Chapter Four

A high-resolution photo soon landed on Eric's phone.

Nothing staged about it. The antique necklace that carried a sixteen-year-old's promise lay cold on black velvet in a box, and there were tiny scratches at the clasp where it had been torn apart by force.

Eric stared at the picture, his eyes flooding with something close to rage.

He typed furiously, pressing so hard he nearly cracked the screen:

I saw through your fake kidnapping, so now you're returning the necklace to force my hand?

Drop the cheap hard-to-get act. From now on, I never want to see you again!

The message went through. But the chat that always answered within three seconds stayed deathly silent.

For a second, something tightened in his chest. Eric shoved it down. Eight years she'd loved him. This was just another stunt.

To kill any hope she had once and for all, Eric held down the power button and shut his phone off.

He hurled it onto the sofa, grabbed the model beside him around her slim waist, knocked back half a glass of liquor, and laughed hoarsely like a madman. "I'm finally free! Pour the drinks! Keep the party going!"

The next morning,

when harsh sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Manhattan penthouse and into the bedroom, I finally woke up.

My whole body ached, hollowed out, as if the fever had burned me down to the bone. Even lifting a finger was hard.

I looked around. The room was empty.

Then the night came back to me in pieces. The warehouse. The knife. My mouth on his. Me, sobbing on a shower floor, begging a stranger to take what I was offering.

And him, saying no.

My face burned. I didn't know which was worse: what I'd done, or that the most dangerous man in the room had been the only one who hadn't taken advantage of it.

It was the first time I'd ever been kidnapped. If this were a mob movie, what came next? Did I wait for a ransom? Was I his captive now?

I looked at my shredded sweater draped over a chair, gritted my teeth, and pushed myself up. I picked up the oversized dark gray shirt that someone had left folded at the foot of the bed, put it on, and tiptoed barefoot toward the door of the suite.

But before I could touch the cold brass handle, a man's low, icy laugh came from the half-open balcony behind me.

"...Those three pieces of garbage were old-timers loyal to you. They weren't my men."

The morning wind carried Victor's rough voice into the room. "Under my rules, kidnapping a socialite without permission and using drugs on her means they crossed the line for the family's new direction. Letting them live was already a favor to you."

The balcony door opened, and Victor walked in with his phone in hand. The person on the other end was clearly furious. Even from a distance, I could hear an old man roaring.

Victor's expression didn't change. "Father, don't forget, I run the Caro family now. Since I've decided we're going legit, anyone who touches dirty business, I'll pour into the foundations of the East River bridges. You'd better keep your temper in check too."

With that, he hung up.

When he glanced up, he saw me frozen by the door.

After two seconds, the dark, violent look in his eyes turned playful. "What's this? You kissed me, cried all over my shirt, and now you're sneaking out in another one?"

He scared me so badly I flinched and shook my head over and over. "N-no, I'm not running..."

By now I'd figured out exactly who Victor Caro was. The youngest boss in New York's underworld, a living devil who had dragged his family into a new direction over the blood of countless enemies.

Victor raised an eyebrow and walked toward me on his long legs.

His presence closed in, step by step, until my back was pressed against the door.

His eyes swept over my bare legs below the shirt, and they darkened. He caught my waist and lifted me lightly, and my bare feet landed on top of his spotless custom-made shoes.

"There are twenty armed bodyguards outside that door." His cool fingers tipped up my chin. "And you were going to walk out dressed like this? I don't think you were trying to run. I think you were trying to die."

I couldn't keep my balance like that. I had to hold on to his shoulders.

But my head was finally clear, and there were two things I needed to know.

"Can I have my phone back?" I asked. "And... am I allowed to leave? On my own, I mean."

Victor looked at me for a moment, as if that was the last question he'd expected.

"Your phone got stepped on in the warehouse. The screen's in pieces. My men are fixing it. You'll have it back in a day or two." He tucked a damp strand of hair behind my ear. "As for leaving, yes. Nobody here will stop you. But those three had friends, and until I've finished cleaning up after them, I'd rather have my people take you home than let you walk out alone. Your call."

My call.

It was the first thing since the warehouse that anyone had actually let me decide.

I made myself look at him. "About last night. I kissed you because I was drugged and terrified and I thought you were going to kill me. I said things... I don't know how much of that was me."

He didn't look offended. He looked like a man who'd been waiting for me to say it.

"I know," he said. "That's why I said no. And that's why I'm asking now, when you're clear-headed."

"Why?" It came out smaller than I meant it to. "You could have. Nobody would have stopped you."

"You would have," he said. "This morning. And you'd have been right."

I swallowed. Something in my chest, something that had been frozen since the moment I heard Eric laughing over the speakerphone, cracked a little.

"Then here's my condition." My voice shook, but I kept going. "If I stay, nothing happens unless I say so. Sober. And if I say stop, you stop. Every time."

"Agreed."

He said it so easily that I didn't believe him. So when he bent his head, his lips almost brushing mine, I whispered, "Wait."

He stopped at once.

He didn't argue. He didn't push. He just straightened, let go of my waist, and set me down off his shoes, as if I weighed nothing and the decision weighed everything.

Then he waited.

That was the moment I started to trust him.

I glanced at the door behind me, then back at him. "And if I stay? What am I staying as?"

The corner of his mouth curved. "Do you know how to date someone?"

I blinked. "Huh?"

"Dinner. Bad movies. Me picking you up after work." He said it like he was laying out terms. "No ransom. No cage. You stay because you want to, and you leave whenever you want."

I should have been afraid of him. Last night, I had been. But standing barefoot on his floor, I realized that for the first time in eight years, a man was asking me what I wanted instead of telling me what I was worth.

"...Okay," I heard myself say. "I'll stay."

This time, I was the one who reached for him.

I rose on my toes and kissed him, slow and clear-headed, and felt him go still under my hands, as if he were afraid to move and break it.

When I pulled back, his gray eyes were dark and very soft.

"We'll do this the way people do when they're dating," he murmured. "One step at a time."

Three days later, at three in the morning, Eric finally turned his phone back on.

The mansion in Miami Beach looked like a hurricane had blown through it. He slumped back against the leather sofa, closed his eyes, and waited for the notification sounds to start their usual bombardment. They'd all be from Chloe, of course. Probably another long, groveling apology.

Before he'd read a single one, a call came in. His mother.

"Eric! Can you reach Chloe? She hasn't answered me for three whole days, and the gallery's closed. Has something happened to her?!"

The haze of alcohol cleared in an instant. He hung up on her mid-sentence and scrolled through the notifications. Work. Parties. Lucas.

Not one from Chloe.

Then his thumb stopped on an app he hadn't opened in years. When she was nineteen, Chloe had turned on location sharing with him. "So you'll always know where to find me," she'd said. He had never once looked.

Her dot sat frozen on the Brooklyn waterfront. An abandoned warehouse. Last updated 5:12 a.m., three days ago.

The exact minute she'd been crying on the phone, begging him to believe her.

Eric's blood ran cold. As he stared, the dot flickered and jumped across the river. Updated: just now. A penthouse in Manhattan he'd never heard of.

Her phone was on. Someone had turned it on.

He dialed before he could think. The ringing dragged across his nerves, once, twice, five times.

Then it stopped.

Someone had picked up.