Serafina #2
I call Dani from the burner. She's on the pre-approved list — which means someone dug through my life and decided she mattered to me. They were right.
"Oh, thank God." A breath, fast and relieved. "They told me you were in protective custody. Are you okay?"
"I'm okay. I can't say where." I pause. "I need you to cover my shifts for the next—" I stop. Because I don't know how long.
"Already covered." Her voice drops to a whisper. "Serafina, there were men asking about you this morning. At the hospital. Suits. Expensive ones. They already knew your schedule. They were just checking whether we'd talk."
The back of my neck goes cold.
"Don't answer questions about me," I say. "Not to anyone."
"Are you sure you're okay?"
"My sheets are very high thread count," I say. "So it could be worse."
She snorts. We hang up.
The rest of the day passes in the specific misery of having nothing to do.
I do laps of the floors I'm allowed on. I read half a medical journal on the burner.
I stare at the locked study door for longer than is probably healthy.
By the time the light outside fades and the brownstone settles into its nighttime quiet, I've exhausted every option that isn't sleep.
I should sleep.
I lie on top of the covers in the dark and have a very honest conversation with myself about the fact that I'm attracted to my kidnapper.
He's a Moretti. My father's enemy. A man who took my phone and my keys and my entire life and handed me a panic button like that makes it okay.
A man with a body count I don't want to calculate and a mouth I can't stop thinking about, and if that isn't the most on-brand thing a Virelli woman has ever done, I don't know what is.
"Stop it," I say out loud to the ceiling.
The ceiling doesn't answer.
The ache between my legs does.
I squeeze my thighs together. It doesn't help. The image is already there. Luca's hands around that glass. The muscle that ticked in his jaw when I pushed back. The half-second in the doorframe when he held my gaze one beat longer than necessary.
I'd felt it then. The charge. Like standing too close to something live.
I'm furious at my own body.
I'm also alone in a room with nowhere to put this, and I am nothing if not practical.
I slide a hand down my stomach.
I don't let myself think of his name. I'm not doing that.
I think about hands instead. Large. Certain. The kind that knows how much pressure to apply and where to use it. I think about being crowded backward, no exit, no argument left. Just heat and decision and his voice in my ear.
I think about that mouth — the cruel, beautiful line of it — dragging down my throat, my collarbone, lower.
I think about a voice that drops low and says, Eat your brunch, Serafina, like it's a warning dressed up as patience, and what that voice would sound like saying other things. Telling me other things. Instructing me.
It doesn't take long.
I come quietly, jaw set, one hand pressed flat against my stomach like I'm holding myself together.
For a few seconds, I just breathe.
Then I hate myself efficiently, roll onto my side, and try to sleep.
I don't manage it for a long time.
It's nearly midnight when I hear it.
A sound. Soft. Deliberate.
Paper against hardwood.
I'm off the bed before I decide to be, moving on quiet feet to the door. I open it.
The hallway is empty.
But on the floor, just inside the threshold, sits a single photograph. Glossy. Printed on plain paper, the kind anyone can buy.
Me.
Outside Bellevue's ambulance bay entrance.
Taken from across the street at an angle, but close enough to read the lanyard around my neck.
Timestamped six days ago. Before any of this started.
Before the drive, before Tessaro, before Luca Moretti walked into my trauma bay and rewired my nervous system.
Someone was watching me before I became a target.
Why?
I flip it over.
Five words in block print:
WE CAN REACH YOU ANYWHERE.
My hand isn't shaking. I notice this the way I notice vitals. Data, not comfort.
My chest is a different story.
I pick up the panic button off the dresser.
I press it.
Twenty-three seconds.
I count every one of them.
That's how long it takes.
The door opens and Luca fills the frame. No jacket. Shirt open at the collar, the top two buttons undone like he'd started undressing and stopped. Not disheveled. Just less armored.
Enough bare skin at his throat that my brain short-circuits for a full second before rerouting to the crisis at hand.
Priorities, Serafina. Jesus Christ.
His eyes sweep the room first, then land on me. The threat assessment clears in under a second. What replaces it is harder to look at.
"What happened." Not a question.
I hold out the photograph.
He takes it. Studies it like it might bite.
His jaw locks.
Then he flips it over — slow, deliberate — reading the back like he's about to find something he won't like.
The room gets very quiet.
"Someone was in the building," I say.
"Or close enough to slide it under." He's already pulling out his phone, texting one-handed. "We'll sweep the block."
"That's it? We'll sweep the block?"
"What would you prefer?"
"I'd prefer not to be receiving threats delivered to my door at midnight." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "I'd prefer to know how someone got close enough to do this. I'd prefer—"
"Serafina."
He says my name and crosses to me in the same breath, and then his hand is at my jaw, tilting my face up, reading me with those dark eyes like he's running diagnostics.
I forgot what I was saying entirely.
His thumb traces the line of my cheekbone once.
"You're okay?” Quiet. Certain.
"I know I'm okay."
"Your pulse says otherwise."
His thumb finds it at my throat. Presses there. Light and deliberate.
My pulse is not behaving itself, and we both know it. It hammers against the pad of his thumb like it's trying to tell him everything I won't say out loud.
And the worst part — the truly unforgivable part — is that I can smell him. Whiskey and dark amber cologne. I was just in this bed with my hand between my legs, thinking about his mouth, and now his mouth is right there, six inches from mine, and my body remembers what it wants.
I should step back.
Every functional brain cell I have is filing the same recommendation.
I don't step back.
Neither does he.
His eyes drop to my mouth. Come back up.
Then he steps back.
Puts the wall back up, smooth and immediate, as if it were never down.
"Lock your door," he says.
He takes the photograph. "I'll post someone in the hall."
He leaves.
I stand in the middle of the room, staring at the closed door.
Furious that he walked away. Furious that part of me aches because he did.
I lock the door.
It doesn't help.