orange Chicago streetlights. His jaw tightened.

“It means pack a bag,” he said. “Essentials only. You have five minutes.”

I stared at him.

“Excuse me?”

“Four minutes and fifty seconds now,” he replied crisply, turning away from the window. “Move, Emma.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said, shooting to my feet. “This is insane. You can’t just show up in my apartment and—”

“The man who’s been sitting in a parked car across from your friend Tina’s building all week works for the Constantines,” he said, cutting me off. “They’re not watching her for fun. They’re watching her for you. They will come for you here, or I remove you from their reach. Those are your choices.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but something stopped me.

It wasn’t his tone, though that was firm. It wasn’t the logic, though it was brutal and clear. It was the look in his eyes—uncompromising, yes, but underneath that, something else. Concern.

“I don’t believe you,” I said, weaker than I wanted.

He tilted his head slightly.

“Believe me,” he said, voice low and flat, “or don’t. But when a Constantine wants to send a message, it is written in blood. Yours, this time.”

My stomach lurched.

“As of ten minutes ago, they know exactly which door to kick in,” he finished. “You sent them the address yourself.”

And like it or not, he was right. Stepping into that black SUV might be dangerous. Staying here could be fatal.

The distant wail of sirens cut through the rain outside. Chicago symphony.

I grabbed my backpack.

In my bedroom, I yanked open drawers with shaking hands. Underwear. Jeans. Two T-shirts. My phone charger. My worn copy of Jane Eyre. The one photo of my parents that wasn’t on my phone—a snapshot of them in Seattle on a sunny day that looked like a memory from another planet.

I changed into jeans and a sweater, shoved my feet into sneakers, and returned to the living room.

Luca spoke softly into his phone near the door. When he saw me, his eyes flicked to the bag, then back to my face. He nodded once and ended the call.

“Stay close to me,” he said, opening the door partially and checking the hallway. “Do not talk to anyone. Do not look at anyone. You stay where I put you. Understood?”

I swallowed.

“Understood.”

The hallway was empty. We took the stairs instead of the elevator, moving quickly down dingy concrete steps that smelled faintly of old cigarettes and bleach. On the ground floor, he paused again, listening, then guided me toward a metal door I’d never noticed before.

“Service exit,” he murmured.

We slipped into a narrow, rain-soaked alley behind the building. A sleek black SUV idled there, engine humming. A huge man with a shaved head stepped out from the driver’s side, scanning the alley automatically before nodding to Luca.

“Marco,” Luca said. “This is Emma.”

Marco gave me a brief, assessing look. Not unkind, but clinical. He opened the back door.

“Get in,” Luca said quietly.

I hesitated at the threshold. Everything in me rebelled at climbing into a car with a mafia boss in the middle of the night.

“Emma,” he said, and something in his voice softened, just a fraction. “I give you my word. No harm will come to you while you are under my protection.”

“And if I don’t want your protection?” I asked. “If I walk away right now?”

A shadow crossed his face.

“Then,” he said, “I cannot guarantee what happens next.”

Under any other circumstances, I would have laughed at how cinematic he sounded. Right now, with sirens drawing closer, with his driver scanning the darkness as if he expected it to shoot back, it didn’t feel dramatic. It felt true.

I climbed into the SUV.

The door closed with a solid thud that sounded, somehow, like a door closing on my old life.

Luca slid in beside me. The SUV pulled away from the curb, tires hissing on wet asphalt, and my Chicago apartment—my job, my routine, my carefully small, safe existence—disappeared in the rearview mirror.

We drove through the city I thought I knew and made it strange.

From inside his car, Chicago looked different. The familiar grid of streets blurred into something shadowy and unpredictable. Marco took turns I wouldn’t have, doubled back, slipped down side streets and underpasses that felt like escape routes. The rain streaked the windows, smearing the neon and headlights into abstract streaks of red and white.

Luca hadn’t let go of my hand.

His thumb traced idle circles over my skin, absent-minded, almost soothing, as he checked his phone periodically with his free hand. We didn’t speak for a long time. The soft hum of the engine and the swish of the windshield wipers filled the silence.

“Your friend is secure,” he said at last, tucking his phone away. “My men retrieved her before Constantine’s people could make a move. She’ll be taken to a separate safe location.”

“Safe house,” I echoed. The word felt like something out of a TV show, not my actual life. “This is…really happening, isn’t it?”

He turned his head, studying me.

“I’m afraid so,” he said. “This is not a game, Emma. Not for them. Not for me.”

“And for you,” I said slowly, “I’m…what? A liability? A weakness?”

His hand tightened almost imperceptibly around mine.

“You are leverage,” he said. “To them. To me…” He trailed off and shook his head. “We’ll discuss what you are to me when you are somewhere no one can put a bullet through the window.”

We left the city slowly, the bright sprawl thinning into low buildings, then stretches of highway. Eventually the skyline fell away behind us, replaced by the flat darkness of the Illinois suburbs and the faint glow of distant strip malls.

When we finally pulled up to a gated property on the edge of a lake, the rain had softened to mist.

The house that rose out of the darkness looked like it belonged in a glossy magazine. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Clean modern lines. Warm interior light glowing against the night. Not quite a mansion, but something close—a carefully designed, carefully anonymous lake house somewhere outside Cook County, maybe.

“This is one of my residences,” Luca said as Marco swiped a key card at the gate. “Not in my name.”

“Of course it’s not,” I muttered.

Inside, the air smelled faintly of polished wood and lemon cleaner.

Nothing personal. No photos. No clutter. Just expensive furniture, tasteful art, and an emptiness that made it feel more like a model home than a place anyone lived in.

“You don’t stay here often,” I said.

“Never,” he replied, removing his jacket and draping it neatly over the back of a chair. “It exists for nights like this.”

Nights when a woman’s life detonates because she sent the wrong text.

In the kitchen—a sleek space full of stainless steel and quartz—he moved with practised ease, pulling prepared food from a fully stocked fridge, sliding plates into the microwave like a man who had done this a hundred times.

Someone maintains this place, I realized. Maybe a housekeeper who never met the owner, just a manager and a list of instructions.

“Eat,” he said once he’d set a plate in front of me at the long wooden table overlooking the dark water. “Shock hits harder on an empty stomach.”

I stared at the pasta steaming on the plate. Under normal circumstances, I would have inhaled it. Tonight, each bite felt like I was forcing it past the tightness in my throat.

“What are you, exactly?” I asked finally. “Besides the guy my friend warned me never to text.”

He gave a small, almost amused huff.

“Officially?” he said. “I run an import–export business. Restaurants. Real estate. Investments in various legitimate enterprises in Chicago and across the Midwest.”

“And unofficially?” I pressed.

He met my gaze without flinching.

“Unofficially,” he said, “I inherited a family name that comes with certain…expectations. The Valente family has been part of this city longer than half the skyscrapers. My grandfather ran numbers on the South Side. My father built something bigger. I made it…efficient.”

“Mafia,” I said quietly.

“If you like,” he replied. “The news prefers ‘organized crime.’ My attorneys prefer ‘alleged.’”

“And you protect random bartenders why?”

His jaw went tight.

“You are not random,” he said sharply. “You became involved because of something that was never meant to touch you. That is on me.”

“You keep saying ‘involved,’” I said. “Involved in what?”

He set down his fork, folding his hands together on the table. When he looked at me, the smooth, controlled businessman exterior had cracked just enough to reveal something harder underneath.

“The night at the Crimson Room,” he said. “Eight months ago.”

“I work there sometimes,” I said slowly. “Private events. But I don’t—”

“Anton Constantine’s birthday party,” Luca said. “You were on the floor that night. You intervened when he grabbed one of the other servers. You threw a drink in his face.”

The memory came back in sharp flashes.

A velvet-rope back room. Men with expensive watches and cheaper manners. My coworker Mia trying to twist out of a drunk guy’s grip. The splash of cold champagne as it soaked my hair and shirt. Laughter. Embarrassment. Anger.

I remembered storming off toward the back office to clean up.

I didn’t remember much after that.

“I hit my head,” I said slowly. “They told me I slipped on spilled champagne. Mild concussion. That’s all.”

“That’s not all,” Luca said. “You went into the office to change. You picked up a thumb drive that had fallen from Anton’s pocket when he grabbed your friend. That thumb drive contained information that could dismantle multiple organized groups in this city. Transactions. Names. Dates. Judges. Politicians. My family. His.”

“Blackmail material,” I said.

“Insurance,” he corrected automatically. “Young men like Anton collect leverage like toys. He was careless. You found what he dropped.”

“I don’t remember,” I whispered.

“You hit your head when you slipped,” he said, voice gentler now. “You were unconscious when I found you.”

“You—what?” I stared at him. “You were there?”

He nodded once.

“I was there to meet Anton,” he said. “To discuss our arrangement. When I realized he’d lost his drive, I began looking for it. I found you first. On the office floor, the drive in your hand.”

My hand went instinctively to the back of my head, where a small, faded scar still lingered beneath my hair. The ER doctor had called it “a bump” and sent me home.

“What did you do to me?” I asked, throat dry.

“Nothing you’re imagining,” he said sharply. “I checked your pulse. Made sure your breathing was steady. Then I took the drive and left.”

“You just left me?” I demanded. “On the floor?”

“I called an ambulance from a burner phone,” he said. “Stayed until I saw them carry you out. Then I left. I didn’t know your name. Not yet.”

“So you took the thumb drive,” I said, trying to string the pieces together. “And Anton—what? Just shrugged it off?”

“Anton started asking questions,” Luca said. “He suspected someone had taken it, but couldn’t prove who. He knew you’d been in the office. He knew something had changed. Three weeks later, he turned up in the Chicago River.”

Killed. I heard the word even if he didn’t say it.

“You?” I whispered.

His eyes flashed.

“No,” he said. “Victor. His older brother. He discovered the existence of the drive, realized Anton had created a liability, and solved the problem in his own way. But he never got the drive. My people had already copied its contents and destroyed the original.”

My stomach turned.

“And Victor traced all of this back to…me?”

“He traced the last person seen near the office that night,” Luca replied. “A bartender who slipped, hit her head, and woke up in the hospital with a concussion and a hazy memory. A bartender who, months later, happened to catch the attention of his primary rival at a charity gala. A bartender whose phone suddenly popped up on my private contact list. Victor isn’t stupid.”

“So he thinks I still have the drive,” I said slowly. “Or that I know where it is. And your men following me made it look worse.”

“Yes,” Luca said. “I put a target on your back the moment I decided to protect you.”

“Great,” I muttered. “Love that for me.”

Before he could respond, his phone buzzed again, sharper this time. His gaze flicked to the screen, and whatever softness had been in his expression vanished.

He answered, listened, swore in Italian—a low, vicious sound that made the hair rise on my arms.

“They moved faster than I expected,” he said, ending the call. “Constantine’s men grabbed your friend. Tina.”

The room jolted.

“What?” My chair screeched against the floor as I lurched to my feet. “No. That’s not—how—”

“They took her from outside her building,” he said. “My men were close, but not close enough. Victor has her.”

My lungs forgot how to work.

“She has nothing to do with this,” I choked. “This is between you and him.”

“He wants you,” Luca said grimly. “He will use anyone he can reach to pull you out.”

His laptop sat on the counter. He opened it, fingers flying over the keys. A video call request blinked on-screen, waiting.

“Answer,” a message in the corner read. “Or she bleeds.”

My hands shook.

“Emma.” Luca’s gaze caught mine, steady and hard. “You will say nothing about the drive. Nothing about Crimson. You let me handle him. Do you understand?”

I nodded, barely.

He accepted the call.

Tina’s face appeared first. She was tied to a chair, mascara smeared, a bruise forming along her cheekbone. Tears cut shining tracks through the makeup.

“Emma,” she sobbed when she saw me. “Emma, I’m sorry. I’m so—”

A hand swung in from the side and hit her hard enough to snap her head sideways. She gasped.

I lunged toward the screen as if I could reach through it.

“Stop! Don’t—”

A man stepped into view. Tall. Blond. Handsome in a way that would have been charming if not for the cold delight in his eyes.

“Miss Campbell,” he said, his accent thick and Eastern European, an ugly contrast to his pleasant tone. “Chicago suits you. I am Victor Constantine. So very nice to finally meet you.”

Luca’s shoulders went rigid beside me.

“I don’t know what you want,” I said, my voice shaking. “Please, just let her go. She has nothing to—”

“Oh, she has everything to do with this,” Victor said. “You see, we’ve been watching you for some time. Ever since Luca’s little soldiers started circling your building like anxious dogs. At first, I thought you were just his latest…diversion.”

Luca didn’t move, but I felt the temperature in the room drop.

“Then I realized,” Victor continued, stroking a finger down Tina’s ruined cheek as she flinched, “you must be much more valuable than that. Why else would he give you his private number? Why else would he come running the moment you sent him a little…text?”

He smiled, all teeth.

“Ask him, Miss Campbell,” he said. “Ask your new protector about the thumb drive. Ask him what was on it that was worth my brother’s life.”

I turned my head. Luca’s expression was carved from stone.

“Let her go, Constantine,” he said, his voice like ice. “You and I can settle this directly.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Victor asked lightly. “Here is my offer. You will bring me the drive. The original, of course, and any copies you may have made. You will do this by dawn. You will come alone. If you fail…” He shrugged and patted Tina’s shoulder. “Then your Emma will have a memory of her friend she will not soon forget.”

The screen went black.

Silence crashed down.

“Tell me the truth,” I said finally, my voice raw. “All of it. No more half-stories.”

Luca closed the laptop with slow, deliberate care.

“The drive exists,” he said. “The original is gone. I have the only remaining copy. Giving it to Victor exposes rot in my organization, my allies, my…friends. People who will die if he has that leverage. Not giving it to him puts you and your friend in his hands. He will not negotiate in good faith.”

“And you’re deciding between my life and the lives of your people,” I said.

His gaze met mine, steady. No apology. No denial.

“Yes,” he said.

The room felt suddenly too small.

“Then I’ll make it easy for you,” I said hoarsely. “Keep it. I’ll go to him myself. I’ll tell him I don’t have it. I don’t know anything. Maybe he’ll—”

“You will not go anywhere near him,” Luca snapped, the controlled exterior finally cracking. “Do you understand me? You do not bargain with a man like Victor. He doesn’t want your words. He wants your suffering.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face once, then straightened.

“We’re leaving,” he said.

“We just got here,” I protested weakly.

“This house is burned the moment he knows you’re with me,” Luca replied. “We need somewhere no one alive knows about except my people. Somewhere older than this war.”

The cabin in the woods looked like something out of a Midwest postcard. Log walls. Stone chimney. A porch that creaked underfoot. Surrounded by dense trees that turned everything into a green tunnel.

Inside, though, it felt warm. Worn leather chairs. Bookshelves actually filled with books, not designer objects. A mug left on a side table. A sweater thrown over the back of a chair.

“You actually live here sometimes,” I said.

“When I need to think,” he answered, unstrapping a shoulder holster and setting the weapon on a table as casually as if he were setting down a pen. “My father built this before I was born. It’s not in any of our records. No one outside this room and Marco knows we’re here.”

Marco did a perimeter sweep and disappeared outside. We were alone.

I found myself drawn to the bookshelf. The spines were in Italian, English, sometimes both. Crime novels, philosophy, history, poetry.

“You read all of these?” I asked.

“Some,” he said. “The rest, I’m working on.”

“I didn’t picture you as the bookish type,” I said.

He gave me a sidelong look.

“You pictured me at all?” he asked.

“Unfortunately,” I muttered.

He smiled, quick and genuine before he smoothed it away.

The hours that followed stretched strange and thin.

We laid out possibilities. Luca explained the full scope of the drive’s content—accounts, shell companies, kickbacks that reached from the South Side to City Hall. He talked about “minimizing collateral damage” and “controlled exposure,” phrases that sounded sterile until you realized they translated to lives ruined or preserved based on what he decided to do with a single file.

At some point, he excused himself to speak with Marco outside. I wandered the cabin, touching his world in small, guilty ways. The sweater draped over the chair was soft, worn at the elbows. When I pulled it around my shoulders, it smelled faintly like cedar and his cologne.

The weight of everything that had happened pressed down on me—my old life in Chicago, my grad school dreams, my mom in Seattle who thought I was safe and ordinary.

And the man currently planning how to keep me alive.

By the time he returned, night had sunk its teeth into the forest outside. The only light came from a lamp and the fire he’d built in the stone fireplace.

“We’ll get your friend first,” he said without preamble. “Then we deal with Victor.”

“I’m coming with you,” I blurted.

“No.” The answer was immediate.

“She’s my friend,” I insisted. “This is my fault. I’m not staying here and just—”

“Emma.” He stepped closer. “I need you safe. My men need to focus on the operation, not on keeping you from getting killed trying to be a hero.”

“I’m not trying to be a hero,” I snapped. “I’m trying not to feel like a coward while other people get hurt because of me.”

His jaw clenched.

“You are many things,” he said. “Coward is not one of them. You will stay. Marco and I will go. We will bring her back.”

“And if you don’t?” I asked.

He held my gaze for a long moment.

“Then,” he said, “you use the satellite phone in the drawer by the bed. You call this number.” He pressed a slip of paper into my hand. “You tell them my name and yours. They will take you out of Illinois and out of this country if they must.”

I stared at the numbers, at the out-of-state area codes.

“You had this ready,” I said. “For me. Why?”

He hesitated.

“You remind me of someone,” he said finally, voice quieter than I’d ever heard it. “My sister. Sophia.”

I blinked. That, I hadn’t expected.

“She died five years ago in a car bomb meant for me,” he continued. “Since then, anyone who comes too close to my world ends up collateral. When I saw you at the gala, for a moment I thought I was seeing a ghost. Then I realized you weren’t her. You were yourself. And I realized I’d been neglecting something very important.”

“What?” I whispered.

“The cost innocent people pay for our wars,” he said. “I won’t lose another woman like that because of me.”

Before I could respond, he stepped back.

“Eat something,” he said gruffly. “Sleep if you can. We’ll be back before dawn.”

He and Marco were gone a few minutes later, the sound of the SUV fading down the dirt road.

I was alone.

Time thickened. I wandered. I paced. I stood on the porch, staring out at the black line of trees, wondering what part of Illinois we were even in. Fox River Grove? Somewhere in Lake County? It didn’t matter. It was nowhere. A hiding place within a hiding place.

Every noise made me jump. Every creak of the cabin had me imagining headlights sweeping across the yard, boots on the steps, voices I didn’t recognize.

At some point exhaustion dragged me down onto the couch. I must have dozed, because the next thing I knew, headlights did sweep across the windows.

I shot to my feet, heart in my throat.

The SUV rolled to a stop. The door opened. Marco climbed out first, then turned to help someone else down.

“Tina!” I flew to the door, yanking it open.

She stumbled toward me, pale and shaking, eyes red and swollen but alive. I wrapped my arms around her, holding her so tightly she wheezed.

“You’re okay,” I whispered. “You’re okay. I’m so sorry.”

Behind her, Luca walked in. His white shirt was splashed with dark patches, his sleeves rolled up, his face drawn. For a second I thought he’d been shot. Then I realized the stains weren’t his. His movements were too smooth, too controlled.

“Tina needs rest,” he said quietly. “And a doctor, when it’s safe.”

Tina’s fingers dug into my arm.

“They said they’d cut my fingers off,” she sobbed. “If you didn’t come. I thought—they were going to—”

“It’s over,” I lied. “You’re safe now.”

Later, after I’d tucked her into the cabin’s only bedroom and stayed until her breathing evened out, I returned to the main room.

Luca stood by the fire. He’d changed his shirt. Only a faint smear of something dark lingered along his forearm near a pale scar.

“Is she really okay?” I asked.

“Physically,” he said. “They hadn’t started on the threats they made yet.”

“And the men who took her?”

He didn’t look away from the flames.

“Dead,” he said simply.

I should have been horrified. Part of me was. Another part, the one that had imagined what Tina would look like if he hadn’t gotten there in time, felt only a fierce, startled sort of gratitude.

“What happens now?” I asked, wrapping my arms around myself.

“Now Victor knows I can reach back,” Luca said. “He lost men. He lost face. He lost his leverage.”

“And he’ll retaliate,” I murmured.

“Yes,” Luca said. “Unless I change the game.”

He told me his new plan then. Not a simple trade of drive for lives. Something more calculated. Release portions of the drive’s contents—enough to strip Victor of his corrupt police protection, to put pressure on his elected friends. Use the law, or the appearance of it, as a weapon. Force Victor into a corner where he couldn’t move without exposing himself further.

“And then what?” I asked. “You shoot him in a back alley?”

“Something like that,” he said without apology. “One bullet is cheaper than a war.”

I thought of the men already dead on both sides. Men whose names I didn’t know. Men who’d probably grown up in neighborhoods not far from mine.

“This isn’t going to just…disappear,” I said. “Even if he’s gone. There will always be someone else.”

“Probably,” Luca said. “But he won’t be your problem anymore.”

“And me?” I asked. “And Tina? What do we look like in whatever version of your problem-solving comes next?”

He turned then, finally looking away from the fire to me.

“That depends on what you want,” he said.

I laughed, short and humorless.

“What I want?” I repeated. “I wanted to get into grad school and catalog rare books at the University of Chicago library. I wanted to pay off my loans before I was forty. I wanted to have a normal midwestern apartment and worry about normal midwestern things like broken radiators and whether the bus would come on time.”

“You can still have all of that,” he said quietly. “If you’re willing to let me help.”

“As what?” I asked. “Your…what, exactly? Your obligation? Your pet project?”

His jaw flexed.

“As someone whose life I took responsibility for the night I took that drive from your hand,” he said. “As someone whose future I feel responsible for preserving.”

“That’s not all it is,” I said softly.

Silence stretched.

“No,” he admitted finally. “It isn’t.”

He crossed the space between us until we were standing close enough that I could see flecks of gold in his dark eyes, the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw.

“In my world,” he said, “people want things from me. Money. Power. Protection. They come to me with their hands open and their eyes calculating.”

He reached up, slowly, giving me every chance to flinch away. His fingers brushed a strand of hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear.

“You didn’t want anything from me,” he said. “You wanted to leave. You wanted your quiet life back. And yet here you are, trying to bargain for your friend, for my men, for people you do not even know. You see me, Emma. Not the name. Not the stories. Me. I am not used to that.”

“You’ve killed people,” I said, needing to anchor us.

“Yes,” he said. No excuses. “And I will kill again. I won’t lie to you. I won’t pretend to be something I am not.”

His thumb traced the line of my jaw.

“But when I look at you,” he said softly, “I remember there is a version of myself that my sister believed in once. A version that might have survived if she had. I don’t know if that man can exist again. But if he can, it will be with you.”

The confession cracked something in me I hadn’t realized was brittle.

“This is crazy,” I whispered.

“Yes,” he agreed. “It is.”

We didn’t kiss. It would have been too easy, too neat. Instead, we stood there, breathing the same air, until a soft cry from the bedroom broke the spell.

“Tina,” I said, stepping back. “She needs me.”

“She does,” he said. “Go.”

As I walked away, he added, so quietly I almost didn’t hear it, “Come back.”

Morning came gray and thin through the cabin windows. Tina slept deeply, pain meds and exhaustion knocking her out. Marco had already left to deliver her to another safe house near the city—one with a doctor on call and no known ties to either of the warring families.

Luca and I drove back toward Chicago in a nondescript sedan with plates that probably belonged to a very confused accountant in Naperville.

“Tell me about your life,” he said once the trees thinned and the suburbs started again. “Before all of this.”

“Why?” I asked, watching wet fields roll past my window.

“Because,” he said simply, “I want to know what I’m asking you to give up. And what I need to give back, if I can.”

So I told him.

About being a kid in Seattle, hiding in the library during lunch because books made more sense than other children. About my plan to get my master’s in library science, to specialize in preservation and rare manuscripts. About crashing onto a friend’s couch in Chicago after college because it was cheaper than the coasts and I wanted to see something that wasn’t rain and evergreen.

“Bartending was supposed to be temporary,” I said. “Debt wasn’t.”

He listened, really listened, eyes flicking between the road and my face.

“You still want that?” he asked when I finished. “The degree. The books. The quiet life.”

“Yes,” I said. “But wanting doesn’t mean I believe it’s possible anymore.”

“It is,” he said. “I have contacts at Northwestern, at the University of Chicago. There are scholarships. Endowments. Foundations that owe me favors.”

“You’re offering to be my patron?” I asked skeptically.

“I am offering to fix what my world broke,” he said. “When this is over, you will have the means to pursue whatever future you choose. With me or without me.”

I looked at him, at the strong line of his profile against the gray light, at the hand resting on the steering wheel—steady, capable, stained by things I couldn’t un-know.

“And if I choose without?” I asked.

He swallowed once.

“Then,” he said, “I use what I have to make sure you can disappear somewhere Victor’s ghost can never reach. And I live with it.”

The city swallowed us again, concrete replacing trees, traffic replacing quiet.

The plan to meet Victor at the abandoned factory complex on the South Side had already been set in motion while we were still at the cabin. Luca’s men would arrive early to secure positions. A sniper on a nearby rooftop “just in case.” An inside man in Victor’s crew ready to misdirect at a critical moment.

My role was simple. Show up. Be visible. Convince Victor I mattered enough to Luca to trade for.

“If he doesn’t believe you care,” I said dryly, “what then?”

Luca’s mouth twisted.

“Oh,” he said. “He believes it.”

We were three turns from the meeting point when his knuckles tightened on the wheel.

“We’re being followed,” he said calmly.

My heart stuttered.

“What?”

“Two cars back. Black sedan. Been behind us for six blocks. Marco?”

He hit a button on the steering wheel. The car’s speakers crackled.

“Here,” Marco’s voice came through.

“Tail at our six,” Luca said. “Position B.”

“Understood,” Marco replied.

Luca glanced at me.

“Glove compartment,” he said. “There’s a phone. Code seven-two-nine-four. Text the contact labeled ‘Falcon.’ Write: ‘Moving to position B. Need immediate support.’”

My hands shook as I did what he asked.

“And Marco,” Luca added into the car’s mic, “the package is being rerouted.”

“Alternate delivery point,” Marco finished. “Got it.”

We peeled off the main road into an alley so narrow my breath stalled. Concrete walls loomed inches from the side mirrors. At the end, a hidden courtyard opened up between buildings—cracked pavement, chain-link fence, a loading dock.

Three identical black SUVs idled there, engines humming. Three sets of men in dark clothing scanned the entrance.

“Switch,” Luca said, pulling to a stop.

“Mr. Valente,” one of the men called. “They’re still at the alley mouth. Waiting.”

“They’ll follow the decoy,” Luca replied. “Enzo, Paulo, Emma rides with you. Keep her out of sight. Vest.”

One of the men grabbed a black bulletproof vest from the back of an SUV and held it out.

“Under your jacket,” Luca told me.

The vest was heavier than it looked. He helped adjust the straps, his fingers brushing my ribs briefly.

“Emma,” he said, cupping my face for a heartbeat. “Whatever happens, do not get out of that car until you see me. Not my men. Not anyone else. Me.”

I nodded, throat thick.

A sharp crack split the air.

Someone shouted. Another crack. Metal pinged. A bullet hit the trunk of our sedan and ricocheted off.

Gunfire.

Luca’s body was on top of mine before I could think, pushing me down behind the car, his weight a shield, his voice a shout in Italian to his men.

“Get her out!”

Hands grabbed me, hauling me toward an SUV. I twisted, trying to keep Luca in sight.

“Luca!”

For a second, his eyes met mine through the chaos. He nodded once, then turned away, drawing his own gun with deadly focus.

The SUV door slammed. Tires squealed. The last I saw of him was a flash of dark hair and a white shirt streaked with dust as he moved into cover.

“Mr. Valente will meet us at the secondary location,” Paulo said from the passenger seat, breath steady despite the gunfire fading behind us. “It’s safer this way.”

The “secondary location” turned out to be the top floor of a sleek office building in the Loop—a penthouse with glass walls overlooking the Chicago River, the kind of place that rented for more per month than I made in a year. A law firm occupied the lower floors. Purely legitimate, if the brass-and-marble lobby was any indication.

“Please, sit,” Enzo said, gesturing toward a leather sofa worth more than my car. “He won’t be long.”

“He’s in a firefight,” I snapped, unable to keep still. “You don’t know that he—”

“He will come,” Paulo said, with a faith that made my chest hurt.

He didn’t come quickly.

An hour passed. Then another. The city glowed beneath us, lights reflected in the black water of the river. The bulletproof vest dug into my shoulders. Every time an elevator bell chimed in the distance, my heart leapt.

Finally—finally—the private elevator opened directly into the penthouse.

Marco stepped out first.

Then Luca.

He was supported on one side, his face drawn, his normally crisp shirt half-untucked and stained dark red along his left side.

“Luca,” I breathed, crossing the room before I could stop myself. “You’re hurt.”

“It’s nothing,” he said, which was what people always said right before collapsing.

“It’s a graze,” Marco confirmed. “Doctor is on his way.”

“Still bleeding,” I muttered, guiding him gently to the sofa.

I peeled his jacket away. The bullet had carved a deep groove along his ribs, tearing through skin but missing the vital things underneath. Angry, red, already swelling. Ugly and yet, in the hierarchy of injuries, merciful.

“What happened?” I asked, pressing a clean cloth from the first aid kit against the wound as gently as I could.

“Victor came prepared,” Luca said, breathing shallow. “More men than we thought. More angles covered. He still ran when the tide turned. He always was a coward when things got messy.”

“Did you…?” I couldn’t finish.

“No,” Luca said. “He was wounded. But he got out. For now.”

“And your men?” I asked, dreading the answer.

Marco’s jaw clenched.

“Three casualties on our side,” he said. “Seven on his, that we could count.”

It felt like someone had dropped a lead weight into my chest. Three human lives on one side. Seven on the other. All because of information on a thumb drive and the ripples of choices made months earlier in a back room I barely remembered.

“This has to stop,” I whispered. “No more. No more dead men in alleys. There has to be another way to end this.”

Luca’s hand closed around my wrist, his grip warm despite his pallor.

“There is no clean way,” he said softly. “Not with people like Victor. But I will do everything in my power to keep the blood from touching you again.”

He kept that promise.

We delivered an edited version of the drive’s content to a secure mailbox that night, addressed not to a reporter, not to a cop, but to three different federal agencies operating out of downtown Chicago. Enough evidence to light fires under people who had built careers on looking the other way. Enough heat to make Victor far less protected when the end finally came for him.

Weeks later, the headlines would mention a “serious federal inquiry into organized crime and political corruption in Cook County.” They wouldn’t mention the woman who’d found a thumb drive on a bar floor, or the man who’d used it as both shield and sword.

That part of the story would belong to us.

In that penthouse, with the lights of the city stretching out like a map of everything I thought I’d wanted before all this, Luca asked me again what I wanted now.

“I want safety,” I said. “For Tina. For me. For my mother in Seattle. I want to finish my degree. I want to work with books. I want to sleep without wondering who’s parked across the street.”

“And with me?” he asked quietly. “What do you want there?”

I looked at him. At the man who’d dragged me out of my life and into his. Who had armed me with knowledge I never asked for. Who had killed to protect me and offered to help me disappear if that was what I chose.

“I want to understand what this is,” I said honestly. “Between us. When no one is trying to kill me. When there aren’t men with guns waiting outside. When I’ve had time to remember who I am without all…this.”

His gaze softened in a way I hadn’t seen before. Less steel. More something like hope.

“I can give you that time,” he said. “And that space. And when you have decided—whatever you decide—I will accept it.”

“And if I decide you’re bad for me?” I asked.

He smiled faintly.

“Then I will spend the rest of my life proving you wrong,” he said.

Ridiculous. Arrogant. Completely, utterly him.

“When Victor is gone,” I said. “When the dust settles. When Tina is living some normal life in some other state. Then we talk about…anything else. On my terms.”

“On your terms,” he agreed.

Dawn crept up behind the skyscrapers, washing the Chicago sky in soft gold and pale pink, the colors reflected in the glass towers and the dark ribbon of the river. The city woke up slowly below us—L trains rattling over steel tracks, early commuters hurrying down wet sidewalks, coffee shops in River North switching on their lights.

My old Chicago. My new one.

Luca eased closer on the sofa, slow enough that I could have moved away. I didn’t.

He wrapped an arm carefully around my shoulders, mindful of his bandaged side. I rested my head against his uninjured shoulder, listening to his heartbeat thump steadily beneath my ear.

Outside, the city went on—sirens wailing, traffic building, people living their ordinary lives, unaware of the quiet war that had almost swallowed me.

Inside, in a glass-walled penthouse overlooking the American city that had become both my prison and my salvation, I let myself exhale for the first time since I’d pressed send on a stupid text message that changed everything.

Maybe this was madness.

Maybe it was the start of something neither of us knew how to name yet.

Whatever it was, it was real.

And for better or worse, we were in it together.