Serafina
The brownstone is beautiful.
I hate it immediately.
Luca isn't one of them.
A man named Kosta takes my gym bag before I can argue about it, carries it inside, and sets it on a bench in the foyer like a bellman at a hotel I didn't book. He's polite. Professional. Doesn't speak unless spoken to.
Luca isn't here.
I don't ask where he went. I don't care where he went.
I tell myself that twice and almost believe it.
Inside is worse than outside. High ceilings. Dark wood. Furniture that probably costs more than my first year of med school. I find the kitchen on my own — at the back of the main floor, with marble countertops and appliances that have never seen an actual meal.
I run the tap. Drink two full glasses of water standing at the sink because I've had nothing since a vending machine coffee at 6 p.m., and my body is filing a formal complaint.
I count cameras while I drink.
Three in the main hall. Two in the kitchen. One above the back door, angled to catch the alley.
I'm still cataloging the living room when the front door opens.
I spin. Hand flat on the counter. Body already braced.
Luca fills the frame.
No tie now. Jacket still on, but the collar button undone, and there's something different in the set of his shoulders. Tighter. Like whatever he was doing in that car wound him up instead of down.
His eyes find me immediately. Cross the room and land like he already knew exactly where I'd be.
"You're still up."
"It's past 2 a.m., and I'm in a stranger's house." I set my water glass down. "Where did you go?"
"I had business."
"At 2 a.m."
"I always have business." He crosses the room without stopping, without offering an explanation. "I'll show you upstairs."
I follow him because the alternative is standing in the kitchen alone, and I'd rather be annoyed at him directly than at the general concept of him.
I count four more cameras on the way up.
"Guest suite." He opens a door at the end of the hall. King bed, original artwork, en suite bathroom with heated tile. Fresh flowers on the dresser.
Someone put flowers in here. In the kidnapping room.
Before I can settle in, Luca turns in the doorway.
"The drive." Not a question.
I look at him. He looks at me. The gym bag is still on my shoulder, and we both know what's in it.
"It stays with me."
"It stays in this building. With my tech specialist." His voice is even.
Patient. The patience of a man who will wait exactly as long as he needs to and not one second longer.
"Whatever's on it, we need to know. And you need to not be the only person carrying it when the next team comes through a door. "
He's not wrong.
I hate that he's not wrong.
I pull the drive from the gym bag's inner pocket. Hold it between two fingers. This tiny piece of metal that got a man killed and turned my life inside out in under an hour.
"If anything happens to this—"
"Nothing happens to it."
I set it in his palm. His fingers close around it, and our hands overlap, and I feel the warmth of his skin and the calluses on his fingers. I pull back like I've touched something hot.
Which I have.
He pockets the drive. "I'll have updates in the morning."
"I want to be there when your guy opens it."
A pause. "We'll see."
"That's not a yes."
"It's not a no." He leans against the doorframe. Arms crossed. "Get some sleep."
"I need my phone."
"You'll have access to a secure line."
"My phone. My number. My contacts."
"Compromised." Flat. Immediate. "Anyone who has your number could be used to triangulate your location. You make calls on my line or not at all."
"And my keys?"
"Your apartment is being watched. You can't go back."
"My car."
"Impounded for your safety."
Each answer comes out rehearsed. Like he knew what I'd ask and pre-built a wall for every exit.
Fury crawls up my throat.
"So you've taken my phone, my home, my car." I keep my voice even. A skill. Years of practice. "What exactly do I have?"
Luca reaches into his jacket and sets two things on the dresser beside the flowers.
A burner phone. Next to it, a small rectangular black device that fits in a palm.
"Burner's loaded with six contacts. Me. Caruso. Niko. Your colleague Dani. Bellevue switchboard. Panic line." Flat. Informational. "Anything else gets blocked. Incoming or outgoing."
I stare at the phone.
"And that." He nods at the black device. "Panic button. Triggers a silent alert to my team. Response time under ninety seconds anywhere in the building."
I look at it.
Then I look at him.
"You put flowers in here."
His jaw tightens. "The staff does that."
"And the panic button. You thought about what I'd need if I woke up scared in an unfamiliar place."
"I thought about threat scenarios."
"Right." I pick up the panic button. Turn it over. Set it back down. "So this is what kidnapping looks like when it has good taste."
"You're not a prisoner."
"I can't leave."
"You can't leave safely."
"That's a semantic argument, and you know it."
He holds my gaze for a beat too long. Then: "Brunch is at 11:00 a.m. Someone will knock." He pushes off the doorframe.
"Luca."
He stops.
"If you lock that door, I'll take the window."
He glances at the window. Then back at me. A muscle ticks once in his cheek. "It's a twenty-foot drop to the alley."
"I'm a surgeon. I know how to fall."
A pause. Long enough that I wonder if he's calculating the odds.
Long enough that I notice the way his shirt sits across his shoulders and hate myself for it. Years of medical training. Two board certifications. And my brain's contribution to this crisis is nice shoulders.
Somebody revoke my degree.
"The door doesn't lock from the outside," he says finally. Then he leaves.
I wait forty-five seconds. Then I start mapping the room.
Window: two stories, iron trellis, alley gated. An option, barely.
Door: unlocked. The hallway camera covers the staircase.
I open the closet.
Women's clothes. My size. Not my style — too understated, lots of neutrals. But my size, down to the shoes. A full week's worth.
Toiletries in the bathroom: the brand of face wash I use, which isn't a common one. Someone looked at Serafina Virelli's medicine cabinet and took notes.
I sit on the edge of the bed.
A prisoner with nice sheets and a well-stocked closet.
I sleep in two-hour intervals. Residency habit.
My body doesn't know how to do more than that in an unfamiliar place, and tonight it's running on fumes from a double shift, a dead man, and the kind of adrenaline that doesn't metabolize quietly.
Between naps, I stare at the ceiling and memorize the guard rotation outside my window. Every twenty minutes. Clockwork.
By the time pale morning light cuts through the curtains, I've slept maybe five hours total, mapped the room three times, and accepted that my body has simply shut off the part of my brain that tracks what day it is.
Brunch is served at 11 a.m. A table that seats eight. Just the two of us, which makes the table feel half its size.
A man named Raf brings the food. He's built like a door and sets the plates down with surprising gentleness. He doesn't make eye contact with me. He makes a lot of eye contact with Luca.
"You can eat," Luca says, not looking up from his phone.
"How generous. A meal and a panic button. You really think of everything."
He sets the phone down. Looks at me. "You've been quiet since the room."
"I've been thinking."
"About?"
"Exit strategies." I pick up my fork. The food is exceptional, which is the most offensive thing in this building. "How many people know I'm here?"
"Relevant personnel."
"How many is that?"
"Enough to keep you alive. Not enough to get you killed."
I chew. Swallow. Look at the art on the dining room wall. A dark, abstract canvas — all shadow and a single slash of red. Someone hung that on purpose. Someone who understands negative space.
"Did you choose that painting?"
Luca glances up. "Yes."
"It's violent."
"It's honest."
I look at him for a moment longer than I mean to. "That's either the most pretentious thing I've ever heard or the most self-aware."
The corner of his mouth moves. Not quite a smile. Close enough to be distracting.
I look back at my food.
Don't look at his mouth. Don't look at his mouth. Don't—
I'm looking at his mouth.
The hard line of it. The way the lower lip is just slightly fuller than the upper. The way he presses them together when he's thinking, like he's holding back words he's already decided not to say.
I think about that mouth on my throat.
Then I stop thinking about that mouth on my throat because I am at brunch and I am a professional and I have lost my goddamn mind.
I reach for my water glass.
His hands. I keep coming back to his hands. Large. Controlled. The kind that wrap around a whiskey glass like they know how much pressure everything deserves. The same hands that caught me in that car, wrapped around my arms for three seconds I'm still thinking about.
What those hands would feel like slower. More deliberate.
Fuck. Stop.
"You keep looking at the door."
"Occupational habit. I always know my exits."
"So do I." His eyes don't leave my face. "You won't make it past Raf."
"I wasn't planning on tonight."
"When, then?"
I meet his gaze directly.
Mistake.
Up close, in the low light, his eyes are darker than I've let myself notice. Not a color. A depth. The kind you fall into if you stop paying attention.
I don't stop paying attention.
"When I have a better plan."
His expression doesn't change. Not exactly. But something behind his eyes unlocks. My body gets there first — a pull low in my stomach I refuse to acknowledge.
"Eat your brunch, Serafina."
My name in his mouth lands somewhere it has no business landing. Low. Warm. Between my hips.
I eat my brunch.
After brunch, I test the Wi-Fi.
There isn't any. Or rather, there is, but it's locked behind a firewall that returns an access-denied message before I can finish typing the URL. I try three workarounds on the burner. Each one hits the same wall.
Luca anticipated me. Again.