Page 5 of Ruthless Bond

I don’t know what I expected. Someone older, maybe. Someone who looked like the men who used to sit in my father’s restaurant, thick-necked and heavy-lidded, wearing their authority like a bad cologne. Someone I could look at and categorize and dismiss.

That isn’t what I get.

He’s tall. Over six feet, with a build that fills the doorway without crowding it. Dark hair cut short, just long enough to show a slight wave. A face that’s all clean angles, jaw and cheekbones that look like they were carved with intention. His suit is charcoal, impeccable, and fits him in a way that makes it clear the suit was tailored.

But it’s his eyes that stop me.

Gray like winter sky, like steel, like smoke. They find mine across the room and hold there, and I feel it in my sternum. A hook. A pull. A sensation so immediate and so deep that for a second I can’t breathe and I don’t know why.

He’s looking at me like he already knows me. Or he knows everything about me.

“Ms. Marchelli.” His voice is low and even. “Thank you for coming. I’m Dominic Voronov.”

He extends his hand. I take it.

His skin is hot like he’s running a fever. But he looks perfectly healthy. The handshake is brief and firm, and when he releases my fingers I can still feel the heat on my palm, an afterimage of contact that lingers longer than it should.

“Please.” He gestures toward his office. “Sit down.”

The office is enormous. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lake, a desk that’s probably worth more than my student loans, bookshelves lined with volumes that look read rather than decorative. Between two shelves hangs a black-and-white photograph of three men in dark coats standing outside a brick building buried in snow. Old Chicago, judging by the cars. One of the men has Dominic’s eyes. Not similar eyes. His eyes.

I look twice.

Genetics, I decide. Strong genetics.

He doesn’t sit behind the desk. He takes a chair across from me, close enough that I catch his scent for the first time. Clean, expensive, and underneath, something warm and dark. Almost primal. I feel my pulse shift in a way I don’t authorize.

“I was sorry to hear about your father,” he says. “Marco was a valued associate of this organization.”

Associate. The word does a lot of work.

“Thank you.” I keep my voice steady. “Your men said this is about his accounts.”

“It is.” He leans back in his chair. The movement is unhurried, casual, and I realize he’s perfectly calm. This man sits at the center of his own gravity and everything around him orbits. “Your father managed several financial relationships on behalf of my company. He handled them well for many years. But at the time of his death, there was an outstanding balance. A significant one.”

“How significant?”

He names a number. It’s large enough that my vision narrows for a second, a tunnel of disbelief. That figure is more than I’ll earn in five years, assuming I ever actually start earning.

“That’s impossible,” I say. “My father lived in a two-bedroom apartment and drove a ten-year-old car. He didn’t have that kind of money.”

“He didn’t owe that kind of money personally. He was responsible for funds that moved through his oversight. When he died, those funds were in transit. They never arrived where they were supposed to.”

I stare at him. He stares back. Those gray eyes are patient and absolutely unreadable.

“You’re saying my father stole from you.”

“I’m saying there’s an imbalance. I’m not interested in assigning blame to a dead man. I’m interested in resolution.”

I want to argue. I want to tell him my father would never steal, that Marco Marchelli was the most honest man I’ve ever known. But I was sitting in a dead man’s apartment where I found a hidden notebook written in cipher, and I’m not sure I know what my father would and wouldn’t do anymore.

“What kind of resolution?”

He studies me for a moment. I can feel the assessment, clinical and thorough, and I resist the urge to sit straighter under it.

“I understand you have an MBA in finance.”

It’s not a question. He already knows. He’s done his homework on me, and he’s not bothering to hide it. I’m not sure if the transparency is a power move or a courtesy. Maybe it’s both.