Chapter 8
I woke up to empty space. Not just the absence of warmth, though that was there too, the sheets beside me cooled enough to tell me it hadn't been long.
It was something else. The specific quality of silence that a room had when it had been carefully, deliberately emptied.
She had been deliberate about it.
Planned it. Executed it. Slipped out from under my arm - which no one had ever managed without my permission - and walked out of this room like I was something you could simply leave.
I pushed the irritation aside before it could settle into something I'd have to examine. And went to the bathroom.
When I stepped back into the bedroom, towel around my waist, I went to the chair where I had left my clothes the night before.
Empty.
I looked at the chair for a moment. Then at the floor around it. Then at the room in general.
My shirt. Gone.
My trousers. Gone.
She had taken my clothes.
I stood very still for a while. Then I looked at the nightstand.
Three full seconds.
The sun pendant. Passed from my grandfather's hands to my father's to mine. The chain that had not left this building without me in eleven years. The symbol that half this city would start a war over.
In its place sat a small neat stack of bills.
I picked it up. Counted it. Set it back down.
She had paid me.
She. Had. Paid. Me.
I stood there in nothing but a towel in a suite that cost more per night than most people made in a month, holding the information that a woman had left approximately three hundred dollars on the nightstand - and walked out wearing my seventeen thousand dollar shirt with a pendant that men in this
city would burn entire districts to the ground for, leaving cash in its place like I was a service she had used and responsibly compensated for.
I looked at the money for a long time. Long enough that a less controlled man might have done something inadvisable to the furniture. I was not a less controlled man.
I picked up my phone. Romano answered on the first ring.
"Bring me clothes," I said.
"Boss?" Confusion, barely concealed.
"Clothes, Romano." My voice came out considerably quieter than usual. Romano would understand that meant the opposite of calm. "And find the woman from last night."
A pause.
"The one who-"
"Yes," I said. "That one."
A shorter pause.
"Alive?" Same question. Different morning.
"Romano."
"Finding her now."
I ended the call.
Looked at the cash on the nightstand one last time. And tucked it into my pocket.