Chapter 6
Chapter six
By the time the breaking news finished rewriting the story—how the mayor of New York City’s daughter had nearly been abducted and saved by a heroic security guard—two NYPD detectives came in from the hallway.
One wore a black wool coat with snow still melting on the shoulders.
The other was older, his face set in an irritated scowl of a man who didn’t want to be working on Christmas night.
They introduced themselves as Detectives Reynolds and Walsh, with Walsh being the older of the two.
Mary stood behind me and adjusted the blanket, pulling it higher over my shoulders in a quiet show of support. The tea warmed my hands. I wasn’t shaking anymore, but only because my whole body was locked up tight with anxiety.
My father sat across from me, his chief of staff hovering close by his shoulder.
Detective Walsh didn’t hesitate to sit next to him and pulled out a notebook.
“Miss Hayes,” he said carefully, “we need you to walk us through what happened.”
Detective Reynolds crossed his arms. “Start with the man. What did he look like?”
I stared into the fire and kept my face blank.
“He was tall,” I said. “Dark clothes. He moved fast.”
Devastatingly handsome, predator-pretty, and completely irrelevant to their report.
“How tall?” Walsh asked.
“Taller than me,” I said. “Broad shoulders.”
“Hair color?”
I shrugged. “Dark.”
“Any tattoos? Scars? Accent?”
My mouth went dry, recalling his deep, raspy Irish lilt. A voice that had made my thighs clench, but there was no way I’d ever say that out loud.
“I don’t know. It happened so quickly.”
Reynolds leaned forward. “Did he say anything to you?”
“A few things,” I said.
“What specifically?”
I inhaled through my nose. “He told me to come with him.”
“Did he call you by name?”
Yes…it had been the last thing I heard as I bolted away.
“No,” I lied.
My father’s eyes stayed on me. Maddox shifted as if he wanted to jump in and steer my answers. I gave them nothing. Why, I honestly couldn’t explain.
Walsh looked down at his notes. “Did he attempt to rape you, Miss Hayes?”
The question hit with a sick kind of predictability. It was the easiest box for them to put this in.
“No,” I said calmly.
Reynolds lifted his eyebrows. “No?”
Everyone was silent, waiting for me to fully explain what had happened.
“He came up behind me and then he grabbed my arm. I panicked and defended myself.”
“Have you had defensive training?” Reynolds asked sarcastically.
I didn’t hesitate because hesitation looked weak.
“At the monastery,” I began, and the words tasted bitter. “We were taught basic self-defense. Sometimes we’re targets when working in the city.”
My father’s mouth tightened at the word monastery. The PR woman’s eyes flicked up from her phone, then away again.
“So after he grabbed your arm, what did you do?” Walsh prompted.
“I jumped back and fell against one of the votive stands,” I explained. “I got tangled up in my habit trying to run. So, I shed the bulky layers as I moved across the sanctuary. He followed, but didn’t catch me. I shouted at him not to touch a bride of Christ, or he’d be damned.”
I shrugged, shaking my head in embarrassment.
“He probably thought I was acting insane, throwing off my robes and veil in the middle of a holy place. The next thing I remember was making a mad dash out the side door and down the alley. The iron gate leading to the sidewalk was slightly open. I flung it open and took off, never looking back.”
I didn’t mention him pinning me to the altar. I didn’t mention him ripping off my veil. I didn’t mention biting his lip.
And I would never mention, not in a thousand years, that I pressed my ass against his cock on purpose and made him rock hard.
“And then your security guard was shot outside,” Reynolds said. “Do you know who fired the weapon?”
“No.”
“That’s hard to believe,” he said skeptically.
I met his eyes. “It was dark, and I was running away, terrified.”
Walsh stared at me for a moment. “Was anyone else involved?”
“Not that I know of.”
Reynolds leaned back, frustration flashing. “A professional security guard was downed with a shattered knee, and our witness can provide only vague details.”
My jaw tightened. “Is that a question?”
Walsh shot him a look, then turned back to me.
“We’ll need you to come down to the precinct in the morning to give us a formal statement,” he said. “For now, you should rest.”
My father spoke before I could. “She won’t be going anywhere. You have all the information you need.”
It wasn’t protective. It was final.
The detectives didn’t argue. They gathered their things and left. The moment the door shut behind them, the room filled with voices again. People moved in and out with phones pressed to their ears. Updates came fast, and no one bothered to soften them for me.
The guard who’d been outside the church was in the hospital but stable.
NYPD had quickly arrived on the scene and cordoned off the church, but not before a reporter had gotten inside and taken pictures.
“Photos are already circulating,” the PR woman said, her tone tight. “The sanctuary was wrecked. Candle stands overturned, broken glass all over the place, and plants strewn across the floor.”
A phone was turned toward my father. He looked at it for a second, then handed it back without reacting.
My stomach clenched anyway, because I didn’t need to see it to recall the havoc we’d created. The altar runner bunched beneath my palms. His body pressed behind mine, caging me in place.
His hand on my shoulder had been firm, controlled. But his restraint was the part that didn’t make sense.
He could have hurt me in a hundred ways inside that church. He had the size and strength for it. He had me pinned. Christ, he had me bent over the altar.
But he didn’t take what he easily could have.
Instead, he had tried to move me. Contain me. Carry me out.
What unsettled me most was the way my body had responded to him. The way an electric current ran down my spine and straight to my core. The rush of power when his cock hardened against me as I ground back, eliciting a growl from his throat.
The look on his face when I bit his lip had stayed with me too. Not pain. Not shock.
But heat. Violence. Desire.
His eyes had tracked my body from my boots to my face the second the habit came off, as if he wanted to devour me. Like he was angry with himself for wanting me.
I shouldn’t have enjoyed that memory.
But I did.
I didn’t understand why I’d protected him with vague answers. I didn’t understand why I’d reduced him to “tall,” “dark,” and “fast” when I could have given them enough detail to hunt him down.
Nor did I understand why the idea of him being caught made my stomach twist in a way that wasn’t relief.
Maybe I just liked dangerous men. That had always been my problem. I’d never been afraid of the fire. Just unprepared for the scars.
Someone swore under their breath near the doorway. “No usable camera footage. Not from the church. Not from the street cams nearby.”
Of course there wasn’t.
Cameras always failed when powerful men were involved. The footage got corrupted. The truth got lost. It was a neat little coincidence that happened over and over.
Maddox stepped closer to my father. “The press will ask why the cameras didn’t catch anything,” he said. “We can push the organized crime angle. Old families. It’ll be an easy sell.”
My father’s eyes narrowed. “Do it.”
The PR woman opened her folder and started talking as if she were reading from a script she’d already rehearsed.
“We frame this as an attempted rape inside a church,” she said. “Cowardly assault. The city under siege, the mayor’s daughter targeted. Mayor Hayes vows to clean up the criminal underworld as he transitions to—”
“To higher office,” my father finished smoothly.
There it was. The real point. Not me. Not the church. Not the fact that a man had put his hands on me in a house of God and tried to take me.
My stomach turned.
“He didn’t try to rape me,” I said, loud enough to cut through the room.
The PR woman blinked. My father’s head turned slowly toward me.
“This is not your concern, sweetheart,” he said.
I let out a short, disbelieving breath. “Excuse me?”
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. His tone went cold, the same tone he used when he wanted obedience without argument.
“You’re shaken,” he said. “You’re not thinking clearly and you must be exhausted. How about you go to bed?”
The words hit in the exact same place my mother’s death had hit.
Not the grief. Not the loss.
The moment everyone decided my pain was useful, not sacred.
The moment the story mattered more than the truth.
I stared at him across the room, blanket on my shoulders, my wet clothes still clinging to me.
I understood it with sickening clarity.
My mother had died, and he had built a career on it.
Tonight, someone had tried to take me, and he was already shaping it into a campaign narrative—law and order, public safety, a father protecting his daughter.
My throat tightened, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of watching me break. I swallowed it down and kept my face calm.
Because I knew how this worked.
If I gave him emotion, he would use it.
If I gave him truth, he would bury it.
And if I let him, he would continue to turn my life into a weapon and aim it wherever it benefited him most.
They kept talking after that, as if I were no longer in the room.
I sat on the couch, the blanket still around my shoulders and the mug cooling in my hands, while they reviewed the story, refining it, polishing it until it gleamed.
“The voters will eat this up,” Maddox chuckled.
“This boosts sympathy with suburban families,” another voice answered. “Especially the religious vote.”
“We’ll hold a press conference in the morning,” the PR woman said. “Early. Control the cycle before anyone else does.”
My father nodded once, already elsewhere in his head.
I watched him as the distance between us widened beyond the room. He didn’t look like my father anymore. He was just a man I happened to share a last name with. A stranger who knew how to use grief and fear as currency.
“I’m exhausted,” I said, standing and cutting through the room. “And I feel naked without my habit. I’m going up to my room.”
“Of course,” Father said. “Get some rest.”
A guard escorted me upstairs to the guest suite designed for appearances, not comfort.
The door closed behind me and I locked it.
The silence and cool air hit hard, so I quickly changed into the plain cotton nightgown I despised almost as much as the habit.
I crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, then let myself fall back, staring at the ceiling for a long time before I reached for my phone.
The news was already everywhere.
Headlines blurred together as I scrolled. Mayor’s Daughter Attacked in Church. Gunfire Near Upper East Side Parish. Photos of the sanctuary filled the screen.
I swiped past them and continued to search.
No photos of him. No grainy video. No anonymous post claiming credit or proximity.
I set the phone down and stared at the dark screen.
Who was he?
Had my father’s enemies sent him? Some old mafia family looking to make a point? Or was he something else entirely, moving through a different set of shadows?
My mind replayed the fight whether I wanted it to or not. His hands. His strength. The way he’d sworn under his breath. The moment he could have raped me and didn’t.
The way he’d looked at me, as if he wanted to tear me apart and keep me all at once.
I closed my eyes and let out a slow breath.
Hatred and fascination twisted together until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.