Chapter 14
Fourteen
Harlon
My father told me once that every contract tells two stories. The one written in ink and the one hidden between the lines. He went to prison because he stopped reading the second story. I never made that mistake.
Polaris sits beside me at the reception desk, her raven hair draped over one shoulder, her pen moving across a column of figures with quiet precision.
She wears a dark blouse buttoned to the collar, sleeves pulled to her wrists despite the warmth of the room.
She always covers her skin. I've stopped asking why.
Some answers announce themselves when they're ready.
Seven months ago she arrived at Genesis wrapped in my jacket, shivering so hard her teeth cracked against each other like dice in a cup.
Bruises covered her face, her arms, her ribs.
Her blue eyes were the only part of her that wasn't broken, and even those held a vacancy that made my chest feel like someone had reached inside and squeezed.
The Volkov brothers had taken her, used her, fed her through Society 69's auction pipeline where women are priced the way traders price livestock and sold to the highest bidder in a church basement that God stopped watching a long time ago.
Santi carried her through the door because her legs wouldn't hold.
Cassius cleared the penthouse bedroom without being asked, stripped the sheets, remade the bed with blankets soft enough that they wouldn't hurt the welts across her back.
I stood in the doorway and watched a woman I didn't know yet sleep in my home and felt the order of my entire life rearrange itself permanently.
She asked for a job three weeks after she could stand without swaying.
I gave her the reception desk because I told myself she needed purpose, not charity.
The truth is less noble. I wanted her close.
Santi wanted her close. Cassius demanded we become her guardians.
None of us could stomach the thought of her walking out of Genesis and into a world that had already proven it would chew her apart and sell the pieces.
So we gave her the desk closest to us and we all pretended this was professional courtesy and not three grown men rearranging their entire operation around a woman with raven hair and blue eyes who made us feel again after losing our first wife.
But that is a story for another time.
Within a month Polaris knew every client, every ledger entry, every unspoken rule of the Dark Floor and beyond.
Within two months, the three of us stopped pretending she was just an employee.
We never discussed it. Never named it. But the rings on our hands started meaning something different the morning she brought all three of us coffee without asking how we take it and got every single one right.
But the three of us are damn scared to move on our feelings. She’s been through so much. How do three men approach a woman about the lifestyle we live after what she’s gone through?
The overhead lights catch the sharp angle of her jaw, the soft curve of her throat, and I pull my gaze back to the ledger before she feels my eyes on her.
I am forty years old. I run the most dangerous neutral ground in Chicago.
None of it has prepared me for the woman sitting three feet to my left.
I turn my attention back to the day ahead of us.
The Dark Floor is still this morning, the ventilation humming its low frequency, the corridor of meeting rooms closed and silent. I review the previous night's ledger and let the silence settle the way it does before the first client arrives.
Santi is behind the bar, a mug of coffee wrapped in both hands because the man runs cold no matter what the thermostat reads.
Cassius bought him a space heater last Christmas as a joke.
Santi plugged it in and hasn't turned it off since, which made the joke considerably less funny and considerably more expensive on the electric bill.
His dark eyes sweep the floor with the patient, predatory focus.
He cataloged every exit, weapon, and threat before he poured his first cup.
Cassius sits in a leather armchair in the corner, one ankle crossed over his knee, a newspaper open on his lap that he hasn't read a word of in twenty minutes. His scarred knuckles curl around the edge of the paper with the easy grip. Cassius can turn anything in his hands into a weapon. He looks relaxed, but don’t be fooled.
The ring on his left hand catches the light as he turns a page he isn't reading.
The same ring Santi wears. The same ring I wear.
Matching bands of gold that none of us have been able to take off, though the woman who put them there has been gone long enough that the grief should have loosened its grip by now.
It hasn't. Some mornings I still feel the weight of that ring like a fist pressing against the bone, a reminder of a love the three of us shared and lost and have never spoken about to anyone outside this room.
But the weight has shifted since Polaris. Not lighter exactly. Different.
The elevator gate slides open a couple of seconds after a soft ding of the bell. I drag my attention out of the past.
Polaris's hand pauses on the page beside me. Her chin lifts an inch, her blue eyes tracking the movement with the calm, assessing focus she brings to everything. She reads threats the way most people read the weather. A leftover habit from her past I wish I could erase for her.
Lorenzo Ferraro steps into my club polished from his collar to his cuffs, wearing a smile that tells me I'm not going to like the next hour of my day. But to get to this floor the man dropped five million, so I owe him as many minutes of my time.
My gaze glides to Polaris. Her pen stops moving. The delicate curve of her shoulders draws inward a fraction of an inch, the reflexive contraction of a woman whose body learned to make itself smaller in the presence of dangerous men.
She has good instincts. But she doesn't flinch or look away from the man entering. But I see the knuckles whiten around her pen and a primal need to eliminate the threat and protect her stirs in the pit of my stomach.
Santi sees it too. His coffee mug hits the bar with a deliberate clink and he straightens from his lean, both hands free.
His dark eyes lock on Polaris. Not on Lorenzo.
Not on the threat. On her. Checking her breathing, her posture, the tension in her fingers.
The client who just walked in doesn't register on Santi's radar.
Polaris is the only frequency he monitors.
I straighten from the desk and button my jacket out of habit, the familiar weight of my twin Smith and Wessons shifting against my ribs in their shoulder holsters.
The silver inlay catches a sliver of light as the coat settles and I note the way Lorenzo's eyes track the movement.
Good. He should know what's under the fabric.
"Mr. Constantine." He extends his hand across the reception counter and his grip is firm, practiced, and he holds a beat too long.
The hand of a man performing confidence, not possessing it.
His palm is dry and smooth. No calluses.
No scars. This man has never built anything with his bare hands.
He's inherited everything he touches and it shows in the softness of his skin.
I release his hand and glance at Polaris. "Hold my calls please."
Her blue eyes meet mine and the steadiness in them anchors me to the floor where I stand.
Desire and a protective fury tangle together and it’s hard as hell to pull myself away and tend to business.
I do a damn good job of suppressing my emotions where Polaris is concerned, but that doesn't mean they are not there, pressing against my ribs every time she looks at me like I'm the safest man in her world.
"Of course, Mr. Constantine." Her voice is quiet, measured, carrying the professional distance we maintain in front of clients. But her fingers uncurl from the pen and settle flat on the desk, and I know her well enough now to read the translation: I'm fine. Go.
I'm not fine with leaving her on this floor while Lorenzo Ferraro breathes the same air.
But Polaris has asked me, once and with a firmness that startled us both, to stop treating her like she's made of glass.
She's not. She survived things that would have killed weaker people.
So I nod and gesture Lorenzo toward the corridor.
Besides, Santi is close to her.
My gaze returns to Lorenzo. "You requested a sit-down. I'm listening."
Santi catches my eye as I pass the bar. The look lasts less than a second. Jaw tight. Dark eyes holding mine. He doesn't need to speak. I've known this man for decades and that expression has only ever meant one thing.
Trouble ahead.
Cassius folds the newspaper he hasn't been reading and rises from the armchair, unhurried, his jaw set and his shoulders squared. He falls into step behind Lorenzo, placing himself between the client and the corridor that leads back to Polaris.
I lead Lorenzo down the corridor, past three closed meeting rooms, and into Room Four at the end of the hall. Small by design. Dark wood walls, a table with four chairs, one overhead light. No windows. One door. The ventilation swallows sound. Nothing said in this room reaches the hallway.
I take the chair at the head of the table. Lorenzo sits across from me and places a slim leather briefcase with gold hardware on the surface.
He snaps the lock and pulls out a document, placing it on the table between us. He slides it forward with two fingers.
My mouth turns down as I consider the papers pushed in my direction. "What is this?" My gaze hits his face as I wait for his answer.
He shifts in his seat and pegs me with an arrogant arch to his brow like he believes I should bow in front of him because of his last name.