Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Elena
The office gym sits two floors below the lobby, tucked behind a glass door with a keypad and a sign that says STAFF ONLY in block letters. It’s not fancy, but it’s clean.
Rubber flooring. Two racks, a row of dumbbells, a cable machine that sticks on the top plate if you don’t coax it, four treadmills, two rowers, and a few mats stacked in a corner. The mirrors make it look bigger than it is.
I swipe in, let the door shut behind me, and grab a towel. It’s later than I wanted. The energy of the office died about an hour ago, but a building like this never really sleeps. People in the office working late into the night, cleaners moving down the hall, security roaming the building.
Two people are running on treadmills with headphones in. No one I know. Good. I just want a little bit of quiet.
I’m in a black racerback tank, high-waist leggings, and the sneakers I keep under my desk for days when I can’t sit still. Hair up. No jewelry. I toe a bench into place and start with the bar. The metal digs into my palms in a satisfying way. I let my brain check out and my body take over.
I try to leave Luca on the other side of the door. It doesn’t work. He follows me in, gets in my mind, and under my skin.
I rack the bar and sit up. Breathe. Shake my arms out.
This is ridiculous.
I lie back down and lift again. The memory of the lobby is crystal clear, the way all things are when you’re giving them too much attention.
We came down in the elevator—me, Chen, and Caterina. The doors opened, and there he was. Waiting with a coffee cup in each hand. Roberto next to him with a neutral face and two of his own cups.
Roberto handed one to Caterina, but Luca’s extra was for me. He didn’t say anything or make some gesture. Just held the cup out and said, “For you.”
I had no idea how to react, so I did what anyone would do: I took it.
Our fingers brushed when I did, and I know for a fact it wasn’t an accident. Just a brush.
Enough to short my brain for half a beat.
I recovered quickly. Of course I did. I nodded, said “Thank you,” in the same voice I would use for anyone who held a door open. Chen took one step closer, and that was our sign to go.
We were out of his line of sight within twenty seconds, into the corridor toward the stairs. Chen took the cup carefully and disappeared down another hall.
But not before I saw the label that said “Large latte, double shot.”
My order.
Then I was annoyed. Annoyed at the entire situation. That he got it in the first place, that he found out my favorite, that I couldn’t drink it. That I wanted to.
Mostly, I was annoyed at the idea of having to find a new coffee place because, apparently, it’s perfectly acceptable to give out information about a federal prosecutor to literally anyone who asks.
I slide plates on and move on to the overhead press. Three sets of five. The movement makes you honest—no legs to help, no place to hide. On rep three, my shoulders burn. Good.
I keep seeing the name on the cup. PANINI, written in black marker, like it was some sort of stupid joke. It made me smile when I was out of Chen’s sight, and then I hated that I smiled.
I put the bar down and take a step back. Roll my wrists. Pick it up again. Press.
He had to know I wouldn’t drink it. He knows damn well that I wouldn’t drink it. So what was the play?
Seeing how I would react to him getting information on me so easily? Or did he just want to see if I would refuse?
Of course not. Refusing would’ve made me look silly and petty.
I re-rack the bar and move on to my next workout.
I set the weight down and take a long drink of water. My pulse is steady now, except when I replay the half-second of contact when the cup exchanged hands. Which is happening often. Fingers brushing fingers. The heat coursing through me.
It’s ridiculous. I’m not a child. I’m a grown ass woman of thirty-two. A badass prosecutor.
Doesn’t stop me from being angry at myself. I don’t want to notice his strong hands as he passes me the cup, the way he watches me with his dark, unreadable eyes. I don’t want shivers running down my spine when he says, “For you,” in that rich, deep voice.
Giving it up hurt in a stupid way. Not because I thought he poisoned it. I know he didn’t, and I know he knows that.
He went through all of that, dangled it in front of my face, knowing full well I wouldn’t be drinking it.
But it doesn’t change the fact that he did it. He didn’t just give me any cup of coffee. He took the time to learn my favorite drink.
Why? Did he just want to make it that much worse for me, knowing I couldn’t drink it? Or was it something else?
I let the weights drop to the floor with a frustrating sound, earning myself a dirty look from someone on the treadmill.
I need to stop now. I’m going around and around in circles and not making any damn sense.
I rerack my weights, wipe down the bench, and toss my towel in a basket on the way out.
I stand in the hallway of my apartment, looking around at the chaos that’s living in it right now.
My apartment is still half new. I moved fast, packing up quickly and taking the first apartment available in my price range. One bedroom, big windows, and a kitchen I don’t really use except to microwave leftovers. Boxes are stacked against the hall wall.
It should embarrass me to have a team of U.S. Marshals sweeping it right now, but I’m too worn out to care after such a long week.
They came early this morning and started right in.
The man in charge—Lawrence—meets me in the hallway.
“Bedroom?” he asks.
“Go ahead.” I gesture for them, too tired to be properly embarrassed at whatever they might find.
They check under the bed, the frame. Nightstand drawers. The sliding window. “These latches are fine for normal life,” one of them says. “We’ll be adding a secondary bar.”
“Okay,” I say. Just like I have with every other change they want to make.
They move through the hall again and stop at my front door. The deadbolt is new. The chain is old.
“We’ll replace this,” one says, pointing to the chain. “Chain is theater. We’ll leave you a door wedge alarm for nights.”
“Fine.”
I can feel my jaw set. None of this is wrong. I know it’s necessary, but it feels so… intrusive.
All this because of a damn latte?
I remind myself that it’s for my safety.
“Any packages you’re expecting?” the lead asks.
“No.”
“You using a package room?”
“In the lobby. Keypad access.”
“Good. Don’t leave anything down there overnight. We’ll ask the manager to hold your deliveries behind the desk for ID pickup for the next few weeks.”
“Understood.”
They look up at the ceiling. “Do you use a smart speaker?”
“No.”
“Good. Router?”
“In the hall closet.”
They open it. Modem, router, a coil of cables. “Change your wi-fi password tonight. Don’t reuse one. Turn off WPS if it’s on. We’ll send you a sheet.”
“Done.”
One of them walks to the windows and checks sight lines. “Keep the blinds down,” she says.
For the first time, I don’t just say, “Okay.”
“Keep the blinds down? All the time?” I ask, starting to get annoyed. “Until when? How long before I can see sunlight again? I can’t open my shades. I can’t take any walks. I enter and leave my building through the parking garage exclusively.”
“It’s for your safety,” she says patiently, like I’m some child she needs to explain the basics to.
“Great. So I’ll just be completely miserable every moment of the rest of my life. At least until Luca Conti stops being amused and decides to pop one between my eyes.”
I pick up a sweater that was carelessly dropped on the floor and trampled on. “None of this stuff is going to stop him if he really wanted me gone. You really think he can’t get into my parking garage if he wanted to?”
I ball the sweater up and throw it in the hamper.
“Ms. Pennino?” a voice says behind me. Lawrence, the man in charge, is standing in the doorway of my bedroom. “Can we walk for a moment? Down to the garage.”
I follow him out, past the other deputies, into the hall. We take the elevator down. He doesn’t make small talk. Good.
The doors open to the garage. Concrete, oil, fluorescent buzz. He walks a few steps and faces me.
“I don’t have anything to show you. I just wanted five minutes of your time,” he says. “We already checked your car and cleared the garage. Put some new measures in.”
“Great. I feel so safe now,” I say, deadpan. “I don’t know if you noticed, Marshal, but there’s a giant, car-sized hole that leads right into this place. And I don’t think the clearance bar is going to stop anyone from waltzing right in.”
He doesn’t flinch. “You’re not wrong to be angry,” he says. “Restrictions feel like punishment when you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“They are punishment,” I say. “Of convenience. Of sunlight. Of having a normal human day.”
He nods. “I’m not going to sell you a fairy tale. This won’t feel good. It’s also not forever. We use tight posture at the front end, then loosen as the board stays quiet.”
“How tight and how long,” I say. “In numbers, please.”
“Two weeks to start,” he says. “Full posture. Garage only. No outside food or drink. Blinds down at night; managed light by day. Vary your times by fifteen to thirty minutes. No outdoor walks. You text us when you leave and when you get home. Day fourteen we reassess. If nothing has ticked up—no tails, no weird camera hits, no press—daytime rules relax. Nights stay tight.”
“That’s better,” I say. “But it doesn’t change the part where I feel like a prisoner in my own life.”
“Name the pieces that make you feel that most,” he says.
“Sunlight. Coffee. Walking outside. Having to ask permission to exist.”
“Okay,” he says. “Sunlight: We’ll have privacy film put on your windows tomorrow.
During the day, you can open the top-down or tilt the slats down and get light without giving angles.
Coffee: Make it at home for two weeks. If you want foam, buy a frother and some milk.
It’s not a latte, but you know what’s in it.
Walking: office gym only for two weeks. After reassessment, we can discuss short daylight walks with check-ins. No headphones. Phone on loud.”
I force a breath in. “I can live with two weeks.”
“Good,” he says. “Now, what you said upstairs. None of this will stop him if he really wants it. Correct. What it does is make any move against you harder, slower, louder. He likes quiet. We remove quiet.”
“Friction,” I say.
“Exactly,” he says. “It’s a seatbelt, not a force field. We can’t make you immortal, but we can close doors of opportunity. Routine coffee, predictable walks, open windows. If we cut off the easier routes, he has to pick riskier ones. Risk creates evidence. Evidence puts him in a cage.”
“So, he’ll definitely kill me. But at least he’ll go to jail for it.” I blow out a breath and put my hands on my hips. “Not really ideal, Lawrence.” I’m definitely not on a first-name basis with this guy, but I think it’s warranted.
“No, it isn’t, Elena,” he says. I let out a half-laugh.
“Look, the coffee he got you wasn’t poison.
We knew it wouldn’t be. It’s not the point.
Look how easily he picked that information up.
We can’t monitor everything and everyone in your life.
We can’t stop baristas from giving information out. But we control what we can.”
I look past him at the new parking row under the camera. “You can’t promise anything.”
“No one can,” he says. “I can promise we’re paying attention, and that your compliance buys you leverage. You follow the plan, we can discuss easing it. You cut corners, we keep it tight longer.”
“Understood.”
He watches me for a beat. “What’s the hardest part for you to actually do, not just to accept?”
I think. “The only thing I can cook worth a damn is my mamma’s red sauce, which she got from her mamma. And that’s only because it would’ve broken her heart not to pass it on to her only daughter. I mean, I’m Italian, but even I can’t eat sugo every night.”
He huffs a small sound. “Fair. Let’s not make this a cooking show. You need a rotation that’s safe and stupid-simple.”
I lift a hand. “Sold. What does that look like?”
“We’ll send some information over. You’re not the first person we’ve come across who can’t cook,” he says. “We do your grocery shopping, you take care of the majority of the meals. A couple of times a week, we place an order for take-out, pick it up, and deliver it to you.”
I lean on the bumper rail and narrow my eyes. “This is starting to sound like more than a two-week thing.”
“Two weeks is provisional. We can’t know for sure. After that, we’ll assess and talk about next steps.”
I blow out a breath and look around at the garage, the new cameras installed in the corners.
“Fine,” I say begrudgingly. “But if I die after spending my last two weeks drinking crappy coffee when I could’ve had my latte, I’m going to haunt your ass.”
He nods. “Fair enough.”