Chapter 16
Intimacy is a parasite. It burrows under your skin, lays eggs of dependency, and before you know it, it's draining your will to fight.
I woke with Cassian's hand still holding mine.
He'd fallen asleep sitting up, his head tilted to the side, his breathing deep and steady.
For a moment—a dangerous, stupid moment—I wanted to nestle into his warmth.
I wanted to forget he was the man who'd frozen my credit cards and locked my life in a glass tower.
I pulled my hand away. The movement was slow, surgical. He didn't wake—or pretended not to. I got out of bed, feeling suffocated. His scent—gunpowder, sleep, and man—had seeped into my sheets, my pajamas, my pores.
I needed to get out. Not run away forever. I knew that was impossible; the contract was ironclad. I just needed… air. Air that wasn't filtered through Cassian Varro's climate control system. Air that smelled of exhaust, burnt coffee, and cheap freedom.
Two hours later, I was in the back seat of a security car, with Franco at the wheel. “I just need lingerie, Franco,” I lied, adjusting my sunglasses. “And La Perla on Oak Street is the only place that carries my size. You know how particular Mr. Varro is about aesthetics.”
Mentioning Cassian was the masterstroke. Franco tensed. He'd rather face a firing squad than explain to the boss that his wife was unhappy with her lingerie. “Twenty minutes, Signora. I'll be at the door.”
La Perla was perfect. Two entrances. One to the main street, where Franco stood guard like a watchdog, and a service exit leading to the loading alley, where employees went to smoke.
I walked into the fitting room with an armful of lace I had no intention of buying.
I waited two minutes. I slipped out the back door.
The cold Chicago wind hit my face like a slap—a reality check. I took a deep breath. The air tasted of soot and frozen lake. It was delicious. I pulled up the hood of my beige coat—an anonymous piece I'd found at the back of the closet—and started walking.
I had a destination. A café in Gold Coast, five blocks away. The place where Chloe and I used to spend entire afternoons complaining about problems that didn't exist. I needed to see Chloe. I needed ten minutes of frivolity. I needed to remember who I was before I became a chess piece.
The café was packed. The smell of roasted beans and steamed milk wrapped around me. I found Chloe at a corner table, typing on her phone. She looked the same: blonde, artificially tanned, wearing a gym outfit that cost more than a teacher's salary.
“Sol!” She shrieked when she saw me, drawing stares. “Oh my God, you're alive! I thought you'd become a nun or something. No one can get ahold of you!”
I sat down, keeping my sunglasses on. I glanced at the door. New habit. “It's complicated, Chlo. The marriage… the security… you know.”
“Oh, the mafia marriage!” She laughed, as if it were a Netflix plot. “It must be so intense. Is he hot, at least? I saw the photos. He's got that 'I'm going to ruin your life' vibe, which is super sexy, but must be exhausting day to day.”
“It's… intense,” I murmured.
The waitress came. I ordered a skim latte. The words came out on autopilot, but felt strange on my tongue. “So,” Chloe leaned in, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “you have to tell me everything. But first… you won't believe what Tyler did.”
She started talking. She talked about how Tyler, her real estate broker boyfriend, had forgotten their dating “monthiversary.” She talked about how her manicurist had gotten the nude shade wrong on her nails.
She talked about the existential crisis of not knowing whether to go to Aspen or St. Barts for Christmas.
I listened. I nodded. I said “wow” and “that's crazy” at the right moments. But inside, I felt an abyss opening.
I watched Chloe's mouth moving, but all I could hear was the echo of the shot Cassian had fired into that man's neck on the road. She complained that the coffee was lukewarm. I remembered the feeling of Cassian's hand on my chest, teaching me to breathe so I wouldn't pass out from terror.
“…and then I told him: 'If you don't buy the bag, I'm not going to your mother's dinner.'” Chloe laughed, triumphant. “And he bought it! Men are so easy to manipulate, right?”
I looked at my untouched cup. Easy to manipulate. I imagined trying to manipulate Cassian with a handbag. He'd laugh. Or freeze me with that gray stare.
“Sol? Are you listening?” Chloe snapped her fingers in front of my face. “You're being weird. You look pale.”
“Sorry,” I said, pushing my chair back. The sound of metal legs scraping the floor was loud. “I… I don't belong to this anymore.”
“To this what? To coffee?”
“To this life, Chloe. To your problems.” The words came out harsher than I intended. “Tyler forgot a date. My husband sleeps with a pistol on the nightstand because people are trying to kidnap me. Our worlds don’t overlap anymore.”
Chloe blinked, offended and confused. “Wow, dramatic much? You always liked being the center of attention, Solaia, but this is... a lot.”
“It’s the truth.” I grabbed my purse. “Coming here was a mistake.”
“You’re leaving? Just like that?”
“Bye, Chloe. Enjoy Aspen.”
I rushed out of the café, feeling tears sting my eyes.
They weren’t tears of sadness. They were tears of mourning.
The Solaia who cared about nails and vacations was dead.
Cassian killed her, or maybe my father killed her when he signed that paper.
I was something else now. Something colder. Something more broken.
I walked quickly down the busy sidewalk. I needed to get back to La Perla before Franco noticed. I had ten minutes.
That’s when I felt it. That itch on the back of my neck. The sensation of being watched. Cassian called it “situational awareness.” I called it paranoia. But now, it felt real.
I stopped in front of a jewelry store window, pretending to look at a necklace, and used the reflective glass to scan the street behind me.
Traffic. Yellow cabs, rideshares. And a gray sedan.
Old model, tinted windows, no front plate.
It sat at the curb about a hundred feet away. The engine was running.
My heart skipped a beat. I kept walking. Faster. I turned the corner onto Rush Street. I glanced back discreetly. The gray sedan turned the corner too. Slowly. Predatory.
It wasn’t Franco. The Family’s cars were black, armored, and immaculate. This was something else. Kovacs? An opportunist? Or just some crazy fan?
Panic rose in my throat, tasting like bile.
I was alone. No weapon. No phone (I’d left it in the car with Franco so I couldn’t be tracked—stupid, stupid, stupid!).
I’d fled security to find “normalcy” and now I was going to die on a sidewalk because of a whim.
Cassian was right. I was a child playing with matches.
I started running. Dignity didn’t matter. My heels pounded the concrete. The sedan accelerated. I heard the engine rev. They weren’t hiding it anymore.
“Shit, shit, shit...” I whispered, dodging startled pedestrians.
I needed a public place. A hotel. Anything. But the street ahead was strangely empty due to construction.
The sedan pulled alongside me. The rear window started to lower. I saw a shadow inside. I saw the glint of something metallic.
I was going to be taken. Right there. Five blocks from my gilded cage.
I closed my eyes, waiting for the sound of a gunshot or the pull of strong arms.
SCREEEEEEECH.
The sound of squealing tires was deafening. The smell of burning rubber filled my nose. It didn’t come from the gray sedan. It came from ahead.
A black sports car, low and aggressive, cut through traffic going the wrong way, jumped the curb six feet from me, and braked hard, blocking my path and, more importantly, blocking the gray sedan’s line of sight.
The gray sedan didn’t stop to fight. They saw the black car. They knew who it belonged to. The sedan’s engine roared and it took off, disappearing into traffic.
I stood on the sidewalk, trembling, staring at the polished black side of the Aston Martin that had almost run me over to save me.
The passenger window lowered with a smooth electric hum. No shouts. No “are you okay?”
Cassian was at the wheel, wearing dark sunglasses. His hands gripped the leather steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white as bone. He slowly turned his head toward me. Removed his sunglasses.
If I thought he was angry the day of the pink couch, I was wrong. That was irritation. This... this was fury. A cold, absolute, terrifying rage. The kind of rage that doesn’t need volume to destroy cities. His eyes swept over my face, checking for blood, then locked onto mine.
“Get in,” he said. One word. Two syllables. It sounded like a coffin closing.
My legs moved on their own. I opened the door and collapsed into the passenger seat. The interior smelled of leather and that familiar sandalwood—the same scent I’d wanted to escape minutes ago, and now seemed like the only safe thing in the universe.
I fastened my seatbelt. My hands were shaking so badly it took three tries. Cassian didn’t help. He stared straight ahead, his clenched jaw pulsing rhythmically.
He put the car in gear. It lurched forward violently, throwing me back against the seat.
“Cassian, I...” I began, my voice choked with tears. “There was a car... they were...”
“I know,” he cut me off. His voice was metal scraping against metal. “I saw.”
“You were following me?”
He laughed. A short, humorless sound. “You think you’re clever, Solaia? Think the La Perla trick is original? I was behind you from the moment you set foot in that alley.”
He took a sharp turn, blowing through a red light. “I let you walk. I let you feel the wind on your face. I wanted to see just how far your stupidity would take you.”
He glanced at me, and the contempt in his eyes made me shrink back. “You lasted eighteen minutes. Eighteen minutes in the real world, and you almost became a statistic.”
I lowered my head, hot tears of shame running down my face. I had no defense. He was right. I was the sheep who’d jumped the fence and found out why the wolf was waiting.
“Never again,” he said, and this time his voice wasn’t angry—it was a dark promise. “You’re never leaving my sight again. If I have to handcuff you to the bed, I will. But you’re not going to die over a whim, Solaia. I won’t allow it.”
The car plunged down the ramp into the building’s underground garage. Darkness swallowed us. I was back in the cage. But for the first time, the sound of the door locks clicking shut didn’t sound like prison. It sounded like survival.