She's a fighter. She's been fighting alone for five years, carrying a burden that would have broken most people, and she's still standing. She’s a woman who doesn't surrender easily. A woman like that might not surrender at all.
The thought should worry me. Instead, it sends a pulse of heat through my veins that has nothing to do with the climate control in the car.
I think about the contract I have tucked inside my breast pocket. It’s a draft at best. Something we had on hand that Massimo wrote up as a base to work off of back when we started the Red Letter Syndicate. Last night I used my restlessness to make some changes. I added provisions for her family's protection and made damn sure they are ironclad and comprehensive. The arrangements for her mother's care, the best facilities money can buy. The stipulation that she will live under my roof and answer to my authority until such time as we've fulfilled the obligations we've agreed to.
The heir clause.
My mother's watch presses against my wrist, grounding me in the present even as her voice echoes through my memory.Build something that lasts.
Eighteen years of failing to keep that promise. Eighteen years of empty beds and emptier conversations, of women who saw only the power and the money and never thought to look beneath. Eighteen years of watching my brothers find what I've been searching for, one by one falling into love and partnership andthe kind of bone-deep belonging that makes a man soft and fierce all at once.
This isn't love. I'm not foolish enough to call it that.
This is business. A transaction. Mutual benefit disguised as salvation.
She needs protection from a monster who wants to sell her body.
I need an heir to carry forward everything I've built.
Simple. Clean. The kind of arrangement men like me have been making for centuries, trading power for protection, security for servitude.
I tell myself this as I navigate the narrow streets that lead to her neighborhood, watching the buildings grow smaller and shabbier with each passing block. I tell myself this as I note the graffiti on the walls, bright splashes of color that speak of desperation and defiance in equal measure. The bars on the windows. The particular quiet of a place where people have learned not to ask too many questions about the sounds they hear through thin walls at night.
This is business.
The lie tastes like ash on my tongue.
Her building appears on the corner ahead, a five-story walkup with fire escapes that look like they haven't been inspected since before I started shaving and windows that glow with the particular warmth of lives being lived in small spaces. The brick is worn but maintained, scrubbed clean in places where someone took pride in what little they had. A pot of dying flowers sits on one of the lower windowsills, a splash of color fighting against the gray October chill.
She's been surviving here for years. Scraping by on tips and minimum wage, stretching every dollar until it screamed, paying a debt that was never hers to carry while the world turned its back on her.
Not anymore.
I find a parking spot half a block away and kill the engine, sitting in the sudden silence while the cooling metal ticks beneath the hood. The streetlight above me flickers with the particular rhythm of a bulb that's about to die, casting shadows that dance across the dashboard like restless spirits searching for peace.
I pull out her wish and unfold it one more time. The paper is soft from handling, the creases worn smooth from all the times I've traced her words with my fingertips.
Save my family from the debt that's destroying us. Please. I'll pay any price. - Katriana Bellrose
Any price.
The words blur slightly, and I blink hard against the sudden burning behind my eyes. When did I become this man? This desperate, hungry creature who pins his hopes on a woman who doesn't even know his name means anything beyond the brother who broke her heart?
I fold the wish carefully and slip it back into my breast pocket, pressing my palm flat against my chest to feel it settle into place. Then I step out of the car and button my jacket against the chill of the October night.
The air smells like rain waiting to fall, thick with moisture that clings to my skin and settles into the wool of my coat. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barks twice and falls silent. Atelevision murmurs through an open window three stories up, the canned laughter of a sitcom drifting down to the street like confetti from a party I wasn't invited to.
I cross the street with measured steps, my leather shoes clicking against the cracked pavement, and push through the front door of her building.
The hallway swallows me in a cocoon of flickering fluorescent light and industrial cleaner. The linoleum beneath my feet is worn thin in places, showing the darker subfloor beneath like bruises on pale skin. Someone has taped a handwritten sign to the wall near the mailboxes, reminding residents about quiet hours, the letters faded and curling at the edges.
The stairs creak beneath my weight as I climb, each step carrying me closer to the moment I've been imagining since I watched her walk through that velvet curtain at Scarlet Thorn. The railing wobbles slightly when I grip it, the bolts loose in their housings, and I make a mental note to have someone fix that once she's no longer living here.
Once she's mine.
Her door appears at the end of the third-floor hallway, the number hanging crooked on its single remaining nail. The paint is chipped around the frame, and I can see where the lock has been replaced at least twice, the newer hardware gleaming against the older wood. A thin strip of light glows beneath the door, warm against the dirty linoleum.
She's awake.
