Page 20 of Wicked Mafia Mistake
I consider pressing the delete button. One tap and the number disappears. One tap and the temptation vanishes and I go back to being the woman who collects beautiful disasters and never lets anyone close enough to leave a mark.
My thumb hovers, but I hold it steady. But just barely.
I can strip off his cologne. I can pin the rolls back up. I can rebuild every wall I took down tonight. But I can't delete the only thread connecting me to the man who made me feel like I was worth more than a wish in a velvet box. Call it stubborn. Callit stupid. Call it the most on-brand Sloane Whitmore decision I have ever made.
I set the phone face-down on the nightstand, pull the covers to my chin, and stare at the ceiling where early morning light creeps through the curtains, pale and thin and ordinary. The pillow beneath my head smells like my shampoo and disappointingly not of his cologne.
The apartment is too quiet. Too empty. Too much like it was before tonight except now I know what it feels like to have a man's heartbeat under my ear, and the silence where that sound should be is unbearable.
I roll onto my side and pull the covers tighter. His contact is still in my phone. The marks from his hands are still fading on my skin. And every minute puts more distance between this bed and the one I left, but the ache behind my ribs isn't fading with it.
Some mistakes are worth keeping.
Six
Massimo
Seven AM and I haven't slept.
The red heel sits on my desk beside a stack of security stills I've been staring at for the past two hours. Black and white images, grainy elevator footage that shows a woman's profile, blonde hair falling across her cheek, her face angled away from the camera in every single frame as though she knew exactly where the lenses were positioned and avoided them on instinct. The lobby cameras caught her crossing the marble floor barefoot, one shoe in her hand, the baby blue dress wrinkled and loose around her thighs. The exterior camera captured her climbing into the taxi at 4:14 AM, but the angle is wrong. Useless. I want to fire Luca's entire surveillance team and rebuild it from scratch.
The taxi ID came back forty minutes ago. Luca ran it without asking questions, which tells me he has questions and is saving them for later. The cab is registered to a fleet operating out of the West Loop, and the drop-off address puts her in Wicker Park. A residential block of brick three-flats south of North Avenue.
I know the neighborhood. Harrison's daughter lives in Wicker Park.
The thought flickers and fades before I can grab it, the same nagging recognition that hit me on the sidewalk when the dome light caught her face. I've been chasing that flicker all night, circling it the way I circle weak clauses in a contract, looking for the crack that will break the whole thing open. The face is familiar. The neighborhood is familiar. The connection is right in front of me and I can't see it.
"You're losing it, Santoro." I press my thumb and forefinger into my eyes until I see sparks. A Harvard-educated lawyer who has cracked federal cases in his sleep can't identify a woman he held in his arms for five hours. There's a joke in there somewhere, but I'm too exhausted to find it.
I drain my fourth espresso and set the cup down harder than necessary. The ceramic cracks against the granite and a hairline fracture splits across the bottom of the mug. Fitting.
The shoe catches the early morning light from the window behind me, cherry-red leather glowing warm against the dark surface of my desk. I've been keeping it within arm's reach since I picked it off the marble floor. Devotion or insanity. At this point I've stopped trying to tell the difference. I'm a grown man with a woman's shoe on his desk. This is my life now.
My office phone rings and the sound snaps my focus back to the present. The club owner case. Right. The Syndicate doesn't pause for personal crises, and Massimo Santoro doesn't let a woman wreck his focus no matter how badly she's gotten under his skin.
Except he does. Apparently. Because I've been sitting here with a red heel instead of doing my job.
I pick up the phone and slide into the professional register that has kept this family out of prison for fifteen years. "Santoro."
Thirty minutes of contract review, two phone calls, and one thinly veiled threat later, the club owner situation is manageable. Dominic Peluso runs a jazz bar on the south side under Syndicate protection, pays his dues on time every month, and has been a reliable earner for six years. Three weeks ago, outside muscle started showing up at his door demanding a second tax. He stopped paying the Syndicate because he can't afford both, which technically puts him in breach of contract but practically makes him a man caught between two wolves with no teeth of his own.
I'm drafting the enforcement letter when my office door opens without a knock.
Two men walk in. The first one fills the doorway before he's fully through it. Broad shoulders beneath a long charcoal wool overcoat, silvering hair cropped close, dark eyes that scan my office the way a man checks his exits before he sits down. Harlon Constantine moves with a deliberate, unhurried gait. The world adjusts its schedule around him, not the other way around, that’s for damn sure. Two shoulder holsters press faint outlines against his overcoat, the telltale bulk of twin Smith and Wesson .40 calibers riding beneath his arms.
He’s got good taste.
Behind him walks a man I haven't met.
Taller than Harlon by an inch, leaner by maybe fifteen or twenty pounds, with dark, tortured eyes. He fills the room differently.He’s quieter and hums with a low-frequency of violence held in check by discipline and something darker. It puts you on edge because you know death lingers nearby.
"Massimo." Harlon's voice carries a bass-heavy warmth that comes from decades of meaning exactly what he says. He extends his hand across my desk and I take it, his grip firm and dry, the calluses on his palm pressing against mine. "I brought someone who can help with your Peluso situation."
The man behind him steps forward and the light from my window catches the edge of a tattoo climbing above his collar, dark ink disappearing beneath his jawline.
"Samuel Payne." He offers his hand. The grip is brief, controlled. His voice comes out low and direct, nothing wasted, every word doing work. "People call me Bones."
I gesture to the chairs across from my desk. Harlon settles into his chair like he owns it. He's sat across from powerful men in every city on the eastern seaboard and it shows. Bones remains standing, his dark eyes sweeping the objects on my desk with a precision that reminds me of Luca.
