Chapter 2 Alexandra
Chapter Two: Alexandra
The first thing I notice is the color. Burgundy everywhere—not the thin synthetic red of cheap motels, but a rich, deep wine that drinks the light whole. The second thing is my tongue, thick and dry, tasting of pennies and chemical that clings to the back of my throat.
I lie on something soft. Too soft. It takes me a few heartbeats to realize I’m on a bed the size of a studio apartment. The sheets are cold, though the room is warm. I reach for my mouth and spit into my palm. Pink saliva and white, cobwebby threads of some drug. Great.
I sit up slow. Muscles scream, but I don’t make a sound. Even alone, I refuse to whimper.
The room unfolds around me like a scene from an old mafia film.
Plush carpet under my bare feet, gold-accented lamps, a glass table with a crystal decanter, a single orchid blooming in a pot on the dresser.
The windows are thick and curtained. A private bathroom stands with its door ajar, showing stone tiles and neatly rolled towels on a brass rack.
My heart stutters when I spot my shoes placed neatly beside the bed. The courtesy is more threat than kindness. The message is clear: I was handled, moved, arranged by someone who didn’t need me awake for any of it. My jeans are stiff with blood at the knee, but I don’t remember getting hurt.
Last memory: the cement room, the high whine of gas filling my lungs, a figure with no face lowering a mask over mine. Everything after is static.
I search for my phone, but my jacket is gone. Forcing myself to stand and ignoring the black spots swimming across my vision, I blink slow and steady. The door to the hallway is heavy wood with a brass handle. I try it.
Locked. Obviously.
I thump my head against the door once, then turn back to survey my cage.
No windows that open. The glass looks thick enough to stop a bullet, probably even a small explosive.
Beyond it, city lights glitter against black sky.
My brain tallies clues on autopilot: high floor, urban skyline, condensation on the glass from air conditioning.
Somewhere above the fifth floor. Hotel or a rich man’s fortress.
Footsteps in the hall. Then a click.
I back up and grab the crystal decanter from the table. Heavy. I test its weight, curling my fingers around the neck. Not as good as a bat, but it could crack a skull if I swing hard enough.
The door opens with sick, silent grace.
He enters. The one from the cement room, the one who had me strung up by my wrists while my shoulders screamed. Now he’s in a three-piece suit that hugs his shoulders like armor made of wool. Beard trimmed tight, dark hair brushed back, eyes so dark I can’t separate iris from pupil.
He doesn’t look surprised to find me armed and upright. He steps inside, closes the door, and sits in the wingback chair opposite the bed. No words. No throat-clearing. sits there, legs spread, one hand resting on his knee like he owns every molecule in the room.
The silence grows claws.
I hold the decanter higher. “Sit,” he says. The voice is unremarkable… rough, like years of smoke scarred his throat, but there’s no accent. It’s the voice of a man who stopped needing to prove things a long time ago.
I don’t move.
He raises an eyebrow. Not a challenge. Boredom.
“Sit,” he repeats, softer. There’s a gun in his lap now. He lifts it enough for me to see, lazy and deliberate. The implication doesn’t need words.
I sit on the edge of the bed. I don’t drop the decanter.
We face each other. I count seconds in my head to keep from screaming.
His head tilts, measuring me. “Name?”
I almost laugh. “You already know it.”
“Say it.”
“Alexandra Clark.”
“Anything else you go by?”
“Not unless you count ‘hey, you.’ Which I doubt you do.”
His mouth twitches. Almost a smile, but not quite.
He taps the gun against his knee. Casual. Controlled. He’s performing ease, but I catch the way his fingers curl around the grip—tight, precise. He wants to see what I’ll do. If I’ll lunge for it, if I’ll cry, if I’ll beg.
I roll my eyes at him instead.
“Who was the man who warned you?” he asks.
The question catches me sideways. I expected the usual—who do you work for, who are you fucking, who paid you. Not this.
“No one warned me.”
His jaw flexes. “We saw you run. Someone tipped you off.”
I shrug. “Maybe your boys need to work on their stealth. Sounded like a pack of wild pigs coming up those stairs.”
He looks at my hands. My knuckles are still raw from punching the wall when they grabbed me—stupid, useless, satisfying. His gaze lingers, then returns to my face.
“You’re not a professional,” he says.
“Fuck you.”
A real smile this time. Small and tight, but real. “If you were, you’d be dead.”
I lean back on my palms, forcing my body into a pose of relaxation I don’t feel. But I keep my eyes on him. The way his spine stays ruler straight. The way he breathes like even that is a calculated choice. Military. Ex-cop. Or mafia with a stick so far up his ass it’s tickling his brain stem.
“You got a name,” I say, “or should I call you ‘creep’?”
He considers. “Leone.”
No last name. No indication if it’s first or family.
I repeat it, exaggerating each syllable. “Lay-oh-nay.” He doesn’t react. Either I’m butchering the pronunciation or he genuinely doesn’t care.
“Okay, Leone. You’ve got me. What now?”
He folds his hands, and the gun disappears somewhere beneath his jacket. “You’re going to tell me who your contact is.”
I laugh hard enough that spit flies from my mouth. “What makes you think I have one?”
He shifts forward. Not threatening, but close enough that I can smell him. Cologne and some kind of berry, like expensive soap. “Because the boss wants to keep you alive. It’s unusual.”
He studies my face, hunting for a reaction. I give him nothing but teeth.
“You’re not afraid,” he says. Statement, not question.
I look down at the decanter, then back at him. “I grew up with bigger assholes than you.”
He says nothing.
The silence stretches. I wait for him to snap, to threaten, to pull the gun and crack it across my face. But he watches. Patient as a predator who knows his prey isn’t going anywhere.
Silence is a weapon too. Most people rush to fill it, to confess, to crack.
I let it grow instead. I count the veins in his hand.
I note the scar on his knuckle, the way his nose sits crooked from a break that never healed right.
Up close, his eyes aren’t dark. They’re empty.
Like staring into a black hole that used to be a man.
I can’t read him. That’s the part that makes my skin crawl.
He stands, finally. Holsters the gun with a motion so smooth it looks rehearsed. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”
“Why wait?” I ask. “You’re not getting anything out of me. Might as well shoot me and toss me out the window.”
He shakes his head. “No one is dying tonight.”
He moves to the door, pauses with his hand on the brass handle. “If you need anything,” he says, “knock.”
Then he’s gone. The lock clicks behind him.
I sit on the bed for a long time, decanter in my lap, every muscle wound tight enough to snap.
I don’t know how I ended up here. But I know one thing—these aren’t street thugs playing gangster. This is money. Discipline. The type of operation where people disappear and no one files a report.
The very people Viktor tried to warn me to stay away from.
My legs cramp from tension, so I pace the perimeter.
Every inch of me aches, but collapsing feels like losing.
I search for bugs, for cameras, for any crack in the pretty walls.
Three cameras hidden in the furniture—one in the lamp base, one in the smoke detector, one in the frame of a painting I’m sure cost more than my apartment.
No obvious microphones, but I hum to myself anyway.
If they’re listening, let them hear me not breaking.
I stop at the window and press my forehead to the cold glass.
The city pulses below, alive and indifferent. Up here, sealed in burgundy and gold, I’m already a ghost. A body waiting to be processed.
Tomorrow, he said.
Well then, meat head. I’ll be ready.
Will you?
I dream of Viktor.
Not the Viktor who tried to warn me when he was frantic, sweating, pupils blown wide with fear.
The Viktor from before, from the handful of weeks when things were simple.
He’s sitting across from me at that dive bar on Ninth, the one with the sticky floors and the jukebox that only plays sad country songs.
He’s rolling a joint with those quick, practiced fingers, grinning at me like I’m the funniest thing he’s ever seen.
“You’re too smart for this shit, Ales” he says, licking the paper closed. “You know that, right?”
“Smart doesn’t pay my dad’s debts.”
He shrugs, lights the joint, takes a long drag. The smell of weed wraps around us like a blanket. “Nothing pays those debts. That’s the point. They’re not meant to be paid. They’re meant to own you.”
I wake with his voice still echoing in my skull.
The burgundy room is gray with pre-dawn light. My stomach growls. I haven’t eaten in at least a day. I flex my fingers and count the bruises blooming on my arms. Purple and green, a watercolor of violence.
Three crisp knocks at the door.
“Yeah?” I keep my voice bored, unimpressed.
The door opens. Two guards enter first, suits, earpieces, faces carved from stone.
One positions himself by the door, the other behind me.
Leone walks in after, and even without the gun visible, the danger rolls off him in waves.
That body. That stillness. Built like a weapon someone forgot to put away.
He sits. Folds his hands. Stares.
“You here to watch me eat breakfast,” I ask, “or are you the breakfast?”
Leone lets three full seconds pass before answering. “You’re going to tell us about Marco Castillo.”
I snort. “Never heard of him.”
“That’s not what Viktor said.”