Chapter 2 - The Morning Interrogation, the Hidden Syndicate Threat, and the Underworld Boss’s Unexpected ProtectionWhen Khloe finally opened her eyes at 7:30 a.m., the amber lamp had long since burned out, replaced by the brilliant, watery sunlight of a post-storm Denver morning.
Her neck ached. Her brain felt wrapped in cotton wool. And as she blinked away the sleep, her gaze traveled up a pair of long, charcoal-trousered legs, past a broad chest encased in a crisp white shirt, to rest squarely on the face of Vincent Costa.
He was sitting in the leather armchair by the window, cold black coffee in hand, staring at her with an unreadable, dead-eyed expression that made her blood turn instantly to ice water.
Khloe scrambled backward so fast she nearly tangled herself in the cashmere blanket.
“Mr. Costa!” she gasped, her voice cracking with pure terror as she scrambled off the bed, her damp canvas shoes completely forgotten as she stood barefoot on the hardwood floor. “I—I am so sorry! I didn't mean to fall asleep! Paulie said to drop the files in the study, and I got confused, and I was just resting my eyes for a second, I swear to God I didn't touch anything—!”
“Breathe, Miss Evans,” Vincent said, his voice a deep, gravelly baritone that cut through her panic like a knife.
Khloe snapped her mouth shut, her chest heaving as she gripped the hem of her cheap gray skirt. She expected him to pull out a gun. She expected him to call Paulie and have her thrown off the property, or worse, make her disappear entirely into one of those anonymous shipping containers.
Instead, Vincent slowly set his coffee cup down on the windowsill, stood up, and walked toward her.
Every instinct screamed at Khloe to run. She stayed frozen, her knees shaking.
Stop two feet away, Vincent looked down at her. He noticed the dark circles beneath her eyes, the frayed cuffs of her white blouse, and the way she was trembling so violently she looked ready to collapse.
“You worked a fourteen-hour shift yesterday, drove through a freezing downpour at midnight, and delivered zoning permits that kept my city council meeting from collapsing this morning,” Vincent stated, his tone flat, neutral, and terrifyingly calm. “And in exchange, my organization paid you thirty-eight thousand dollars a year without dental insurance.”
Khloe blinked, completely disoriented by where the conversation was heading. “Uh... yes, sir?”
“That is an operational failure on my part,” Vincent said smoothly. “Not yours.”
He walked past her toward the mahogany desk, picking up the manila folder containing the signed permits. He opened it, scanned his signature, and then tossed it into his leather briefcase.
“Go downstairs, Khloe,” Vincent instructed, turning back to look at her. “My housekeeper, Mrs. Gable, will feed you breakfast. Then my driver will take you to our corporate medical clinic to address whatever exhaustion caused you to pass out on my mattress.”
Khloe stood rooted to the spot. “I’m... I’m not fired?”
“If I fired every employee who made a mistake under my roof, I wouldn't have a company left,” Vincent replied dryly. “Now go eat. You have a full calendar of meetings waiting for you at the office by ten o’clock.”
Khloe didn't need to be told twice. She grabbed her wet coat, snatched her soggy canvas flats, and practically bolted out of the master bedroom, down the grand staircase, and out of the manor before the mafia boss could change his mind.
Little did Khloe know, her accidental intrusion into the master suite had inadvertently saved her life.
Down in the subterranean security monitoring room of the estate, Marcus—Vincent’s head of security—stared at a playback screen, his face grim as he rewound the security footage from the front gate at 3:15 a.m.
Just three minutes after Vincent’s Range Rover had passed through the wrought-iron gates, a second, unmarked dark sedan had pulled up to the perimeter wall. Two men wearing tactical black balaclavas and carrying suppressed firearms had scaled the fence, staking out the master bedroom’s exterior balcony—the exact room where Khloe had been sleeping soundly on the charcoal duvet.
When Vincent entered the house and moved straight upstairs, his unpredictable midnight arrival had disrupted the assassination team’s timing. Frustrated by the sudden shift in security patrols, the hit squad had retreated into the woods before they could execute their breach.
Marcus pressed the intercom button on his console, connecting directly to the master suite.
“Boss,” Marcus reported, his voice tight with urgency. “You need to see this. The security logs from last night. It wasn't a random break-in. Someone sent a team for you.”
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Vincent stood by the bedroom window, watching Khloe’s little ten-year-old sedan roll down the winding driveway toward the gates. His dark eyes narrowed into razor-sharp slits as the implications clicked into place.
“They weren't aiming for me, Marcus,” Vincent murmured, his voice dropping into a register of absolute, freezing death. “They were aiming for the bed.”
