Chapter 2 Chapter Two: The Hook

Morning hits like discipline: black coffee, cold shower, linen pressed with military precision. The world reads obedience in the way I dress. It should. Everything I own is a weapon, including patience.

The city outside the penthouse is gray glass and rainlight. Below, my people move—drivers, bodyguards, the men who clean messes no one should see. They think today is ordinary. It is. Until it isn’t.

A message buzzes.

Delivery confirmed. Gardenias. 2318.

Good. She’ll wake to the scent first, before her eyes open. I picture the confusion. Then the realization. Fear will come dressed as curiosity. I want to be the first thought in her mind, the shadow in her chest she can’t name yet.

The desk phone lights. Marco’s voice is careful. “Problem with the shipment, sir.”

The word sir again. I let it pass this time. “What kind of problem?”

“Shorted. Someone skimmed off the top.”

I check my watch. “Handle it. Quietly.”

He hesitates. “You don’t want to know who?”

“If I wanted to know, they’d already be here.” I hang up. That’s the thing about power—it works best when other people imagine the consequences for you.

I walk through the morning brief: Nico in the office doorway, four men on a video call from three countries. A deal with old enemies, a property dispute handled with code and threat. My time is split by necessity, not desire. This business—the one that matters—is always in the spaces between. I sign a contract that will move millions before breakfast, agree to a security upgrade in a voice cold as glass. Nothing touches me. Nothing except the memory of her scent, the sight of her last night—alive, trembling, bright under gold light.

I open the folder still lying on my desk from last night. Conference registry. A hundred names. I don’t need to read them; hers burned through the list like acid. Lena Hart. Marketing strategist. Age, address, degree, photo for her ID badge. A smile meant for HR files. It looks different now that I own the context.

My phone vibrates again. A message thread—security footage from the hotel’s cameras, clipped and blurred by the man I pay for discretion. One still frame: her crossing the lobby, hair caught in light, coat half-slipped from her shoulder.

Her hair is a deep, glossy brown, the color of wet coffee grounds, long enough to twist when she’s nervous—she did it at the bar. Her skin is pale olive, luminous against the black of her jacket, lips flushed dark and bitten as she smiled at her friend. Her eyes are striking: wide, dark, the color of new leaves in low light, fringed with lashes that catch shadow and glint.

I tap to enlarge until the pixels soften and I can almost smell the champagne on her breath. My hand itches to wrap around her throat—just enough to feel the throb of her pulse, the heat of her fear, the tremble of her wanting. I want to test how soft her skin is, to mark the place where her breath would catch beneath my thumb. The urge is physical, electric, a hunger I hold in check only because anticipation sharpens the edge.

I tell myself it isn’t obsession. It’s due diligence. But I know the difference. Obsession is hunger sharpened by denial. Control is simply what I am.

I step out onto the balcony while the city sharpens. I call an old contact—one who owes me too much to ever say no. He gives me the police summary for a man in our orbit, and in return, I promise nothing but silence. Deals are made in the hush between breaths.

I make three phone calls, one to move money, another to remind a rival of the difference between ambition and suicide, and a third to ensure a friend’s son gets a place at university. The world bends, a little. It always does.

There’s a knock. Nico enters, all leather and nerves. He carries a folder of his own, this one thin and red-tabbed. “The numbers from last quarter,” he says, but the edge in his voice says more.

“Speak.”

“It wasn’t a mistake, the skimming. It was Franco.”

“Franco’s family?”

“Still in Naples.”

“Then make it look like he went home.”

Nico nods, relief and fear tangled. “And the woman?”

“What woman?”

“The one from last night. The hotel.”

Interesting that he brings her up. “What about her?”

He hesitates. “You don’t usually notice civilians.”

I take the folder from him, flip it shut, and rest my hand on it. "She’s not a civilian."

He blinks. “She—she’s a marketer.”

“She was a marketer,” I correct. “Now she’s a variable.”

He doesn’t understand, but he knows better than to argue. “Understood.”

“Good. Dismissed.”

When the door closes, the air steadies again. The silence after giving orders always feels like a held breath. I stand, cross to the window, and watch the reflection of the city crawl over the glass.

Most people think obsession starts with want. They’re wrong. It starts with recognition—the instant you see something that fits the space you didn’t know was empty.

She looked at me like she was trying to remember where she’d seen me before. That’s the spark. Familiarity without safety. The body remembers what the mind denies.

I take another sip of coffee gone cold. In the reflection, my mouth moves before I think the words.

“We’ll meet again, Lena.”

Not a hope. A schedule.

✧ ✧ ✧

Lunch is taken in silence—a rare thing, even here. I sit at the head of a long table, four lieutenants down either side, discussing plans for expansion, territory, numbers. They try not to watch me as I answer two messages, each with a single word. The men around me measure their speech carefully, gauging my mood. The ones who know me best know better than to speak Lena’s name, even as they see the way my gaze slides to my phone, restless and waiting. There’s an art to making people nervous without ever lifting your voice. Power is often what’s not said.

A private call from an attorney brings news of a possible alliance. The price: two buildings I don’t need and a favor in three years. I agree, but only because the sound of Lena’s laugh from last night repeats in my skull, sweet as poison. Everything is business—until her. She makes me impatient, distracted. It’s a luxury I do not allow, but for her, I make an exception.

By noon the city dries out, though the air still tastes like metal. I let the driver take the long route through downtown—past the mirrored towers, the vendors setting out counterfeit perfumes, the women who hurry because they know how long a stare can last.

“Pull over ahead,” I tell him when we reach the hotel. The same one. The conference banners are still up, blue and white slogans about connection and growth. I watch people filter through the revolving doors, faces lit by phones, badges swinging.

“Wait here,” I say.

He nods and kills the engine. I go inside with no hurry in my step. Security waves me through because I look like someone who belongs everywhere. Power doesn’t announce itself; it assumes entry.

The lounge smells of citrus polish and faint smoke. The chair she sat in last night is already taken by someone else. I cross to the front desk instead.

“Good afternoon, sir.” The clerk straightens. “Checking in?”

“Just a brief meeting,” I say, sliding a card across the marble. The name on it is one of my companies, a sponsor from the conference. “I’ll need access to the business suite.”

“Of course.” She glances at the card, smiles the automatic smile. “May I ask who you’re meeting?”

“No one you’ll have to remember,” I say, and she doesn’t.

The elevator hums upward. The mirrored walls throw my face back at me—clean, composed, unreadable. It’s a face that convinces people their secrets are safe, right until they’re not.

I step out on the same floor where she slept. The hall smells faintly of her flowers. White petals against gray carpet, a small arrangement waiting beside a housekeeping cart. One of the maids hums as she empties a bin. I pause.

“Those were delivered this morning?” I ask.

She nods. “Yes, sir. Room 2318.”

“Beautiful work. Who signed for them?”

“No one, sir. Left at the door.”

I slip a bill onto her cart. “If she asks who sent them, tell her you don’t know.”

Her smile falters. “I don’t.”

“Good.” I keep walking.

Past 2316. 2318. The door is shut. Nothing marks it except the silence—the kind of quiet you can feel if you know what to listen for. I stop beside it. Lean close enough to hear the faint hiss of the air vent. No movement inside. She’s gone for the day. I don’t touch the door. I don’t need to. The act of not touching is its own statement. But my hand aches with the shape of her throat.

The phone buzzes in my pocket. A message from Marco: Franco handled. Quiet. No debris.

Another from Nico: Flight to Naples booked for next week. Cover holds.

Order restored. The small cruelties that keep the machine running. And through it all, her name sits in my head like a password.

I take out my phone and open the image again—the still frame of her caught in the lobby light. My thumb hovers over it. The hotel glass behind her is filled with reflections; in one of them, blurred but visible, I’m standing just outside frame. She never saw.

The doors to the conference hall open below. Applause swells, then fades. I check my watch. Almost time for the next panel. Marketing strategy. Room 4B.

I head down.

The hall outside 4B smells like burnt coffee and printed paper. Attendees cluster with their cups and forced smiles. I stand at the edge, another expensive ghost among them.

Then she appears—hair swept back, badge swinging against her blouse, phone in hand. She’s laughing at something one of her colleagues says. Her face is brighter in daylight, less guarded. The bruise of last night’s awareness is gone, but I can see the echo beneath her skin.

The sight of her—white blouse tucked into a dark skirt, hair spilling over one shoulder, mouth glossed berry-dark—makes the rest of the world dull around the edges. There’s a heat to her, a reckless joy beneath the composure, the way she throws her head back when she laughs and touches her throat without thinking. I catalog every detail. I plan how I’ll take her apart.

She doesn’t notice me. Not yet.

I could leave. I should. The business waiting downstairs is older, heavier, more necessary than this.

Instead, I watch her for a single beat too long. Long enough for her to pause mid-sentence, glance up as if someone touched her shoulder. Her eyes pass over me, flicker, dismiss. She turns away.

That tiny dismissal is the hook sinking deeper. A denial I want to punish and savor in equal measure.

When I leave the hotel, the sky has cleared completely. I walk back to the car, loosen my cuffs, and feel the shape of what comes next settle in my chest like a secret.

The driver looks at me through the mirror. “Back to the office?”

“Not yet,” I say. “There’s someone I want you to keep an eye on. Quietly.”

He doesn’t ask who. He knows I don’t give orders twice.

I lean back as the city slides by outside. She’ll go home tonight, thinking the world has gone back to normal. It hasn’t. It’s already bending.

I close my eyes, and the sound of her voice from the bar—one word, my name unspoken—threads through the dark.

Roman.

The hook is in. I just have to reel slowly.