Chapter 4
NICO
My hand settles on the exact center of her spine. The heat of her body bleeds straight through her winter coat and seeps into my palm. It burns. I’m freezing and she’s burning.
We walk out of the building into the Chicago wind.
The street is a tactical grid. Every shadow is a firing lane.
Each parked car is a potential explosive package.
I scan with the ruthless efficiency ingrained in my bones.
My eyes track the sightlines. My brain calculates the distance to cover. But my focus keeps fracturing.
She’s the center of the grid.
Everything else is just a threat to her.
Priya marches toward her compact sedan with stiff, furious strides. She’s trying to project control. She’s failing. The rigid set of her shoulders gives her away. She’s terrified, not of the street, but of the sudden, catastrophic shift in her reality. Me. I’m the shift. I’m the cataclysm.
I already have her key fob from the stairwell.
She spins. Her eyes flash. Her mouth opens, already loaded.
I hit the unlock button on her key fob before she can argue. The headlights flash. I open the passenger door and step back, blocking the wind with my body.
She stares at the empty seat. She stares at me.
She’s coiled with the need to push back, to establish dominance in a situation where she has none.
I’m not a man who negotiates. My family points me at a problem and I eliminate it.
Now, my entire violent existence is pointed solely at keeping her breathing.
She climbs into the passenger seat.
I shut the door. The thud of the metal seals her inside.
Safe. Contained. Mine.
I circle the hood and slide into the driver's seat. The interior is small. Too small for a man my size. My knees bracket the steering column. My broad shoulders press against the door pillar. The enclosed space instantly suffocates me with her essence.
Jasmine and warm cardamom.
The scent hits my lungs like a physical strike.
It is rich. It is sweet. It is the exact opposite of the iron and gunpowder that coats the inside of my mouth.
It rewires my brain. The map in my head dissolves.
The street outside the windshield ceases to exist. There’s only the hum of the engine and the scent of jasmine and the woman sitting inches from my right arm.
I grip the steering wheel. The leather groans under my knuckles. The gold watch at my wrist catches the dim glow of the dashboard lights. It belonged to my father. He wore it the night he was murdered. I inherited the watch and the decades of cold that followed.
Priya crosses her arms. She stares straight ahead. The heater kicks on, blasting warm air across our bodies, intensifying the spice of her perfume.
I shift the car into drive. We roll into the street. The silence is enough to choke on.
She refuses to look at me. She’s punishing me with the quiet. She doesn’t understand that silence is my native language. I was fifteen years old when my father Carlo was lured to a South Side warehouse and executed. His body was dumped in an alley afterward.
I sat on the edge of my bed and listened to the dead, empty quiet of the compound while the adults fractured.
I stared at the wall and realized that nobody was coming to fix it.
The silence taught me everything. It taught me how to become the monster in the dark.
It taught me how to turn myself into a ghost.
I look at the woman beside me. She’s vibrant. She’s a riot of color and heat and stubborn, fierce life. She’s everything I am not allowed to touch.
I’m going to touch her.
I drive the route she usually takes to her clinic.
I memorize the timing of the traffic lights.
I map the blind spots along the road. We arrive at her brick clinic, wedged against the boarded-up Bellanti auto-shop armory.
The exterior is unassuming. The security cameras are decent but easily disabled.
My men are already rolling with the replacements. They will be upgraded by noon.
I park the car near the side entrance. Priya unbuckles her seatbelt before the engine fully cuts off. She shoves her door open and marches toward the keypad on the brick wall.
I’m two steps behind her. My boots make no sound on the pavement.
She punches in the code. The lock disengages with a click. She pushes the door open and steps into the dark hallway. She reaches for the light switch.
I catch her wrist.
She freezes. Her skin is impossibly soft under my calloused thumb.
I step past her into the dark. I drop her wrist and draw my sidearm from my shoulder holster.
The metal is cold and familiar. I clear the hallway in three seconds.
I clear the waiting room. I check the locks on the front glass doors.
I move down the central corridor, sweeping the private treatment rooms. Empty therapy tables.
Racks of resistance bands. Stacks of clean towels.
I push open the door to her private office in the back. Clear.
I holster the sidearm. I walk back to the front hallway.
Priya is standing exactly where I left her. Her hand is still hovering near the light switch. Her breath comes in rapid, uneven jerks. She’s watching me with a mixture of raw fear and fascination.
I nod once.
She flips the switch. The fluorescent lights hum to life, bathing the clinic in harsh, sterile white. The smell of antiseptic and eucalyptus oil replaces the cold city air.
Priya drops her coat on a hook near the door. She straightens her spine. She attempts to rebuild the professional fortress she uses to survive. I have read the file.
She walks into the main therapy room. She grabs a clipboard from the reception desk. She doesn't look at me. She speaks to the wall.
"You can leave now. I'm perfectly safe inside my own clinic. The doors are locked until my first patient arrives. The alarm is set. Go back to whatever shady surveillance hole you crawled out of."
I walk into the main room. I bypass the reception desk. I find a wooden chair in the darkest corner of the room. It offers a clear sightline of the front door, the hallway, and her private office. I drag the chair backward. The legs scrape violently against the linoleum.
Priya flinches at the sound.
I sit down. I spread my knees. I rest my forearms on my thighs. I stare at her.
I’m not leaving.
She turns to face me. The clipboard shakes slightly in her grip. Her eyes are wide with outrage.
"You can't stay here. My first patient arrives in thirty minutes. You look like a cartel enforcer. You're going to scare away my business."
I don’t blink. I don’t shift. I’m a statue carved from graveyard stone.
"Cancel them."
Her jaw drops. A fierce, beautiful flush of angry red crawls up her neck. "Cancel them? Are you insane? I run a medical facility. People rely on me to heal. I don't cancel my appointments because a psychotic mobster decided to play bodyguard."
I lean back in the chair. The wood groans under my weight.
"Cancel the morning appointments. You’re not treating anyone until my men finish the sweep and upgrade the exterior cameras.”
Priya slams the clipboard onto the desk. The plastic cracks. She marches across the room. She stops two feet away from my chair. She is furious. She is magnificent. The air around her crackles with defiance.
She points a finger at my chest.
"You don't give orders in my clinic. You don't run my life. You're bleeding through your damn shirt. You're hiding a gunshot wound that you refuse to let heal properly. You’re a walking disaster, and you don’t have the right to occupy my space."
My eyes drop to my left shoulder. The fabric of my shirt is stiff with dried blood. The wound opened when I forced my way into the vacant unit below hers last night. The pain is a dull, constant roar in the background. I ignore it. I have ignored worse.
"Take off your shirt."
The command snaps through the air. Sharp. Clinical. Absolute.
I look up. Priya is pointing toward the nearest therapy table. Her eyes are blazing with professional authority. The fear is gone. The therapist has taken control. She knows how to fix broken things. She doesn’t know that I’m broken beyond repair.
I don’t move.
She crosses her arms. She taps her foot against the linoleum.
"Get on the table, Nico. Now. You're not bleeding all over my clean floors. If you're going to hold me hostage in my own building, you're going to let me fix that shoulder. Move."
The sound of my name on her lips sends a brutal shockwave straight down my spine. She has thrown it at me before, on the sidewalk, in the stairwell. But never like this. Never like a claim.
I stand up. I tower over her. The top of her head barely reaches my chin. I look down into her furious, beautiful face. I want to devour her. I want to consume her anger and make it mine.
I walk to the therapy table. I sit on the edge. The vinyl crunches under my weight.
Priya follows me. She drags a rolling stool across the floor. She stops right in front of me. She’s between my thighs. The proximity is a tactical error. She is too close. She is within striking distance.
"Take off the shirt."
I grip the collar of the tactical shirt and pull. The fabric tears at the seam, peeling away from the wound on my left shoulder. The dried blood flakes onto the floor. I strip the garment down my arms and toss it onto the floor.
The cold air of the clinic hits my bare skin.
Priya freezes.
Her eyes drop to my chest. Her breath stalls. She traces the ink wrapping my right arm. Her gaze drags across my torso. Scars map my ribs. Knife wounds. Shrapnel. The brutal history of my life written on my skin.
Her eyes trace the ink crawling up the left side of my throat. The sharp lines wrapping around my pulse.
She swallows. The professional mask slips. The woman underneath bleeds through.
I watch her pupils dilate. They swallow the brown of her irises.
She wants me.
The realization is a physical blow to the base of my skull. The mask breaks.
She wants me. Mine.