MY ONE NIGHT DON

Chapter 8:The phone call

“The phone didn’t just ring that night, it warned me. I just didn’t know it yet.”

He called. Deep voice. No name. Just a time, a place… and a warning.

The phone rang at exactly 3:07 a.m.

At first, I thought it was part of a dream, some lingering echo in my sleep. But then it rang again, sharp and real, vibrating against the wooden side table beside my bed.

I sat up abruptly, heart thudding. Who was calling me at this hour?

The screen read No Caller ID.

My hand hovered over the answer button for a moment, my instincts flaring. Was it Liam? Some drunk apology in the middle of the night? Or maybe Maya, crumbling all over again with one of her tearful monologues?

But something about the way the phone just waited made my chest tighten.

I answered.

I didn’t say anything, I just pressed the phone to my ear and waited.

Silence.

And then…

“Elara Monroe.” A man’s voice. Deep. Measured. Dangerous.

My breath caught in my throat. “Who is this?”

“You know who this is,” he said, almost like a smile was curling around the edge of his voice. “Or you wouldn’t have picked up.”

Valen.

I didn’t know how I knew. I just did. That same unshakeable, unnerving stillness from the bar. That voice I’d heard whisper against my neck as he undressed me in the dark. It had haunted me for nights, and now here it was alive on the other end of the line.

“You left,” I said, throat dry. “You didn’t even give me a chance to ask why.”

“I had to.”

“You could’ve at least…”

“There’s no at least with someone like me,” he cut in. “There’s only now. And right now, you need to listen very carefully.”

I sat up straighter, sleep gone, pulse flickering like a flame in the wind.

“You need to come to the east side of Midtown. Abandoned bakery on Carson Street. Back entrance. Be there at five. And come alone.”

I blinked. “What? Why?”

There was a pause. A crackle of silence.

And then: “Because someone is watching you.”

The line went dead.

I stared at the phone in my hand, the cold chill of that final sentence tightening around my ribs like a vice.

Someone is watching you.

The words echoed like thunder in my skull.

I flung off the sheets and stood up, pacing my room like a caged animal. The air felt heavier, like it had thickened somehow, walls closing in. My apartment, once my safe space, suddenly felt unfamiliar and unsafe.

I checked the windows. Shut all the blinds. Locked the front door. Double-checked.

Then I pressed my back against the cool wall and slid down to the floor.

What have I gotten myself into?

---

The hours passed in a blur. I didn’t sleep. Didn’t eat. I barely breathed.

I stared at the clock on the wall as it ticked from four to four-thirty, each second louder than the last. My mind spiraled through memories of that night: the intensity of Valen’s gaze, the shadows under his cheekbones, the slight tremor in his voice before he’d told me not to fall in love with him.

The card still sat on my dresser.

Valen Moretti. Don of the Iron Family.

I still didn’t know what that truly meant. But if I was being watched… if he was calling me with warnings… then clearly, it meant more than just danger.

It meant I was involved now. Somehow, in something far bigger than I understood.

---

By five minutes to five, I was in my car, engine humming, hands shaking as I pulled out of my driveway.

The city was quiet. Unnervingly so.

The east side of Midtown was industrial and dark, warehouses stacked like metal skeletons under the early morning gloom. I found the bakery he mentioned: Elena’s, the painted letters faded and peeling, the windows boarded up with rusted nails.

I circled the building twice before finally pulling into the back alley. There was a steel door hidden beneath a staircase. It looked unused.

I stepped out, heart in my throat, feet crunching over broken glass. I reached for the doorknob and froze.

It opened before I could touch it.

Valen stood in the shadows, half-lit by a single overhead bulb. Same dark suit. Same piercing eyes.

“You came,” he said softly, like he hadn’t expected me to.

“I almost didn’t.”

“But you did.” His gaze lingered on my face. “And now you need to know why.”

He stepped aside, silently inviting me in. I hesitated only a moment before slipping past him into the darkness.

Inside smelled of dust and forgotten time, flour still clinging faintly to the air, though no one had baked anything here in years. The tiled floors were cracked, the countertops stained with rust. Yet it wasn’t the ruin that unsettled me.

It was Valen.

The way he moved, quiet, calculated. Like someone who never truly relaxed, not even in sleep.

He led me into a small back office. A single chair. A table. A dim desk lamp that barely held the darkness at bay. He sat on the edge of the desk, arms crossed, eyes never leaving mine.

“Start talking,” I said, more boldly than I felt.

“You were followed,” he said. “Since the night we met.”

My stomach dropped. “Followed by who?”

He didn’t blink. “People who think I care too much. About you.”

I stared at him. “You don’t even know me.”

“I knew enough to leave before you woke up. I knew if I stayed, I’d pull you in further. But you… you’re already in, Elara. Whether you realize it or not.”

I laughed once, bitter and sharp. “Do you always talk like you’re in a movie? What does any of this even mean?”

He stood then, fast and sudden, the air shifting around him. “It means you walked into my life the night my enemies were watching. It means that for better or worse, they now think you matter to me.”

A silence cracked between us.

I took a slow step back. “So what now? You brought me here to scare me?”

“No,” he said, and his voice softened. “I brought you here so you’d know what’s coming.”

“What’s coming?” I whispered.

He reached into his coat and dropped something on the table. A photograph.

Of me.

Outside my apartment.

Taken from a distance, grainy, zoomed in but unmistakably me. My breath stilled in my lungs.

“You see now?” he said. “They’re not waiting to ask questions. They’re watching. Calculating. Waiting for a weakness.”

“And I’m the weakness,” I said.

He didn’t argue.

---

I sat down slowly, fingers trembling as I reached for the photo.

“Why me?” I asked. “I don’t know anything. I’m just… ordinary.”

Valen dragged a hand through his hair, looking like he hadn’t slept in days. “Neither am I. But we play anyway.”

His words hung in the air, heavy as storm clouds.

I tried to breathe through the rising panic. “So what do I do now?”

He turned to face me. “Lay low. Don’t talk to anyone you don’t trust. Don’t answer blocked calls. And if anyone asks you about me…”

“I don’t know you,” I finished.

“Exactly.”

He nodded once.

But we both knew that was no longer true.

---

We sat in silence for a while, the only sound the slow ticking of a forgotten clock on the wall.

Then he moved toward me again, slower this time, something more personal flickering in his gaze.

“I never meant to drag you into this,” he said. “That night… it was supposed to be anonymous. Temporary.”

I swallowed. “Then why does it feel like anything but?”

He didn’t answer.

He just stepped closer, now standing right in front of me, the heat of him sinking into my skin like fire.

And then, without warning, he bent down and whispered, “Because nothing about you is temporary, Elara.”

His lips brushed my cheek soft, fleeting, like a secret.

And then he turned and walked out the door.

---

For a second, I thought he might call me back. That he might stop me, explain, soften the blow. But Valen didn’t move. He just stayed in the shadows, watching, until the door closed behind me.

I drove home in a daze, watching the world blur past my window, knowing something had changed forever. I wasn’t sure what I was now a target, a pawn, or something else entirely.

But one thing I did know:

I would never be able to forget that voice.

Or the man behind it.

But one thing I did know:

I wasn’t just being watched anymore.

I’d already been chosen.