Chapter 14 Dom
It's been a month and he’s gone back to the sofa. I could insist on the bedroom. I don't. The sofa is a line he's drawn and crossing it would cost me more than it's worth. He's still here. He's still working. He hasn't tried to run.
Theo has pulled every piece of data from the surveillance archive and he says he has all the names.
He’s given me his last one today, but it took a lot of persuading.
He trades them like chips, one at a time, each one attached to a negotiation.
More access to the building. I suppose small freedoms add up to something that almost looks like a life, if you don't look too closely at the ankle monitor or the locked front door.
He's bored. I can see it in the way he moves through the building, restless, pacing the floors he's allowed on.
I know that he has memorized the hotel layout, the restaurant schedules, the shift patterns of the housekeeping staff.
He knows which corridors are empty at which times and which stairwells have cameras and which don't.
He's started spending time on the rooftop terrace of the twenty-fourth floor restaurant. It's an open-air space, glass-walled, with views over the city in every direction.
He sits out there for hours, even when it's cold. I watch him on the feeds sometimes, a slight figure in a chair by the railing, his face turned up to the sky.
Every part of me also knows that if I let him walk out the front door, the Castellanos will have him within a week. It’s for his own good. At least that’s what I tell myself. I’m not being selfish at all. It doesn’t matter. I’m never giving him up, no matter what happens.
Viktor's office is on the second floor, behind the main surveillance suite. It’s half the size of mine – his choice -- and twice as functional.
No bar, no view, no leather furniture. He has a metal desk bolted to the wall, two chairs with cracked vinyl seats, a monitor bank showing rotating feeds from the casino floor.
The carpet is industrial gray, worn thin near the door where Viktor paces when he's on the phone.
The overhead fluorescents turn everything the same flat, honest color.
I smell Theo in the corridor before I see him. He's in the doorway of Viktor's office, one shoulder against the frame, studying the space the way he studies everything.
His hair has grown and it falls across his forehead. He keeps reaching up to move it away.
He's in the dark jeans and the gray pullover I bought him, the neckline too wide, slipping off one shoulder to show the ridge of his collarbone and the pale skin underneath.
He's still too thin. Six weeks in my building and he's barely gained anything. His face is sharper than it was, cheekbones more pronounced, and there are shadows under his eyes that tell me the sofa isn't comfortable and the sleep isn't good.
I feel a flush of guilt before I bury it hard. He was thin when he got here. I’m trying to make him eat. He fights me. He doesn’t have to sleep on the sofa either. Neither of those are my choices.
"You're early," I say.
He doesn't startle. My scent precedes me the same way his does. "You said nine."
"I said nine fifteen."
He shrugs. We’ve not had sex since the heat and he’s not tried to kiss me the way he did. I can feel that he wants to, but he’s holding back.
He steps in and takes the chair furthest from the desk, sitting the way he always sits, legs crossed at the ankle, arms folded, making himself small.
I take Viktor's chair and pull up the archived footage of Cath Beresford's section from the main floor. Theo's eyes go to the screens immediately.
He leans forward. The pullover shifts and the light from the monitors catches the underside of his jaw, the soft hollow of his throat.
I can see the faint shadow of stubble along his jawline. There's a mark still visible below his ear, the last remaining bruise from the heat, yellow-green now, almost gone.
I watch him watch the feeds. His eyes track across the screens with a focus that shuts everything else out.
His index finger taps a rhythm on his knee that corresponds to something on the screen I can't follow, some pattern he's pulling from the movement of chips and bodies and cards.
He's beautiful when he works.
The door opens. Viktor comes in. He takes the third chair without looking at Theo.
"Stokes called in sick," Viktor says. "Second time this week."
“Think he knows that we’re onto him?” I say.
“He doesn’t,” Theo replies. “Not with the way he signaled the play yesterday. He’d have held back. Or tried redirect. It’s something else.”
Viktor looks at him. First time he's acknowledged Theo directly since walking in.
“Perhaps,” Viktor says. “But let’s talk about Beresford. I’m still not convinced we do this. We talk to her and she tells the wrong person, the entire operation goes to ground. We have the names now.”
I don’t take my eyes off of the screen where the footage shows Cath Beresford glancing at a bearded man in a green tie and immediately looking away, her jaw tight.
I’ve known Cath since I was six. She used to make me sandwiches and I used to play with toy cars on the floor of her office while she drew up staff rotas and reported on the takings for the night.
I was at the weddings of both her children.
Until Theo proved to me that she was involved, I would never have believed it.
Part of me still doesn’t. In many ways, Cath has been a better parent to me than my father ever was.
Beside me, Theo is pulling himself even closer than he usually does. I can see his knee jiggling the way it does when he is nervous.
“You have thoughts on this?” I ask.
He glances at me, to the screen, and the back to me again. “What happens to her if she doesn’t tell you what you want? Does she end up in a ditch?”
I frown. "Nobody is ending up in a ditch," I say.
"You run a crime empire."
"I run a casino with legitimate gaming licenses and quarterly audits. No crime to see here. I just want to talk to her.”
It’s evident from the look that Theo gives me that he doesn’t believe me an inch. To be fair, I wouldn’t either.
I put up my hands. “I’ll admit that the business was originally built on not-completely honest proceeds and my father’s methods were a little more…
hands on than mine have ever been, but times have moved on.
” I lean forward. "I have no intent of risking time in a federal prison just because someone decides to cheat the casino.
People try that every day. We keep everything above board.
The Castellanos haven't figured that out yet, which is one of the reasons they're losing ground. "
Theo stares at me. His pupils are wide and I can see the ring of gold around his irises. He's recalculating. I can see it happening.
“So, what you said to me was just a threat. You had no intention of killing me.”
Viktor looks like he wants to laugh. I ignore him. "Viktor says things that are designed to make people behave in the way that Viktor wants them to behave. It's effective. But we are trying to run a legitimate business. Or as close to one as we can get."
Viktor crosses one leg over the other and says nothing. He maintains his own reputation carefully.
"You're telling me," Theo says slowly, "that the man who locked me in a penthouse and put a monitor on my ankle is saying I could have left at any time."
“Of course not. You’re mine. But I'm telling you that I don't kill people. The rest of it is accurate."
He stares at me. I can see him trying to work out the logic. There is none. I’ve been treading the fine line between legitimate businessman, mobster and alpha for a long time. I’m used to the inconsistencies. He’s not.
I turn to Viktor. “We bring her in. I think she's being coerced. She's been here too long and she's too good at her job to suddenly go rotten for money. If the Castellanos have leverage on her, I want to know what it is."
Theo is watching us. His eyes move between us the way they move between the surveillance feeds. For a moment, I wonder if he’s just going to stand up and try run for it.
"Get her," I say to Viktor.
Viktor nods. His footsteps are heavy in the corridor and then gone.
Theo doesn’t look at me. He’s deep in thought, his eyes fixed on the monitors.
I want to press my thumb to the fading bruise below his ear and feel his pulse jump against my skin. I want to bury my face in the crook of his neck and breathe.
Instead, I turn back to the monitors and wait. Four minutes later, Viktor comes back with Cath Beresford.
She's in her pit boss uniform: dark pants and a deep blue shirt with the casino logo embroidered on the breast pocket.
Cath is in her mid-fifties, compact with hair graying at the temples and pulled back in a tortoiseshell clip. The skin around her eyes is lined, deeper than I remember. She looks tired.
She sees me first and her step falters, just half a beat. She recovers, pulls her shoulders back, lifts her chin. But I saw it. And so, did Theo.
"Dom," she says. "I didn't expect you."
"Cath. Thanks for coming up. This is Theo Holland."
Her gaze travels over Theo, stopping at the bare ankle where the monitor sits above his shoe. She reads all of it in two seconds and her face gives away none of what she concludes.
"Mr Holland," she says.
Theo nods.
"Sit down," I say.
She sits in the chair Viktor has positioned in front of the desk. Her hands go to her lap and she folds them together, fingers laced. Her nails are bitten down to the quick.
That's new. Cath used to have neat, short nails, always clean. But it’s not just the nails, her scent is wrong.
I've known Cath's scent for most of my life. She's a beta. It’s steady and unremarkable, but today it’s sharp with the metallic tang of cortisol and fear.
It's in the room and it's coming from her and she can't control it.