Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
PIETRO
She steps into the office without invitation, heels crunching on glass shards. No hesitation in her stride. Most women see this office, see me, and their fight-or-flight kicks in.
Liam clears his throat. "This is Miss Kelly. She called about the position this morning."
Kelly. Irish name. Fucking perfect, while Connor O’Sullivan and the Murphys dismantle my operations.
"I'll leave you to it." Liam retreats.
The door clicks shut. We're alone.
She stands before my desk, hands clasped in front of her. Still. Waiting.
I lean back in my chair, studying her. Light from the window ignites the red in her hair.
The blouse hides her shape but not the straight line of her spine. The severe hairstyle should make her look harsh, but it just emphasizes the curve of her neck, the delicate shell of her ear. There's something underneath the professional armor. Desperation maybe, though she hides it well.
"You sure you're in the right place?" I let my voice drop to the register that usually sends them running. "This isn't exactly a Fortune 500 company."
"I know what Sartori Import and Export does." She meets my gaze without blinking. "I can type ninety words per minute and I don't ask questions."
Don't ask questions.
The smart ones always say that. Then they see blood on a shipping manifest or hear the wrong conversation and suddenly they're full of questions.
I stand, letting her get the full picture. Wrinkled Armani, sleeves rolled up over forearms marked with scars. Blood on my knuckles from the wall. Three days of stubble because I haven't been home in longer than that. Everything about me screams danger, violence, run.
She tilts her chin up. Defiant. Like she's daring me to try to scare her.
"Sit." I nod toward the leather chair across from my desk.
She sits with controlled grace, knees together, back straight. Her fingers find a resting position on her thighs. No nervous energy. No tells. Either she's got ice in her veins or she's very good at pretending.
I drop back into my chair, pull a resume from the pile Liam left. Nora Kelly. Twenty-three. Administrative assistant. Boston. The paper feels thin, the history full of gaps. What is she hiding? Then again, no one with a clean past walks through my door. "Why Chicago?"
"Fresh start." Her voice stays level. "Sometimes you need distance from old mistakes."
Old mistakes. The way she says it, careful and controlled, tells me there's a story there. I have my own and it’s enough. I don't need hers too. I need someone who can manage shipping manifests without crying when they realize what we're really importing.
"The position requires unusual hours." I pour myself another drink but I don't offer her one. "Sometimes you'll need to be here at three in the morning to handle customs documentation. Sometimes you'll work sixteen-hour days when shipments stack up. The pay reflects that, but the work's demanding."
"I can handle demanding."
I lean forward, elbows on the desk. "Can you handle this?" I slide a blood-stained manifest across the mahogany. One of this morning's casualties, documenting a shipment that went sideways when the Murphy family decided to make a statement. "Sometimes our business gets messy."
She picks up the paper, examines it with the same detachment she'd use for a grocery list. "The blood obscures some of the numbers here." She sets it down, meets my eyes. "But I can work with the digital copies. I assume you keep backups?"
My jaw tightens. No trembling hands. No wide, scared eyes. She’s holding a man’s blood and asking about fucking data backups.
"We keep backups." I study her face, looking for the crack, the tell that she's about to bolt. "The last three secretaries quit within a week. One lasted three days. What makes you think you'll do better?"
"Because I need this job." The first hint of something raw bleeds through her professional mask. "And from what I can see" she glances at the scattered papers, the chaos of my desk "you need someone who won't run at the first sign of trouble."
She's not wrong. The operation's hemorrhaging money because I can't keep the legitimate front running smoothly. Can't keep anyone in this office long enough to maintain the facade that keeps the feds at bay.
"The salary listed was forty-five thousand." She straightens her shoulders. "I want fifty-four."
The laugh escapes before I can stop it. "You see this office, see me, and your first move is to negotiate up twenty percent?"
"You need me more than I need you." Her chin lifts again, that defiant tilt that sends an unfamiliar jolt through me, something hot and sharp that has nothing to do with anger.
"Your operations are failing without proper administrative support.
I can fix that. Fifty-four thousand is reasonable for someone who will stay. "
Brass balls on this one. Sitting here, looking like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, while negotiating with a man who had someone's blood on his manifests this morning.
"Prove you can type." I pull out one of the legitimate shipping documents, the kind that actually needs proper formatting. "Ninety words per minute, you said?"
She moves to the computer terminal at the side desk without hesitation. Her fingers fly over the keys, transcribing the document with mechanical precision. No errors. No hesitation. Even when I move to stand behind her, close enough that she must feel my presence, she doesn't falter.
"Time." She turns in the chair, looks up at me. This close, I can see the gold flecks in her green eyes. Smell something clean, like soap and wind. "Ninety-two words per minute."
I'm standing too close. Close enough to see the pulse at her throat, quick but controlled. Close enough to notice the faint mark on her collarbone, almost hidden by the high neckline. Like someone grabbed her there.
Fresh start. Old mistakes. A woman hiding bruises who doesn't flinch at blood.
My voice is a rasp. "You running from something, Miss Kelly?" The question is a blade, sharper than I meant it to be.
Her eyes flash with fear and anger before the mask slides back into place. "Aren't we all?"
That's exactly what I don't need. Another complication, another person to fail. But she's the first applicant who hasn't run screaming. Who negotiated up instead of accepting whatever scraps I threw her way.
"Fifty-four thousand." I move back to my desk, needing distance from whatever charge fills the air between us. "You start tomorrow. Eight a.m. sharp. Liam will handle your paperwork, explain the basic protocols."
I extend my hand across the desk. A barrier. The deal is done.
She stands, rounds the chair, and takes it.
Her skin meets mine. A jolt, sharp, unwelcome cracks through the numbness in my veins. Her hand is small, but her grip is firm.
Her pupils bleed into the green. A breath hitches in her throat.
I drop her hand. My skin tingles where she touched it.
"Tomorrow then." She smooths down her skirt, composing herself. "Eight a.m."
"Don't be late."
She heads for the door, pauses at the threshold. "Mr. Sartori? You might want to have someone clean up the glass. It's a liability issue."
Then she's gone, leaving me standing behind my desk with my hand still tingling from her touch.
I sink into my chair, pour another whiskey with hands that aren't quite steady. What the fuck just happened? I've interviewed dozens of secretaries. Fucked half of them. None of them ever made me feel... whatever that was.
This is a mistake. She's trouble. I can feel it
But trouble's never stopped me before. If anything, I court it. Chase it. Maybe that's why I'm going to let her come back tomorrow, despite every instinct screaming that Nora Kelly is more than she seems.
The door opens. Liam returns, cautiousness in every line of his body.
"Well?" He takes in the empty chair, the signed contract on my desk. "She didn't run?"
"She negotiated for twenty percent more salary."
Liam's eyebrows rise. "And you gave it to her?"
I drain the whiskey, feel it burn down to join the fire she lit in my chest. "She starts tomorrow."
"Think she'll last?"
I stare at the door where she vanished, still seeing the defiant tilt of her chin, the way she handled that bloody manifest like it was nothing. Feel the ghost of her hand in mine.
"I don't know." The admission costs me more than it should. "But she seems different from the others."
Different. Dangerous. Beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with conventional beauty and everything to do with that spark in her eyes when she challenged me.
Liam heads for the door, pauses. "For what it's worth, I think she might work out. At least that’s what I hope. And she didn’t really look at you like most of the others do."
"How do the others look at me?"
"Like you're a paycheck or a monster." He meets my gaze. "She looked at you like she wasn't afraid of you."
Not afraid of me. The words sit heavy in my chest next to Pablo's ghost. I haven't wanted someone unafraid of me since that warehouse thirteen years ago. People who aren't afraid can disappoint you. Betray you. Die on you.
But maybe that's exactly what I need. Someone who won't fold under the weight of what we do. Someone who can stand in this office surrounded by blood and broken glass and negotiate for more money instead of running for the door.
NORA
I step into the elevator, my professional mask firmly in place until the doors slide shut. The moment I'm alone, my knees buckle. I grab the brass railing, sucking in deep breaths as my heart hammers against my ribs.
What the hell am I doing?
I knew what I was walking into when Uncle Finn gave me this address. "It's not ideal, Nora-girl," he'd said, "but they won't look for you there. And you need somewhere to disappear."
What he didn't mention was that Pietro Sartori is terrifying in a way that has nothing to do with the blood on his paperwork or his bruised knuckles.
He's beautiful. That's the worst part.
Not handsome like Declan was handsome, all Irish charm and easy smiles. Pietro is beautiful like a blade. All sharp edges and cold precision. Tall, at least six-two, with shoulders that filled out his suit despite its rumpled state.
Dark hair, almost black, slightly too long on top where he'd run his hands through it in frustration. The kind of jawline that could cut glass, perpetually shadowed with stubble.
But it was his eyes that truly scared me. Dark brown, nearly black—windows to nothing. Empty. Dead. Until that moment when our hands touched, when something flared in those depths.
Something hungry.
The elevator reaches the lobby. I force myself to walk normally, past the security guards who eye me with renewed interest now that I'm not just another applicant.
Outside, the Chicago wind whips around the skyscrapers, cutting through my thin blazer. I make it half a block before ducking into a coffee shop, sliding into a back booth where I can finally let myself shake.
Fifty-four thousand dollars. It's enough to disappear properly. Enough to start over somewhere Declan will never find me. Six months of working for Pietro Sartori, and I'll have savings, references, a new identity firmly established.
I just have to survive those six months.
The barista calls out an order, and I jump, my nerves still raw. A man in a business suit collects his coffee, and for a second, I see Declan's face superimposed over his. I freeze
I close my eyes, force myself to breathe. Declan isn't here. He's in Boston, probably still hunting for me, but he doesn't know about Uncle Finn. Doesn't know I'd run to Chicago.
A sudden but familiar scent hits me, triggering memories from long ago.
I'm seven years old again, tucked beneath a quilt my grandmother made, listening to my mother's voice.
"One more chapter, mo stór," Mama whispers, her fingers combing through my hair.
I burrow deeper into her side, breathing in her scent. The Chanel No. 5 that Daddy bought her every Christmas. Her voice rises and falls with Mary Lennox's adventures, but I'm not really listening to the words anymore. It's the rhythm that matters, the safety of this moment.
"Your eyes are getting heavy," she says, and they are, but I fight to keep them open. These are the only times she's truly mine. When Dad's downstairs conducting business, when the house fills with men in dark suits who speak in low voices about territories and shipments.
"Mama, will you stay?"
"Always, my darling girl." Her lips press against my forehead. "Though you know what your father says about coddling."
I know. Connor O'Sullivan doesn't believe in soft daughters. But here, in my pink bedroom with stuffed animals standing guard, Mama creates a different world. One where little girls don't need to be tough. Where fathers don't come home with blood on their collars that the maids pretend not to see.
"Tell me about Ireland again," I whisper.
She sets the book aside, pulling me closer.
"Oh, mo stór, it's green as your eyes. Rolling hills that go on forever, and the sea crashes against cliffs so high you'd think they touch the clouds.
Your gran's cottage sits right on the coast, and on stormy nights, you can taste salt in the air even with the windows closed. "
When I open my eyes again, I see my hands are steady. That's something, at least. They were steady when I typed that document while Pietro Sartori loomed behind me. Steady when I shook his hand.
I've traded one monster for another. But at least this monster is paying me fifty-four thousand dollars.
I gather my things, straighten my shoulders. Eight a.m. tomorrow. I can do this. I survived Declan. I can survive Pietro Sartori.
Even if those dead eyes haunt me all the way back to my apartment.