Chapter 8 #2
She doesn't hear it. Or she can't. "Excuse me.
" She pushes past me and her shoulder hits my chest. The brief contact runs through my body, hot and sharp, every nerve firing at once.
My hand reaches for her arm on instinct, my fingers brushing over her skin just long enough to feel the warmth of her before I force myself to let go.
She keeps moving. Her heels crack against the marble, fast and hard, and she doesn't look back.
The faint trail of Chanel lingers in the air where she passed and I breathe it in before I can stop myself.
Every instinct I have screams at me to follow her. I don't. Not yet. I have business to finish first.
I turn to the study.
Harrison stands behind his desk, whiskey glass in hand, his face carrying the expression of a man who knows he just lost something he can't get back.
The study smells like old leather and cigar smoke and the sharp bite of whiskey, and the cold fireplace sits dark against the far wall, logs stacked but unlit.
Lorenzo Ferraro stands by the window with his hands in his pockets and a look of mild inconvenience on his face, the afternoon light cutting across his jaw and his tailored suit.
I instantly hate the man. Not the word I usually reach for. I assess. I evaluate. I form measured opinions based on evidence. Not this time. The man is already on my shit list and I plan on leaving him there.
"Mass." Harrison sets his glass down on the leather blotter, the crystal thudding dully against the worn surface. "I wasn't expecting you this early."
"Clearly." I step into the study and widen the door behind me. My eyes cut to Lorenzo and I jut my chin toward the exit. "Give us the room."
Lorenzo's eyebrows rise a fraction. He looks at Harrison for confirmation but his attention swiftly falls back to me. At least he has the sense to know who the real threat is.
"Lorenzo, give us a minute." Harrison waves a hand toward the door.
Lorenzo buttons his suit jacket with slow, deliberate fingers, nods at Harrison, and walks toward me. He stops a foot away and extends his hand. "Massimo Santoro. Your reputation precedes you."
I look at his hand. I don't take it.
"Leave the fucking room."
His jaw tightens. The smile disappears. For half a second the mask slips and what's underneath is cold, calculating. He drops his hand, adjusts his cuffs, and walks out without another word. The door closes behind him and the air in the room loosens.
Harrison and I are alone.
I stand on the opposite side of his desk and look at the man who has been my closest friend for twenty years. He looks like hell. The suit hangs loose on his frame and the skin beneath his eyes is bruised from what I suspect is exhaustion and too many mornings like this one.
The whiskey glass has been filled and emptied too many times today, the crystal smudged with fingerprints.
The lines around his eyes have deepened since I saw him last month and there's a tremor in his hand that wasn't there before, a fine shake that rattles the ice against the glass when he lifts it.
My eyes catch the pencil marks on the doorframe behind him.
Faint lines and dates scratched into the wood in Harrison's handwriting, barely visible unless you know where to look.
Sloane's height measured every birthday.
The last one reads 14, 4'11" and the marks stop there.
One year before the night in the hallway.
She was still growing. She was still a child.
"What the hell are you doing, Harrison?"
He sits down heavily, the old wingback groaning under his weight. Rubs both hands over his face, his palms scraping against the beard on his jaw. "It's not what it looks like."
"From the outside looking in, it looks like you're selling your daughter to settle a debt. Tell me how I'm wrong."
Harrison's jaw flexes and his hand tightens around the empty glass. "You don't understand the situation." His eyes drop to his desk, unable to hold my gaze.
Seeing him like this hits me in the chest. My mind falls back to Sloane and how betrayed she sounded. It’s hard to have any sympathy for anyone willing to harm their child for the gain of power or money.
"Then explain it to me. Because I just watched a man I've never met grip your daughter's arm hard enough to bruise and her entire body went cold.
I watched her sit in that chair and hold herself together while you told her you traded her future for a business deal and called her life's work silly.
So explain it to me, Harrison. I'm listening. "
He flinches as he pours another damn drink. Much longer and that shit will take him out. That happens and he won’t have to worry about debts or any other problems.
Silence carries for a long while.
"The debts aren't just money, Mass." He picks up his glass and sets it down without drinking.
Picks it up again. Drains it, the whiskey disappearing in one swallow, and sets the empty glass down with a crack against the desk.
"Lorenzo's family holds leverage. Business records.
Transactions that would put me away for life if they surfaced.
The marriage contract isn't a deal. It's the only play I have left. "
"How much?"
"It's not about the amount."
"How much, Harrison."
"Twelve million in outstanding obligations.
But the leverage is worse. The Ferraros have documentation of three operations I ran through their channels in the early years.
Before the Syndicate. Before I had protection.
If those records go public, I lose everything.
The house. The business. Sloane's inheritance.
All of it. If it goes public my international business will come under scrutiny or worse. Much worse."
“Your precious luxury hotel chain will survive. But will Sloane? They set you up years ago and waited in the wings until they were ready to collect.” My stomach churns with bitter rage. “They’ve had plans for your daughter for a while now.”
His face turns ghostly white but he says nothing.
“Since when did you become a damn coward, Whitmore?”
Still no response.
I process the numbers. Twelve million is significant but manageable. The Syndicate has moved larger sums. I can restructure his debts, negotiate terms, create a payment schedule that keeps the Ferraros at bay.
But the leverage. That's the real chain that will drag him to the bottom of hell.
"I can cover the money," I tell him. "I'll restructure the debts through the Syndicate. We'll create a trust that pays down the obligations over time. Luca can build a financial shield that makes the Ferraro claims unenforceable."
"And the records?"
"We retrieve them. Or we make them irrelevant. Luca's people can find anything digital. But if it's physical, Kon's team can acquire it."
Harrison shakes his head slowly, his gaze dropping to the empty glass.
"You think I haven't thought of that? Lorenzo's father has dead man's switches on everything.
If anything happens to the records, copies go to the feds.
If anything happens to Lorenzo, the copies go public.
The only scenario where those documents stay buried is if Sloane walks down the aisle. "
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
The room goes quiet. Harrison taps his thumb against the antique desk scarred with decades of ink stains and whiskey rings.
I give Harrison a moment to consider his options.
I turn my attention to the photos on the credenza that stop about ten years ago.
Sloane is in braces with a gap-toothed grin in one.
In another she’s in a school uniform squinting against the sun.
Then one of Sloane at fifteen, baby blue eyes so innocent and full of hope.
She had no idea of what would come. None of us did.
I remember that time of her life. The night she was attacked she was about that age.
"You don't have children, Mass." Harrison's voice drops. Tired. Old. "Sometimes the best you can do is choose the cage with the strongest lock that will keep them safe."
My jaw tightens so hard my teeth ache and I feel the pressure all the way to my temples.
My mother's face surfaces. The way she looked the last time I saw her, sitting in a room she didn't choose, married to a man she never wanted, trapped in an arrangement someone else signed.
No one came for her. No one stepped up and stopped her father from doing exactly what Harrison wants to do to Sloane.
I wasn't old enough to save my mother then, but I can damn sure step up for Sloane.
Mine.
"Harrison." I flatten my palms on his desk and lean forward until he has no choice but to look at me. The wood is warm under my hands, worn smooth from years of his fists and his elbows and his whiskey glasses. "Do you remember what happened to Sloane when she was fifteen?"
The color leaves his face. His hand tightens around the empty glass, his knuckles going white.
"I pulled a man off your daughter in a hallway in this house. I made sure he never touched another woman again. And now you're handing her to a man who looked ready to do the same thing to her the second she didn’t fall in line with his demands."
"Lorenzo isn't—"
"You want to tell me you didn’t see her freeze up. You didn’t see the fear in her eyes? And here you are handing her life over like you just sold the door key to a stranger. She’s twenty-six years old. You have no control over her life."
Harrison's mouth opens. Closes. His jaw works and nothing comes out. The guilt on his face is so raw it almost makes me feel sorry for him. Almost.
"I'm not going to let this happen." My voice comes out flat. Final. "I'll find another way. I don't care what it costs or what it takes. Sloane is not marrying Lorenzo Ferraro."
"And what exactly are you going to do, Mass? Restructure a dead man's switch? Ferraro Senior flips it, everything goes off. Even you and your organization could get caught up in the fallout."