Mine to Protect

Chapter 2: The Devil's Suite

Chapter 2 — The Devil's Suite

Sofia

The car was the nicest thing Sofia had ever sat inside.

That wasn't saying much. She'd spent most of her life in Chicago city buses and the occasional taxi that smelled like someone else's regret. But this was different. Black leather so soft it felt like sitting on a whispered secret. Tinted windows. A partition between them and the driver might as well have been a wall between two different worlds.

She sat pressed against the door, arms crossed, watching the city slide past in streaks of rain and neon. Luca Moretti sat on the opposite side of the backseat, one ankle crossed over his knee, phone in hand, utterly unbothered by the fact that he had just essentially kidn*pped her.

Dmitri rode up front. Occasionally she caught his eyes in the rearview mirror, watchful, unreadable.

"You should relax," Luca said, without looking up from his phone.

"I'm perfectly relaxed," Sofia said, in the tone of someone who had never been less relaxed in their entire life.

His mouth curved slightly. Still not a smile. Just the suggestion of one, like a door left an inch ajar.

"You're gripping that armrest hard enough to leave marks."

She released it immediately. He still didn't look up.

She turned back to the window and focused on memorizing the route — not because she had any plan, exactly, but because it felt better than sitting there feeling helpless. Left on Michigan. North on Lakeshore Drive. The lake was invisible in the dark and rain but she could feel it out there, vast and indifferent, the way it was always in November.

They pulled into the underground garage of a building so tall Sofia had to crane her neck to see where it ended. It didn't seem to. It just kept going up into the clouds and the dark like it belonged to a different atmosphere entirely.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"Somewhere safe," Luca said, stepping out of the car.

"That's not an answer."

He looked back at her over his shoulder. "No," he agreed. "It isn't."

The elevator was mirrored on all sides, which meant Sofia got to watch herself looking disheveled and drowned-rat damp from sixteen different angles while Luca Moretti stood beside her looking like he'd just stepped off a runway. His dark coat was soaked through but he wore it like it wasn't. His jaw was sharp in the mirrored light. His hands were still clasped behind his back.

She noticed, for the first time, the ring on his right hand. Dark stone. Thick gold band. Old, she thought. The kind of thing that got passed down.

The elevator opened directly into a suite.

Not a room. Not a hotel room with a king bed and a minibar. A suite — the kind with a separate sitting room, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lake, a kitchen that probably cost more than her entire apartment building, and lighting so warm and golden it made even the air look expensive.

Sofia stood at the entrance and tried not to look impressed.

She was extremely impressed.

"The bedroom is through there," Luca said, nodding toward a set of double doors. "There are clothes in the wardrobe — they should be close enough to your size. The kitchen is stocked."

"You keep women's clothes on hand?" she asked. "That's not alarming at all."

"The suite is used for guests. Occasionally female ones." He moved to the window, hands in his pockets now, looking out at the invisible lake. "I don't make a habit of this, if that's what you're implying."

"What I'm implying," Sofia said carefully, "is that I don't know you, I don't know where I am, and I'd like to go home."

He turned then. Really looked at her — the full weight of it, those dark eyes settling on her face like something heavy being set down.

"Your apartment is on Wave land Avenue," he said. "Third floor. Fire escape on the east side. Your landlord's name is Gerald Park, who has—" he paused, almost thoughtfully "—an interesting relationship with two men who work for a person who would very much like to know what you saw tonight."

The floor dropped out from under her.

"How do you know where I live?"

"I told you. I found out everything," he said without threat. Just fact, the way someone might observe that it was raining. "Which means other people can find it out too. And they will, Sofia. The moment word gets out that there was a witness tonight and it will get out, it always does your apartment is the first place they'll look."

She wanted to argue. She wanted to tell him he was exaggerating, or lying, or trying to frighten her into compliance.

But she thought about the alley. About the way those men had moved practiced, silent, like violence was a language they'd grown up speaking. About the man on his knees in the rain.

"For how long?" she asked quietly.

"Until I handle it."

"And how long will that take?"

A pause. "As long as it takes."

Sofia laughed short and humorlessly. "I have a job. I have a life. I can't just disappear into some luxury prison because you."

"I'll have someone contact the diner."

"That's not"

"And your rent is covered for however long this takes."

She stopped.

"I don't want your money," she said, even as thirty-seven dollars flickered through her mind like an accusation.

"I know," he said, and somehow that was worse the fact that he said it simply, without contempt. Like he respected it and was going to do it anyway.

He moved toward the elevator, buttoning his coat.

"You're leaving?" she asked, hating how startled she sounded.

"I have things to attend to." He pressed the button. "Dmitri will be outside the door. Not to keep you in," he added, before she could speak. "To keep others out. There's a difference."

"Is there?"

The elevator doors opened. He stepped inside and turned to face her, and for a moment they just looked at each other across the golden room her, damp and furious and frightened, and him, dark and unreadable and entirely too composed.

"Get some sleep, Sofia," he said quietly. "You're safe here."

"You keep saying that," she said. "Like if you say it enough times I'll believe it."

Something shifted in his expression. So small she almost missed it. A flicker behind the dark eyes something that wasn't calculation, wasn't strategy.

Something almost human.

"Maybe," he said, "I'm saying it enough times so I believe it."

The doors closed.

Sofia stood in the middle of the most beautiful room she'd ever been in and listened to the rain against the glass.

After a long moment she walked to the window and looked out at the city. Chicago spread below her like a circuit board, all light and grid and darkness between. Somewhere out there was her apartment, her real life, her thirty-seven dollars, her three barely-surviving houseplants that nobody was going to water.

She pressed her forehead against the cool glass and closed her eyes.

Think, she told herself. Think clearly. He's dangerous. This whole situation is dangerous. You need to be smart.

She stood there for a while. Then she went to find the bathroom, because if she was going to be trapped in a luxury suite she was at least going to take a hot shower.

The bathroom was marble and gold and had approximately nine different shower settings. She stood under water so hot it turned her skin pink and tried to organize her thoughts into something useful.

She was still trying when she heard it.

A sound from the sitting room. Soft. Deliberate.

She turned off the water and stood very still, heart hammering.

She had heard Dmitri outside the door when she'd passed — a single knock, his low voice confirming he was there. She hadn't let him in. The elevator required a keycard she didn't have.

No one should be in that room.

She wrapped a towel around herself, grabbed the only thing available a marble soap dish, heavy and cold and pushed open the bathroom door with her shoulder.

The sitting room was empty.

She let out a slow breath.

And then a hand closed over her mouth from behind.

"Don't scream," said a voice that was not Dmitri's. Low. Accented differently than Luca — harder, colder, like the accent had edges. "And don't drop that soap dish. You might need it."

The hand didn't move.

"Nod if you understand."

Sofia nodded once, slowly.

"Good." The voice dropped even lower, right beside her ear. "Now listen very carefully, Ms. Carver. The man keeping you here? He's not protecting you."

A pause that felt like falling.

"He's the reason you're in danger."