“Kiss Me—They’re Watching Us,” She Whispered to the Mafia Boss—He Never Expected What Happened Next
“Kiss Me—They’re Watching Us,” She Whispered to the Mafia Boss—He Never Expected What Happened Next
“Kiss Me—They’re Watching Us,” She Whispered to the Mafia Boss—He Never Expected What Happened Next
The breath against Victor’s jaw was warm, carrying the faint smell of cheap champagne and sheer panic.
“Kiss me. They’re watching us,” she whispered.
Victor froze.
The cold steel of the snub-nosed revolver pressed against his ribs beneath his tailored jacket was a familiar comfort. The woman trembling against his chest was not.
He did not know her name. He did not know how she had bypassed his security.
But when a faint red laser sight danced across the velvet drapery just inches behind her skull, Victor knew one thing.
She had just made him a human shield.
The Gold Room at the Beaumont Hotel smelled of expensive gin, melted wax, and unspoken threats. It was the kind of charity gala where the city’s elite gathered to outbid one another at silent auctions while pretending their money did not have blood on it.
Victor hated these events.
He hated the stiff collar of his tuxedo. He hated the hollow smiles of politicians who owed him favors. Most of all, he hated the exposure.
Standing near the edge of the room, nursing a glass of sparkling water with a lime wedge, Victor surveyed the crowd. He was not a man who enjoyed the spotlight. At 38, he had inherited a crumbling empire and spent the last 5 years fortifying it with ruthless, quiet efficiency.
He did not make headlines.
He made problems disappear.
Javier, his head of security, stood 10 ft away beside the ice sculpture, looking like a granite statue stuffed into a suit. He caught Victor’s eye and gave a nearly imperceptible shake of his head.
Clear.
Then the anomaly appeared.
She did not glide through the room like the socialites. She moved with a jagged, frantic energy, bumping into a waiter and leaving a splash of champagne across the sleeve of a city alderman.
She wore a dark green slip dress that looked as though it had come straight off the rack. Her dark curls had been twisted into a messy knot that looked like something she had done during the cab ride over.
Victor tracked her instinctively.
She was scanning the room, eyes wide, constantly darting toward the exits.
She was being hunted.
Victor watched her focus on a pair of heavyset men in overcoats near the coat check. Eastern European muscle. Not his men. Not local.
The woman’s chest heaved.
She searched desperately through the politicians, businessmen, and oblivious wealthy guests.
Then she saw Victor.
He did not look away.
He offered her nothing. No smile. No warmth. Only the flat, dead-eyed stare that normally sent civilians walking in the opposite direction.
Instead, she came straight toward him.
She closed the distance before Javier could intervene and slammed into Victor’s chest, gripping the lapels of his jacket with bruising force.
She was small, but her grip was like iron.
She smelled of rain, hotel soap, and terror.
Her lips hovered near his ear.
“Kiss me. They’re watching us.”
Victor’s body tensed, muscle memory preparing for a blade between his ribs.
There was no weapon.
Only the trembling of a woman pushed to the edge.
Over her shoulder, Victor saw the 2 heavyset men moving through the crowd, their hands reaching inside their coats.
Beyond them, on the mezzanine, a shadow shifted.
A red dot flickered against the heavy crimson curtains behind them.
Sniper.
Victor did not think.
He reacted.
His glass hit the marble floor and shattered, the sound swallowed by a sudden swell from the string quartet. His hand closed around the back of the woman’s neck, fingers tangling in her messy hair.
He pulled her tightly against him and twisted their bodies until his broad back faced the mezzanine, completely shielding her.
Then he brought his mouth down on hers.
It was not passion.
It was tactical.
He pressed his lips hard against hers, forcing her head slightly backward, making the kiss convincing to anyone watching.
Her lips were cold and chapped.
She gasped against his mouth and stiffened for a second, instinctively resisting the very contact she had demanded.
Victor tightened his arm around her waist.
Relax.
His eyes remained open, tracking the reflection in a mirrored pillar.
The 2 men in overcoats stopped.
Confusion appeared on their faces.
The sound of the breaking glass had caused the crowd to shift, and now the room was watching Victor, the notoriously cold and reclusive businessman, apparently devouring a random woman in the middle of a high-society charity gala.
Javier was already moving.
He had recognized the change in Victor’s stance and was tapping his earpiece, signaling the perimeter team.
Victor broke the kiss but kept the woman against him. He lowered his face into the curve of her neck.
“Walk,” he growled.
His breath moved against her skin.
“Don’t look at them. Don’t look at anything. Just walk with me.”
“I—”
“Shut up. Smile. You’re my date, and we can’t wait to get to a hotel room. Move.”
His arm locked around her waist, almost lifting her from her feet as he guided her toward the kitchen access doors.
The red dot moved across the floor tiles, searching for a target, but Victor kept his body between her and the mezzanine.
They passed through the swinging metal doors and left the quartet and expensive gin behind.
The kitchen was chaos, filled with shouting chefs and clattering pans.
Victor never slowed.
He pulled her past a bewildered sous-chef and moved with the practiced efficiency of a man who knew every exit in every building he entered.
“Where are we going?” she panted.
“To find out why someone is trying to put a bullet in my head.”
Victor shoved open the heavy steel fire door leading to the loading dock.
It slammed shut behind them.
The alley was freezing. Chicago wind howled between the brick buildings, driving sleeting rain into their faces. The air smelled of wet garbage and diesel exhaust.
Victor pushed her against the slick brick wall and pinned her there with his forearm across her collarbone.
The force knocked the breath from her.
“Who sent you?”
“Nobody. Nobody sent me. Let me go.”
“You bypass my security. You use me as a shield against a sniper, and you expect me to believe nobody sent you?”
Victor leaned closer.
“Give me a name now, before I leave you here for those men to finish the job.”
“I don’t know who they are!”
Her voice cracked with genuine panic. Tears of frustration mixed with the rain running down her cheeks.
“I don’t know who you are.”
Victor froze.
The certainty in her eyes threw him off balance.
In his world, everyone knew exactly who he was.
“You don’t know who I am?”
“No.”
Her dark hair had come completely undone and was plastered against her neck.
“I was hiding by the coat check. I saw them looking for me. I looked at the crowd, and everyone was mingling and laughing. Then I saw you.”
“And you decided to make me a target.”
“I saw people giving you a wide berth. Nobody was standing near you. You looked like the scariest man in the room. I figured if I was with you, they wouldn’t dare shoot.”
Victor stared at her.
The sheer audacity of it was almost absurd.
She had not targeted him because he was Victor Rossi, head of the city’s quietest and most dangerous syndicate.
She had targeted him because he looked like a monster, and she needed a monster to frighten away the wolves.
A cynical laugh nearly escaped him.
He released the pressure against her collarbone and stepped back half a pace, although his body still blocked her only exit.
“What’s your name?”
“Chloe,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself. “Chloe Bennett.”
Her green dress was soaked through.
Victor reached inside his jacket and removed his phone.
“Well, Chloe Bennett, you just crashed an assassination attempt. The problem is, I’m not sure whether they were aiming at you or whether you interrupted a hit meant for me.”
The kitchen door burst open.
Javier stepped into the rain with a suppressed handgun held close to his chest. He swept the alley in seconds before lowering the weapon slightly.
“2 bodies in the coat check,” Javier reported. “Throats cut. The guys in the overcoats are gone. Sniper nest on the mezzanine was abandoned. Found a bipod and a cigarette butt.”
Victor processed the information immediately.
The men in overcoats had not been the real threat.
They had been beaters, flushing the prey into the open for the sniper.
“Falcone crew?”
Javier shook his head.
“Messier professionals. Not our local problem. They were hunting.”
His attention finally moved to Chloe, who shrank against the brick wall as she stared at his gun.
“Who’s the girl?”
“A complication.”
Victor watched her teeth chatter.
She was a civilian. A messy, terrified civilian who had just dragged him into a war he did not understand.
The smartest decision would be to walk away and let the streets swallow her.
It was not his business.
But Victor’s world was built on leverage, information, and control of the board. Chloe Bennett was the only piece on that board he did not understand.
Victor despised blind spots.
“Bring the car around.”
“Boss, protocol—”
“Bring the car, Javier.”
Javier nodded once and disappeared into the shadows.
Victor removed his tuxedo jacket and draped the heavy wool over Chloe’s shoulders.
The jacket swallowed her.
“Walk.”
“I’m not getting into a car with you. You have a man with a gun. You talk about assassinations. I just want to go home.”
“The people looking for you know where your home is, Chloe. They know what you look like. They know you survived. If you walk out of this alley alone, you’ll be dead before the sun comes up.”
He opened the rear door of the armored black sedan that had pulled to the curb.
“You wanted to use the scariest man in the room to stay alive. Get in the car.”
Chloe stared into the dark interior.
Then she looked toward the pouring rain and empty street.
She pulled Victor’s jacket tighter around herself, breathing in cedar and gunpowder.
With a defeated, shuddering breath, she climbed inside.
Victor followed.
The door slammed shut, sealing them inside the quiet, leather-scented vault.
The drive was agonizingly silent.
Victor sat motionless, staring through the windshield at the wet Chicago streets while mentally reviewing his enemies, recent deals, and current tensions.
Nothing suggested a hit squad at a charity gala.
It had been too public. Too sloppy.
Next to him, Chloe was falling apart.
She had curled against the door with her knees drawn toward her chest beneath Victor’s oversized jacket. Her teeth clicked together as violent shivers moved through her.
Victor watched from the corner of his eye.
She was not trained.
Whatever she had become involved in, she had entered it by accident.
“Turn up the heat.”
Warm air flooded the back of the sedan.
They did not drive to Victor’s estate. That was a fortress, a place for family and business, not somewhere to take an unvetted stranger.
Javier instead drove into the industrial district and stopped behind a row of abandoned storefronts.
They climbed a rusted iron fire escape.
On the 2nd floor, Victor unlocked a reinforced steel door.
Fluorescent lights revealed a stark apartment smelling faintly of bleach, old dust, and stale coffee. Scuffed linoleum covered the floor. There was a basic kitchenette, a worn leather sofa, a heavy oak table, and no windows.
It was a burner.
A place to bleed quietly or disappear until the heat passed.
“Sit.”
Chloe collapsed onto the sofa.
Victor filled a cheap glass with water and carried it to her.
Her hands shook too badly to hold it.
When the glass slipped, Victor caught it.
He knelt in front of her, wrapped his warm fingers around her freezing hands, and guided them toward the glass.
“Drink.”
She obeyed.
“Better?”
Chloe nodded.
Victor placed the glass on the coffee table and crossed to the kitchenette, where a basic medical kit sat beside an electric kettle.
“You’re calm,” Chloe said. “People were just shooting at us, and you act like we missed a train.”
“Panic is a luxury for people who believe someone is coming to save them. I learned a long time ago that nobody is coming.”
Victor turned toward her.
Without his jacket, his shoulder holster and revolver were clearly visible.
Chloe stared at the weapon.
“Let’s stop playing games, Chloe Bennett. I ran your face through the hotel guest registry in the car. You weren’t on it. You weren’t a plus-one. You snuck in, and men with suppressed rifles followed you.”
“I didn’t mean to drag you into it.”
“Intentions don’t matter. Actions do. Right now, your actions have put me in the crosshairs.”
Victor stopped several feet from the sofa.
“I need to know why a hit squad breached a high-security event to kill a woman who shakes when she holds a glass of water.”
Chloe closed her eyes.
A tear slipped down her cheek.
“I’m an auditor.”
Victor raised an eyebrow.
“An auditor.”
“Not the IRS. I work for a private forensic accounting firm. We were hired to audit a logistics company operating out of the South Side shipyards. Routine work. Cargo manifests against tax filings.”
Victor became completely still.
The South Side shipyards were prime territory, heavily contested by the Falcone Syndicate and a rising cartel presence.
“Keep talking.”
“I found a discrepancy. A massive one. Millions of dollars hidden through shell companies and ghost shipments. Cargo logged into the ports but never shipped out on the rail lines.”
“Embezzlement?”
“No. Worse.”
Chloe had accessed a secured server she was not supposed to enter.
The shipments were not commercial goods.
The weights, manifests, and routing numbers matched the profile for heavy arms shipments from Eastern Europe, stored temporarily in cold storage before disappearing into the city.
Victor understood the implications immediately.
Someone had established an independent pipeline bringing heavy weapons into Chicago while bypassing his control and the established syndicate taxes.
Enough firepower could shift the balance of the entire city.
“I compiled a report,” Chloe continued. “I was going to take it to my boss tomorrow morning, but someone flagged my login. When I left the office tonight, a black SUV tried to run me off the road. I ditched my car and ran into the hotel because it was crowded. Because there was security. I thought I’d be safe in a crowd.”
She looked at him.
“I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know who to trust. Then they found me in the ballroom.”
“You still have the report?”
Chloe reached into Victor’s jacket and removed a small silver flash drive.
Victor took it.
She had just placed one of the most valuable pieces of leverage in Chicago into his hand.
Information that could destroy rivals or begin a war.
It also ensured that the people running the operation would hunt Chloe as long as she remained alive.
“You’re a problem, Chloe Bennett.”
“I know.”
She shrank against the sofa.
“Are you going to kill me?”
Victor pocketed the drive.
“No. But starting right now, you belong to me until this is handled. You don’t make a move. You don’t make a sound. And you don’t breathe without my permission. Understood?”
Chloe stared into his dark eyes.
She had traded one group of monsters for another.
Yet beneath Victor’s ruthlessness she saw something else.
Not kindness.
Never kindness.
But a cold, calculating kind of honor.
“Understood.”
The kettle clicked off in the kitchen.
The game had changed.
Victor did not sleep.
He sat at the heavy oak table with the silver flash drive beside his revolver, studying the information on his encrypted laptop.
Chloe had not exaggerated.
The financial structure was a masterpiece of misdirection.
Shell companies fed into holding corporations, which routed money through offshore accounts in Cyprus and the Cayman Islands before it finally resurfaced at the South Side shipyards.
To an ordinary observer, the records described thousands of tons of frozen seafood and industrial machinery.
To Victor, the weights, ports of origin, and delivery schedules revealed something entirely different.
Military-grade hardware.
The Reyes Syndicate was moving into Chicago.
Worse, the Falcone family might be helping them.
A faint rustle from the sofa drew his attention.
Chloe woke slowly.
The adrenaline had disappeared, leaving exhaustion and trauma behind. She was still wearing the damp green dress beneath Victor’s tuxedo jacket. Her makeup had smeared beneath her eyes, making her look bruised.
She drank a glass of water and looked toward him.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
“I found a war.”
Victor showed her the spreadsheets.
He pointed toward Apex Logistics, the primary receiver for the ghost shipments.
Chloe identified it as a blind trust registered in Delaware, managed through a downtown Chicago law firm.
“Which firm?”
“Garrison and Cole.”
Victor leaned back.
Garrison and Cole represented the Falcone family’s legitimate real estate holdings.
Falcone was not simply ignoring the Reyes cartel’s weapons pipeline.
They were actively laundering it.
“You look like a man who just discovered his neighbor is building a bomb in the basement,” Chloe said.
“Something like that.”
Victor noticed her shivering.
He told her there was a gray canvas duffel bag in the bedroom containing clean clothes. They would not fit properly, but they were dry.
Chloe looked surprised.
“Thank you.”
Before entering the bedroom, she stopped.
“The men at the hotel. The ones at the coat check. Javier killed them, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“And the sniper?”
“Gone before my people reached the mezzanine.”
Chloe gripped the doorframe.
Victor knew what she wanted.
“You’re waiting for me to tell you it’s going to be okay. I don’t lie, Chloe. You kicked over a hornet’s nest. The people you exposed don’t leave loose ends. If you’d gone to the police, you’d probably be dead in a holding cell by noon.”
She did not cry.
“I’m an accountant. I find missing pennies. I don’t do this.”
“You do now.”
Victor returned to the computer.
“Get dressed. Javier is bringing food. Then you’re going to walk me through every transaction on this drive.”
Javier arrived at 9 with food, coffee, and worse news.
He had sent someone to Chloe’s apartment building in Logan Square.
It had burned.
The official explanation was a gas leak.
In reality, an incendiary device had gutted the entire 3rd floor.
Had Chloe gone home the previous night, she would have died.
Victor watched her emerge from the bedroom wearing oversized black sweatpants and a gray thermal Henley.
She forced herself to eat until Victor told her what had happened.
“Your apartment is gone.”
Chloe stopped chewing.
“Gone?”
“Fire.”
Javier supplied the rest.
Everything she owned had been reduced to ash.
Chloe lowered the sandwich.
For several seconds, she seemed almost unnaturally calm.
Then she looked at Victor.
“My cat. Did he get out?”
Victor looked toward Javier.
Javier slowly shook his head.
Chloe closed her eyes.
One jagged breath escaped her.
She pressed her hands over her eyes, shoulders shaking with silent grief.
Victor was accustomed to death and collateral damage. He had seen widows, orphans, and burned businesses.
He managed those consequences.
He did not feel them.
But watching Chloe break apart felt different.
He stepped forward.
“Breathe.”
“Everything is gone.”
Victor gently caught her wrists and lowered her hands until she had to look at him.
“They took your home. They took your life, but they didn’t take you. You’re breathing. You’re standing here. That means you’re a problem they haven’t solved yet.”
Tears spilled down her face.
“You want to cry? Cry. But do it fast, because men are hunting you. The only way you survive, the only way you get justice for what they took from you, is if you help me burn them down first.”
It was not comfort.
It was a weapon.
Chloe wiped her face with the sleeve of the oversized shirt and took a shuddering breath.
“Show me the spreadsheet.”
For the next 4 hours, the burner apartment became a war room.
Chloe traced the shipments through routing numbers and maintenance records.
The weapons were not going directly to Falcone warehouses.
They were being transferred to private rail cars, then diverted through an old decommissioned spur line into an abandoned meatpacking plant on 43rd Street.
Victor knew the building.
Massive.
Concrete.
Isolated.
Perfect for an arsenal.
Chloe had also traced the final payment for the largest shipment.
It had cleared 3 days earlier.
The weapons were already there.
Victor could not wait for a formal sit-down with the other families. That would require days and give the cartel time to move the shipment.
He turned toward Javier.
“Call the captains. Strike teams at the primary safe houses. Silent running. No radio chatter. Heavy resistance.”
Javier stood.
“We hit the meatpacking plant at 0200.”
“It’ll be a bloodbath.”
“If Falcone has men guarding that plant alongside the cartel, then Falcone bleeds too. They brought a foreign army into my city. The penalty for treason is death.”
Javier left to make the calls.
Chloe watched Victor.
For the first time, she was seeing clearly what he was.
Not merely a dangerous businessman.
A man capable of ordering a war.
“What about me?”
“You stay here.”
Victor explained the reinforced door, food, water, and secondary exit.
Then he placed his snub-nosed revolver on the table in front of her.
Chloe recoiled.
“I don’t know how to use that.”
“You point it at the door. You pull the trigger until it clicks empty. If anyone other than me or Javier comes through that door, you don’t ask questions. You don’t hesitate. You shoot.”
“I can’t kill someone.”
Victor leaned across the table.
“They burned your home. They tried to put a bullet in your head in a crowded room. They will not ask you for mercy, and they will not show you any. If they find you, they’ll kill you. I need to know you’ll fight back.”
Chloe stared at him.
She had followed rules all her life.
Worked hard.
Kept her head down.
Done everything correctly.
Her reward was ashes.
Slowly, she reached for the revolver.
The steel felt impossibly heavy.
“I’ll shoot.”
Victor held her gaze and knew she meant it.
“Lock the deadbolts behind us.”
Then he and Javier left.
Chloe sat alone with the revolver in her lap and the digital blueprint of a criminal empire glowing on the laptop.
She had asked the scariest man in the room to save her.
Now she had to pray the monster came back.
The abandoned meatpacking plant on 43rd Street smelled of rust, old copper, and wet concrete.
Victor stood in the shadows of the loading bay with a suppressed tactical rifle against his shoulder.
Javier counted down with his fingers.
They moved.
It was not a firefight.
It was an execution.
Victor’s men swept through the ground floor in a coordinated wave. Suppressed gunshots cut through the darkness. Cartel sentries fell before they could reach their radios.
Victor moved with mechanical efficiency.
Center mass.
Step over the body.
Keep moving.
They breached the main cold-storage floor.
Floodlights revealed rows of wooden crates marked with Cyrillic lettering.
Automatic weapons.
Explosives.
Enough military hardware to turn Chicago into a war zone.
In the middle of the room stood several Reyes cartel soldiers and Angelo, a captain in the Falcone family.
Victor stepped from the shadows.
“Angelo.”
Everyone turned.
Angelo went white.
One cartel soldier reached for an assault rifle.
Javier shot him through the throat before he could raise it.
Victor’s teams had already surrounded the room.
Red laser sights settled across every hostile chest.
“Stand down.”
Weapons hit the concrete.
Victor walked directly toward Angelo.
“Victor, listen. It’s business. The Reyes crew offered a tax percentage you wouldn’t match. It’s margins.”
“You brought an army into my city. You put a hit squad in a hotel where civilians were drinking champagne.”
“That wasn’t me. That was the Reyes cleaners. They were tracking a leak. They tracked an IP ping to some accountant. They sent a crew to her apartment. When they realized she was at the gala, they sent the hitters.”
Victor stopped.
An IP ping.
Angelo continued.
“She logged into the servers from a burner location a couple hours ago. They got the trace. The cleaners are already on their way to the address. It’s handled, Victor. We can split the crates.”
Victor drew his revolver and fired into Angelo’s kneecap.
The gunshot thundered through the building.
Angelo collapsed screaming.
“Burn the crates. Kill the rest of them.”
Victor turned and ran.
Chloe had remained logged into the system.
She had left a digital footprint.
He had placed a civilian inside a cage.
Now the wolves knew where the door was.
Back at the burner apartment, Chloe stared at the laptop until the numbers blurred.
She had traced the shell companies all the way to the cartel’s primary accounts in Mexico.
She had the proof.
Then she heard a faint scrape in the hallway.
A boot against linoleum.
Chloe stopped breathing.
Another scrape.
A muffled voice.
Her eyes moved toward Victor’s revolver.
Her hands shook as she picked it up.
Someone began working the deadbolts.
The top lock released.
Then the bottom.
Chloe backed toward the kitchenette, gripping the weapon with both hands.
The door opened.
2 men entered.
The first raised a suppressed handgun.
He saw Chloe.
He saw her gun.
He fired.
The bullet struck the drywall 3 inches from Chloe’s ear.
She screamed and pulled the trigger.
The revolver exploded in the confined apartment.
Recoil snapped through her wrists.
She fired again.
And again.
And again.
Then only empty clicks remained.
Chloe opened her eyes.
The first man lay on the floor, his chest destroyed by the gunfire.
The 2nd was gone.
She remained against the wall, holding the empty revolver while smoke and the smell of gunpowder filled the apartment.
A shadow moved through the doorway.
Chloe tried to fire again.
Click.
A hand pushed the barrel downward.
Victor stood in front of her.
His clothes were streaked with grease and blood that was not his. A deep cut above his left eyebrow bled down his cheek.
He looked at the dead man.
Then the smoking revolver.
Then Chloe.
Victor carefully pried the gun from her rigid fingers.
Her legs gave out.
He caught her.
Chloe buried her face against his shoulder and shook violently.
Victor held her against his chest.
She had crossed the invisible border between his world and hers.
There was no way back across it.
“I’ve got you,” Victor murmured.
His cheek rested against her hair.
“I’ve got you.”
The master bathroom at Victor’s estate was the size of a studio apartment and lined in cold, dark slate.
Chloe stood over the sink, washing her hands.
She had been doing it for 10 minutes.
There was no blood on them. The recoil from the revolver had not even broken the skin.
Still, she kept scrubbing.
The ringing in her ears had faded into a dull hum, but the silence inside Victor’s enormous fortress-like estate felt almost as deafening.
The door opened.
Victor entered.
He had changed out of his bloodstained clothes and now wore dark trousers and a simple black long-sleeved shirt. The cut above his left eyebrow had been stitched and bandaged.
He leaned against the doorway.
“You’re going to take the skin off.”
Chloe stopped.
She gripped the marble counter and bowed her head before finally turning off the water.
“Javier dumped the bodies,” Victor told her. “The meatpacking plant burned to the ground. The Reyes cartel lost $10 million in hardware, and Falcone is bleeding out in a mob doctor’s basement. The ledger is balanced.”
“Is it?”
Chloe lifted her eyes toward his reflection.
“My apartment is ash. My life is gone. I killed a man.”
“You survived.”
Victor crossed the slate floor and stopped behind her.
“He was a cartel cleaner. If you hadn’t shot him, you’d be dead, and he’d be drinking coffee in a diner right now. You chose to live.”
“It doesn’t feel like living.”
“It feels like surviving.”
Victor looked at her in the mirror.
“You’ll get used to it.”
He reached into his pocket and removed a thick manila envelope.
He placed it on the counter.
“There’s a passport in there. A new name. A plane ticket to Geneva departing in 4 hours. There’s also an account number with enough money to buy a quiet house on a lake and never look at another spreadsheet.”
Chloe stared at the envelope.
It was an exit.
A chance to disappear.
To become a ghost and pretend none of this had happened.
She turned away from the mirror and faced him.
“What if I don’t want to go to Geneva?”
Victor’s dark eyes remained fixed on hers.
He searched for the terrified woman who had crashed into him at the Beaumont Hotel.
She was no longer there.
The fire that had destroyed Chloe’s life had left something harder behind.
“My world doesn’t have a retirement plan, Chloe. It’s blood and paranoia and ledgers that never balance. You walked away from it once today. Take the envelope. Never look back.”
“I pulled your financial records while I was tracing the cartel’s money.”
Victor’s jaw tightened.
“You’re bleeding capital through your legitimate fronts. Your law firm is skimming from your real estate holdings. You have a rat in your commercial shipping division.”
“You audited my syndicate while you were waiting for assassins to kick down the door?”
“I needed something to pass the time.”
Chloe stepped closer.
“You need someone who understands the numbers. You need someone who can see the board the way I do.”
“I don’t hire civilians.”
“I’m not a civilian anymore.”
The distance between them disappeared.
Chloe looked up at the brutal, handsome, terrifying face of the man who had burned down an arsenal to protect her.
“You told me I belonged to you until this was handled.”
Her voice remained steady.
“Is it handled, Victor?”
Victor looked down at her.
He saw the intelligence in her eyes and the steel that had replaced panic.
Sending her to Geneva would be the greatest tactical mistake of his life.
She did not merely understand the numbers.
She understood him.
Victor raised his hand and gently wrapped it around the back of her neck. His thumb rested against her pulse.
Fast.
But steady.
“No.”
He stepped closer until his chest brushed hers.
“It’s just getting started.”
Then he kissed her.
This time, there was no sniper watching from a mezzanine.
No tactical reason.
No need for a disguise.
The kiss was not a maneuver.
It was a surrender.
A heavy, bruising collision between 2 people who had survived the fire and discovered that neither wanted to walk away from the ashes.
Chloe met him with equal intensity, her hands gripping his shoulders.
They were no longer hiding.
They had the ledgers.
They had the guns.
May you like
And whatever came next, Chloe Bennett was no longer the terrified accountant who had crossed a ballroom looking for the scariest man in the room.
She had chosen to stay.
Disclaimer: This story is fictional and created for entertainment purposes only. Any names, characters, places, or events are fictitious or used fictitiously. No real person or organization is intended to be portrayed.
