Chapter 3 - Whispers at the Penthouse
The bathroom in the East Suite was larger than the entire apartment I had rented in Pilsen. The walls were clad in slabs of Calacatta marble with veins of moss green running through the stone. In the chrome basin, a bar of clear, fragrance-free soap sat on a porcelain dish.
I scrubbed my hands under scalding water until the skin was pink and raw. I caught my reflection in the mirror: twenty-four years old, cheeks hollowed by three months of eating stale toast and instant noodles, dark eyes wide with an emotion I couldn't quite identify. It wasn't just fear. It was an uncanny, electric anticipation that made my ribs ache.
What was I doing? I was putting myself in the hands of a syndicate boss—a man whose surname was spoken in hushed tones by the Chicago police commissioner and whispered with terror by the dockworkers of Calumet Harbor. If he decided I was a liability, nobody would come looking for me. A missing waitress from Wicker Park wasn't worth an investigation.
*Rosa,* I reminded myself, drying my fingers on a lint-free towel. *You breathe because she breathed for you when you were an infant abandoned in a car seat. You can survive two weeks with a devil to keep her heart beating.*
I walked down the darkened hallway. The thick wool runner muffled my footsteps completely. Outside the double oak doors, Dante stood sentinel, his arms folded across his chest, a submachine gun slung discreetly under his unbuttoned overcoat.
He didn't speak. He simply reached out and turned the brass handle, pushing the door open an inch.
“Go on,” he muttered. “Don't talk unless he asks a question. Don't touch anything except him.”
The master bedroom was vast and darkened, illuminated only by the faint pre-dawn twilight seeping through the sheer window panels. The bed was enormous—an island of dark mahogany surrounded by an ocean of dark wood flooring.
Adrien was lying atop the covers, fully dressed in his charcoal trousers and a thin black cotton long-sleeve shirt. His shoes were off; his bare feet were long and pale. His eyes were closed, his arms laid flat against his sides like an effigy on an ancient tomb.
“Sit,” his voice emerged from the shadows.
There was a low leather armchair placed directly beside the right edge of the mattress. I crossed the room quietly, my bare feet sinking into the thick carpet, and sat down on the edge of the chair.
“Roll up your sleeve,” he whispered.
I pulled back the sleeve of my gray cotton cardigan, exposing my wrist and forearm.
“Give me your right hand.”
My fingers trembled slightly as I lifted my arm. Adrien reached out. His fingers hovered for a fraction of a second—a hesitation born of a lifetime of conditioning, expecting the white-hot agony that normally accompanied contact—before he wrapped his palm around my wrist.
The moment our flesh connected, a sound broke from his throat—a low, helpless groan of pure relief.
He pulled my arm down toward the mattress, adjusting his grip until the pads of my fingers rested against the bare skin of his neck, just below the angle of his jaw where his carotid artery throbbed.
“Do not move,” he commanded, his voice already heavy, slurred by the onset of sudden, overwhelming drowsiness. “Keep your fingers… right there.”
The heat radiating from his skin was staggering. Up close, I could see the perfection of his eyelashes, ridiculously long and dark against his pale cheekbones. The faint scent of cedarwood and cold rain emanated from his collar. His skin was smooth, surprisingly soft despite the scars that marked his hands.
Under my palm, the frantic, jagged pulse of a man living on the edge of madness began to slow down.
Sixty beats per minute.
Fifty-five.
Fifty.
Within three minutes, Adrien Varelli’s breathing turned rhythmic, deep, and heavy. His fingers, which had clamped around my wrist with the strength of an iron vise, gradually loosened, though they remained resting securely over the back of my hand.
He was asleep.
I sat in the silence of the forty-story tower, watching the most dangerous man in Chicago surrender to unconsciousness like a wounded soldier collapsing into a trench. Outside, the fog over the lake began to turn a faint, ghostly lavender as the sun fought through the winter clouds.
For the first time in twelve hours, my own mind began to slow down. The terror of the night receded, replaced by an unsettling, almost hypnotic tranquility. There was an intoxicating intimacy to the moment—holding the lifeline of a predator while he lay completely defenseless beneath my fingers. A single press of a hidden blade against that exposed throat, and the Varelli empire would tumble into anarchy.
He knew that. He had killed men for looking at him with suspicion. Yet he had invited me into his sanctuary, placed his neck beneath my palm, and closed his eyes.
*He’s not just a monster,* I realized with a sudden chill that traveled down to my marrow. *He is a starving man. And I am the only bread he can swallow.*
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My eyelids grew heavy. Exhaustion, heavy as wet cement, dragged at my consciousness. My head nodded forward. Eventually, unable to fight the tide of three consecutive shifts and the emotional whiplash of the night, my forehead sank onto the edge of the mattress, inches from his shoulder, my hand still pinned beneath his warm, motionless fingers.
***