Chapter 13 #2
"Beautiful craftsmanship." His voice carries across the quiet shop, smooth and conversational. "You have excellent taste, Sloane. The emerald is new? Arrived this morning, if I'm not mistaken, right?"
The only way he knows that is if he’s been watching me.
"Can I help you with something, Lorenzo?" I set the hanger down on the display case, keeping the glass counter between us.
"I was in the neighborhood." He moves down the rack, his fingers trailing along fabrics, leaving his prints on silk and cotton and lace.
He pulls a seamed stocking from the glass display case and holds it up to the light, the sheer fabric stretching between his fingers.
"Egyptian cotton. Nice." He sets it down and turns to face me.
"How was lunch at Scarlet Thorn the day before yesterday?
The wives seem lovely. Persia's charity work is quite impressive. "
The blood drains from my face. So, it was his men he sent. The fucker likes to play games.
"My social calendar isn't your business."
"Mmm." He buttons his jacket and moves closer, each step measured and deliberate, closing the distance between us with a patience that makes my pulse pound.
"I also hear you've been settling in nicely at Redthorne Holdings.
Penthouse 106, right? Beautiful view of the city.
Very romantic." He stops four feet from me, close enough that his cologne fills my lungs and my stomach churns.
"How was the pad thai, by the way? I hope the delivery was prompt. "
The pad thai. He knows about the pad thai, too. What a creepy son of a bitch. He knows what we ordered for dinner, which means someone is either watching the building's deliveries or watching us directly and the difference doesn't matter because both mean Lorenzo Ferraro has eyes inside my life.
"My living arrangements aren't your concern." My voice is level but my heart is slamming against my ribs so hard dots dance in my vision.
"Everything about you is my concern, Sloane." His voice drops. The civil surface thins and underneath it is something cold and patient and absolutely certain of its own authority. "Your father and I have an agreement. Some stranger’s ring on your finger doesn't change the terms."
"The terms changed when I signed a different contract."
His smile returns and it makes my skin crawl from my scalp to my heels, a slow creeping revulsion that tightens every muscle in my body.
"Contracts can be broken. People can be broken.
You'd be surprised how fragile the things we build really are.
" His eyes sweep the boutique, the racks, the display cases, the brass bell on the door, the emerald dresses I steamed and tagged and arranged with my own hands an hour ago. "Beautiful things especially."
The threat sits between us, clear and polished and impossible to misread. He's not talking about dresses.
"Get out of my shop." My voice doesn't shake. I'm proud of that, proud of every molecule of lipstick and liner and armor holding me upright right now. "You're not welcome here and you never will be."
He holds my gaze for three seconds. Four. Five. His dark eyes are flat, patient. He's never been told no by anyone who lived to enforce it. Then he buttons his suit jacket, smooths his lapel with a slow hand, and walks toward the door, unhurried.
He pauses at the door with his hand on the brass handle. "Give my regards to your fake husband, Sloane. Tell him Lorenzo Ferraro always collects what he's owed."
The bell chimes as the door closes behind him. The bright, clean sound that used to settle my nerves rings through the shop and this time it sounds like the last note of something ending.
"Sloane." Bree's voice is thin from behind the register, her face pale, her hands gripping the counter edge. "Who was that?"
"Nobody." I grip the edge of the display case and breathe. In through my nose, out through my mouth, the way I've been breathing through panic since I was fifteen years old. My hands are shaking but my face is calm. "He's nobody, Bree. Watch the register. I'll be right back."
I walk to the front door on legs that feel numb beneath me.
Push through it. The cool morning air hits my bare face, damp and sharp with the smell of rain on concrete and exhaust from the street.
I scan the sidewalk for Lorenzo but he's gone, absorbed into the foot traffic of Wicker Park as cleanly as if he was never here.
I turn toward the parking lot and where the SUV should be.
Savine is in the driver's seat. His partner is in the passenger seat.
Neither of them moves. The engine is off.
The wipers are still. Rain collects on the windshield in heavy drops that distort the shapes inside, and something about the angle of Savine's head, the way it tilts forward with his chin resting against his chest, stops me three feet from the car.
"Savine?" My voice comes out thin, swallowed by the wet air.
I take one more step. Look through the driver's side window, which sits halfway down, rain beading on the glass edge.
There’s blood. It’s dark and thick, almost black against the white cotton of Savine's shirt, soaking through the fabric from a wound beneath his jaw. His eyes are open and fixed on nothing, the brown irises dull, the life behind them gone.
His hand hangs over the center console, limp, fingers dangling over the gearshift. Callan slumps against the passenger door in the same stillness. The same dark stain spreads across his chest. His head tips against the rain-speckled window at an angle that living necks don't hold.
Two clean entry wounds. No struggle. No shell casings on the dashboard. No sign that either man had time to reach for the weapons still holstered beneath their jackets. Professional. Fast. Done while Lorenzo was inside my shop.
The metallic smell of blood reaches me through the open window, warm and thick and wrong against the clean rain.
I press my hand over my mouth and grip the car door with my other hand and my knees buckle. I catch myself against the side of the SUV, my palm sliding on the wet metal, and I stare through the window at two dead men who were alive an hour ago because I insisted on coming to my shop.
I did this. I pushed back against the guards' hesitation.
I made the argument about the dresses and the rain and the twelve thousand dollars.
I stood in Massimo's kitchen with coffee in my hand and told them to keep me safe at my boutique and they listened and now they are dead in the front seat of a car parked outside my door while I steamed wrinkles and arranged hangers and talked to the man who ordered their deaths about Egyptian cotton.
The guilt hits my stomach so hard I double over, one hand on the cold metal of the SUV, the other pressed against my mouth, and I breathe through my fingers and stare at the wet concrete under my heels until the nausea passes and my vision stops tunneling and the sidewalk solidifies under my feet.
And then something shifts.
Underneath the horror and the guilt and the shaking hands, something harder takes shape.
Something old and familiar, a muscle I developed at fifteen when a man put his hands on me and I fought back even though I couldn't win.
That girl didn't freeze. That girl swung her fists at a man twice her size and screamed until someone came through that door.
I'm done freezing. I'm done running. I'm done hiding behind lipstick and contracts and men who promise to protect me while other men die in parking lots because of my choices.
Lorenzo Ferraro walked into my shop and smiled at me while two men bled out on the other side of the wall.
He touched my fabrics and complimented my taste and told me contracts can be broken and people can be broken, beautiful things especially.
He did it with the confidence of someone who has never faced a single consequence.
That ends now.
I pull my phone from my pocket. My hands are shaking but my voice is steady when Massimo picks up on the first ring.
"Tesoro, where are—"
"The guards are dead." I cut him off because I don't have room for tenderness right now. Not with blood on the other side of this car door and the metallic smell of it mixing with rain and exhaust. "Lorenzo was here. He was inside my shop, Massimo. The stench of him burns my nostrils even now."
Silence. Two seconds. Three. When he speaks, his voice is flat and cold and stripped of everything except the man underneath the lawyer.
"Don't move. Don't touch anything. I'm coming."
I hang up. Slide the phone into my pocket. I stand on the sidewalk outside my boutique and for the first time in a long time, I actually feel the minute solid steel slides into my backbone.
Cinderella lost her slipper running away. I'm keeping both of mine and walking straight into this fight. Fuck Lorenzo.