Chapter 7
ISABELLA
Eight days. That’s how long I have before they move her. The number burns on every screen in Lorenzo’s office. Four days of working across from him, wearing his shirt. Every time I lift my arm I catch the scent and my body moves toward him on its own.
He knows. His nostrils flare when I adjust the collar. He looks away too fast, like he’s been caught.
“Talk to me,” I mutter to the screen, pulling up utility records, property transfers, shipping manifests.
Six potential warehouses. Irregular power usage, shell company ownership, proximity to transport routes.
One of them is where they stage girls before the final move. I just don’t know which one yet.
“The data’s not enough.” Lorenzo’s voice from behind me. I didn’t hear him move from the window. But now he’s there. Close enough that the heat of him bleeds through the thin cotton of his shirt onto my back.
“I know.” I don’t turn around. “I’m cross-referencing with traffic patterns. If I can isolate which location shows vehicle activity during the port compound’s quiet periods—”
“How long?”
“Days. Maybe longer.” My fingers tap the desk edge in a restless staccato. “The analysis takes time. And my equipment can barely keep up.”
Silence. He’s right behind me.
“Get up.”
I spin in the chair. “What?”
“Get up. We’re leaving.”
“Leaving to go where? I’m in the middle of something.”
“You’ve been in that chair for sixteen hours.” His voice is flat. Final. “You haven’t eaten. You’re wearing the same clothes you’ve worn for four days. And your equipment is shit.”
“My equipment is fine.”
“Your equipment is slowing you down.” He’s already moving toward the door. “We’re getting you clothes. And better hardware. Now.”
I stare at his back. “You want to take me shopping.”
He stops. Doesn’t turn around. “I want you functioning. That requires proper tools and more than one set of clothes.”
“This is your shirt.”
The words hang in the air. I watch his shoulders lock. The line of his spine going rigid.
“I know.”
He walks out. Expecting me to follow.
I should argue. Should insist on staying, on using every second of the time I have left. But my back aches from the chair. The screens have gone blurry. And he’s right about the hardware. My analysis would run three times faster with better processing power.
I follow.
The SUV is waiting in the front drive. Two guards in the front seats. Old. Gray-haired. The kind who’ve seen enough violence to be bored by it. He picked them on purpose.
We drive in silence. The city slides past the tinted windows, and I press my forehead against the glass. Four days inside that house. Four days of data and four days of Lorenzo sitting three feet away.
The SUV stops outside a storefront on Magazine Street. Marguerite’s. Crystal chandeliers visible through the window. Silk on mannequins. A place where a single dress costs more than three months of my old rent.
“No.” I don’t move from the car. “Absolutely not.”
Lorenzo is already out, holding my door open. “Move.”
“I’ll find a Target. A thrift store. Anywhere else.”
“You’re going in there. Now.”
I climb out because I don’t have a choice, but my skin prickles. I’m wearing his shirt and borrowed sweatpants. I look like someone who wandered in to ask for directions.
The woman who greets us is silver-haired, impeccable. She takes one look at me and her expression doesn’t flicker. Not with judgment. With recognition. Then her gaze moves to Lorenzo.
“Mr. Santoro.” She inclines her head. “I dressed your brother’s wife not long ago. It’s good to see the family again.”
She knows who he is. A place like this survives on discretion and powerful clients.
“She’s starting from scratch,” Lorenzo says. “We don’t have much time.”
I grab what I need with efficient desperation. Dark colors. Practical cuts. Things that won’t show coffee stains or make me feel like I’m playing dress-up in someone else’s life.
He stands by the door the entire time, arms crossed, watching the street. He’d rather be anywhere else.
“A few things for evening,” Marguerite says. “Dinners with the family. Events that may arise.”
“Evening wear is pointless.”
“Add whatever’s appropriate.” Lorenzo’s voice cuts across the store. “Have everything delivered.”
“He watches you,” Marguerite says, quiet enough that only I hear. “The way the Don watched his wife, before he’d admit what she was to him.”
My hands still on the blouse I’m holding.
“Another Santoro,” she murmurs, mouth curving. “Another woman who doesn’t know what she is yet.”
He pulls out a black card and hands it over without looking at the total. “Everything gets delivered to the compound. Today.” His hand finds the small of my back as we leave. The touch burns through the cotton. “We’re done here.”
Fine. Whatever she adds, I’ll deal with later. Right now, I don’t care about clothes. I care about the hardware.
The tech store is different. I forget myself the moment we walk in.
Processors. Graphics cards. Solid state drives with speeds I’ve only read about.
I move through the aisles like I’ve found the holy land, fingers trailing over boxes, reading specs, calculating what I could do with this kind of power.
“This processor.” I pull it off the shelf, already running the math. “With enough power behind it, I could run my analysis in hours instead of days.”
Lorenzo watches me. He’s leaning against a display case, arms crossed, but his eyes are tracking me the way they track threats.
“What else?”
“I’d need—” I glance at the price tag. More than everything in my old apartment combined. “It’s expensive.”
“What else?”
I look at him. His face is unreadable, but he’s shifted toward me. Leaning forward instead of back.
“Whatever you need, Isabella.”
My name in his mouth. Low and rough and disregarding professionalism. My fingers tighten around the box.
I grab everything. Three external drives. A new graphics card. More RAM than I’ve ever had access to. A portable monitor for mobile work. By the time I’m done, the cart is full. I’m bouncing on the balls of my feet like a kid who just won a shopping spree.
This is better than clothes. Better than food.
He pays without blinking.
The guards load everything into the SUV while I stand on the sidewalk, palms pressed against my cheeks, grinning at nothing. “Thank you.” The words aren’t enough. “I mean it. This is — thank you.”
He nods once. Doesn’t speak. But the corner of his mouth moves. Barely. A dent appears in his left cheek. Gone before I can confirm it.
The drive back is quiet, but my leg won’t stop bouncing. I keep pulling boxes out of bags, reading specs, planning the setup. He tracks me from across the backseat, steady and unblinking.
We carry everything into the house. He dismisses the guards with a look. Leads me toward his office and helps me set up like this is normal. Like we do this every afternoon.
His sleeves are rolled to the elbow. I watch his forearms flex when he lifts the monitor onto the desk, the tattoos shifting with the movement. The ink disappears under his shirt, and I have to look away before I start wondering how far it goes.
Focus.
The new processor hums to life. I connect the drives, configure the settings, watch my analysis tools load three times faster than before.
My correlation algorithm starts running.
Fast. So fast. Data that would have taken days to process streams across in minutes.
The patterns I’ve been chasing for weeks start resolving, sharpening, becoming information I can actually use.
“Oh my god.” I spin in the chair. “Lorenzo, look at this. Look how fast it’s running.”
He moves from his spot by the window. Leans over my shoulder.
“The analysis that was taking sixteen hours? It’ll be done in two. Maybe less.” I’m grinning so hard my face hurts. “I can cross-reference the warehouse locations tonight. I can narrow down where they’re staging before transport. I can find her.”
I can find her. After years of running on fumes and failing, the path to Sofia is right there on the screen.
The reflex wins. I’m out of the chair. My arms are around him. The data is singing, the path to Sofia is visible for the first time since I started searching, and my body moved before my brain could catch up.
He turns to stone. Arms at his sides. He doesn’t breathe. Doesn’t move. Standing there like I’ve pressed a blade against his ribs instead of my cheek against his chest.
Oh god.
I start to pull back.
His hand closes around my throat. Not squeezing.
Not hurting. Catching. His thumb presses into the hollow where my pulse hammers, and he tilts my head back until I’m looking up at him.
Pupils blown wide. A thin ring of dark iris.
A vein standing out at his temple, every tendon in his neck pulled taut.
“Lorenzo.”
His forehead drops to mine. Brow to brow, the contact lands like the sear of a hot iron.
Everything goes quiet. The processors humming.
The data streaming. The eight-day countdown.
Gone. There’s just the press of his skin against mine and his breathing, ragged and unsteady, alarming for a man who usually controls everything.
The grip on my throat is shaking. Fine tremors beating against my pulse. Running through his wrist where it rests against my collarbone. Lorenzo Santoro doesn’t shake. I’ve watched him clean a gun, set up a whole office for me, pour whiskey without spilling a drop. He’s shaking now.
“I—”
Nothing else comes. My voice has disappeared.
He doesn’t speak. His forehead stays pressed to mine, his thumb shifting to find the groove where my blood moves fastest. Counting beats. Or just holding on.
I’m pressed flat against his chest. His heart hammering against my cheek. Too fast. Too hard for a man this steady.
He grips my hip. Not gently. Pressure that would leave marks if he held long enough.
He walks me backward. One step. Two. Three.
The edge of the desk hits my lower back and I gasp.
Not from pain. From the sudden full-body contact of him pressing me against it.
Chest to chest. His hips pinning mine to the wood. His thigh between mine.
He’s hard against my stomach.
The sound that leaves me is nothing I planned. Just a broken exhale my body makes for me.
His forehead still on mine. Eyes open. Watching me from an inch away. The gold ring in his dark irises. The scar through his eyebrow. The place where his lip is bitten white.
My hips move. A reflex. Grinding forward against the hard length of him through layers of fabric, and he bears down until the pressure is individual. Distinct. His breathing changes. Shorter. Rougher. Through his teeth.
“Lorenzo.”
His hips pin mine to the desk. Pressure right where I need it, and my head drops back because I can’t hold it up and process this at the same time. His forehead slides to my temple. His mouth by my ear. Not speaking. Each exhale landing on my neck and running down the full length of my body.
I clench his shirt. My thighs open wider without permission, making room for the friction I can’t stop chasing. I’m grinding against him and I should be embarrassed but the heat building low in my body has burned away every thought I had.
I’m climbing. He braces against the desk behind me. The wood creaks. The tremor in his grip hasn’t stopped.
I hook my ankle behind his calf and pull him closer. The angle shifts. I bite down on a sound that would have given away how close I am. My body is coiling tight. Every nerve narrowing to the single point where his body meets mine through cotton and denim.
His jaw brushes mine. Stubble catching on my skin. Almost a kiss. Not a kiss.
My hips stutter. I’m right there. One more roll of friction and I’ll come apart against him in his office and I don’t care. I don’t care.
He tears himself away. Cold air. Everywhere at once, rushing in where his body was. I pitch forward from the desk and catch myself on the edge.
He’s three feet back. Something moves across his face. Raw, exposed, gone in an instant, like a door slammed shut from the inside. Then nothing. The wall back up. Impenetrable.
His chest is heaving. Fists clenched at his sides, unclenching, clenching. He swallows hard. Nothing comes.
“This can’t happen.”
Ragged. Then he’s gone. The door closes behind him, and I’m left with the hum of processors and a pulse slamming in places he never touched.
I grip the desk because my legs won’t hold me. My body is still wound tight, still aching from the loss of him. He pinned me to his desk. Ground against me until I nearly came from friction alone. And he didn’t even kiss me.
My hand rises to my throat. The skin is hot where he held me. I press into it, chasing warmth that’s already gone.
The data scrolls across the screens. Six potential warehouses. Eight days.
I turn back to the work. But my body won’t settle.
His hands were shaking. And he still walked away.