Chapter 7 - Faith
The black dress clings to my body like guilt. I smooth the fabric one more time, practicing my surprised face in the foyer mirror. “Oh, Mr. Neumann! I didn’t realize you’d be here!” The lie tastes like ash. Sunday confessions haven’t helped me, now I lie as easily as breathing.
My phone buzzes with Dad's text: "Have fun at the library fundraiser, sweetheart."
The cross necklace weighs against my throat like judgment as I type back: "Thanks, Dad. Should be home by eleven."
Another lie. The library doesn't have fundraisers at the Ritz-Carlton.
The library doesn't require me to walk into the den of Chicago's most dangerous crime family.
But Trent Neumann will be here. He's a major donor to every charity gala that matters, and the Rosettis throw the biggest ones.
Tonight's different though. He's announcing a new pharmaceutical initiative.
He'll need Rosetti distribution channels. He has to stay, has to network.
I touch the Polaroid in my purse, the one that brought me here. "Come find me." Three words that make my pulse race. Two goals tonight: get close to Neumann, and find my mysterious guardian.
My guardian might think he lured me to him tonight, but he didn't: he just gave me access to Neumann.
Mom's death changed everything, made me who I am.
She'd be horrified to know I'm here, walking among criminals.
Or would she understand that sometimes justice needs darkness to deliver it?
I don't know anymore. A lifetime of being good, and I'm unraveling in weeks because pale blue eyes make me feel seen.
The valet takes my keys with professional disinterest. I'm nobody here, just another face in designer black.
Perfect for hunting. The hotel looms above me, all limestone and power, windows glowing with warm light that belies what happens inside these walls.
My heels click against marble as I enter, the sound swallowed by conversation and chamber music.
The ballroom opens before me like a stage, and I'm both audience and actor tonight. The air smells like money: expensive perfume and aged whiskey. Nothing like the dust and paper smell of my library, my safe haven that suddenly feels like a cage I've built myself.
I grab a champagne flute from a passing server as my eyes scan systematically. Neumann always positions himself near the bar at these things, likes to hold court with a whiskey while lesser mortals approach to pay tribute.
There. Neumann stands at the bar exactly where I predicted, bourbon in hand, telling some story that has two younger men laughing nervously.
The champagne tastes like acid when I spot him. My fingers tighten on the crystal flute. He looks older—silver threading through his hair, lines around his eyes—but his hands are the same. Manicured. Soft. Not the hands of someone who's known consequences.
Someone bumps into me, apologizing profusely. I barely hear them. Neumann is turning this way, about to scan the crowd, and my grip intensifies unconsciously.
The crack is subtle—a hairline fracture spidering across the crystal. Then pressure wins. The stem snaps, the bowl shatters in my palm.
Sharp pain blooms instantly. Blood wells, mixing with champagne, dripping onto the marble floor in tiny red spatters. The sensation shoots straight between my legs, a pulse of dark pleasure I wasn't expecting.
"Oh my God!" The woman beside me gasps. "You're bleeding!"
I look down at my palm with detached interest. A shard has embedded itself deep in the flesh below my thumb. Blood runs in neat lines down my wrist.
"It's nothing." I pluck the largest shard free without wincing, watching more blood well up. The pain sharpens, clarifies. My nipples harden beneath the silk of my dress, my body responding to damage like it's foreplay.
A server appears with napkins. I take one, wrapping my hand methodically, pressing just hard enough to make the cuts sing. The white cloth blooms red immediately.
"Should I call for medical—"
"No need." I smile at him, serene despite the blood seeping through the napkin. "Just a little accident."
Across the room, Neumann laughs at something, unaware that I'm bleeding because of him. Unaware that the sight of him makes me grip things until they break. Unaware that pain makes me wet now, ever since I started planning all the ways I'll make him suffer. Legally, of course.
I squeeze my wrapped hand, sending another spike of sensation through my nerves. The pain grounds me, reminds me why I'm here. Not to break glasses. To break him.
I've practiced this approach in my apartment mirror. The "accidental" bump, the startled apology, the recognition that gets me into conversation. My hand finds my purse strap as I move through the crowd, dodging servers with champagne trays.
Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten.
I'm almost there when Neumann's face drains of color. He's looking past me, toward something that makes his hand shake hard enough to slosh bourbon. I start to turn, to see what could frighten a man who's destroyed so many lives, but he's already backing away.
"Excuse me," Neumann mutters to his companions, voice pitched high with fear. "I just remembered an urgent call."
He flees. Actually flees, moving through the crowd with the desperate urgency of prey. My practiced approach dies in my throat as I watch him practically run toward the far exit.
Now I turn fully, frustration burning in my chest. Weeks of planning this moment, and Neumann runs before I can even speak.
Movement on the balcony draws my eye. Him.
The man from the restaurant, my guardian, now in an expensive charcoal suit that fits him like violence wrapped in Armani.
Even from here, I can see those pale blue eyes—ice-cold, the kind of blue that belongs in winter skies or on frozen lakes where people drown.
They track movement below before landing on me with the weight of a physical touch.
He's taller than I realized at the restaurant, maybe six-one, with that lean build that speaks of controlled strength rather than bulk.
Dark hair, almost black, pushed back from sharp cheekbones that could cut glass.
There's something wrong about how beautiful he is—like a blade is beautiful, all deadly edges disguised as art.
The kind of face that makes you want to touch even though you know you'll bleed.
Heat pools low in my belly when he starts down the stairs, that lazy leonine walk making my thighs clench involuntarily.
Each step deliberate, unhurried, like he has all the time in the world to come claim what's already his.
Our gazes lock across the space. He doesn't smile—I don't think his mouth knows how to form anything that isn't a threat or a promise of violence—but I feel his attention like hands on my skin.
My guardian. The man who's been in my bedroom, who sharpens my knives, who removes men for looking at me wrong.
He promised protection, my mind whispers.
This feels like possession, my body responds.
He never looks at where Neumann fled, never acknowledges the man who just ran, but the message is clear. He did that. Scared off my target with just his presence.
Part of me wonders what he did to make Neumann run. Did he threaten him? Promise him pain? The thought makes me wet, my body having stopped listening to my conscience days ago.
"Damn it," I breathe, watching Neumann disappear completely from sight. My carefully crafted approach, ruined. Weeks of planning destroyed by one look from those pale eyes.
I retreat to the wall, grabbing champagne I don't intend to drink, trying to understand what's happening. A woman grabs a glass beside me, whispers urgently, "Stay away from that one, honey. The Rosetti men collect pretty things and break them."
My stomach drops. "The Rosetti men?"
"Oh honey, you didn't know whose party this is?" She laughs, but not unkindly. "The Rosetti charity gala. Their annual show of being civilized members of society."
The champagne glass trembles in my hand. He invited me to the Rosetti gala. To his family's gala. Because he's—
No. No, that can't be right.
"The whole family's here tonight." She points discreetly, savoring the gossip. "Marco there, by the main doors. He runs everything. That's Dante beside him, the one who doesn't speak. Nobody knows why. His wife's Ana, the pregnant woman in the gold dress."
Each identification cuts into my chest. These are the people Dad loses sleep over. The people I promised to stay away from. The people who run Chicago's underworld like their personal kingdom.
"Sofia there in the cream silk. Don't let the sweet face fool you. And that's Luca." Her voice drops to a whisper. "The psycho. They say he doesn't sleep anymore. Just works in that basement of his, doing things that make grown men cry."
She's pointing at my guardian. The man with pale eyes who's been in my apartment. Who leaves me photographs like love letters written in violence.
Luca Rosetti.
The glass slips from my numb fingers, shattering on the marble.
Several heads turn, but I can't move, can't breathe.
The man I've been writing to, been trusting, been having inappropriate dreams about—he's Luca Rosetti.
The one Dad specifically named. "If you see any of them, especially Luca, you run," he'd said.
"That one doesn't have normal human limits. "
Of course it's him. Who else could move through shadows like smoke? Who else could kill nine men and make them disappear completely? Who else would have a basement for "working"?
Dad says he's the worst one. The enforcer. The torturer. The one even other criminals cross the street to avoid.
He's protecting you, my mind argues weakly.
He's a Rosetti, my panic responds. He's been in my apartment. He knows where I sleep. He could—
He's ruining everything, my fury cuts through the panic. Trent Neumann is here somewhere, and now I'm trapped in the Rosetti heartland.
He kills for you.