Chapter 1 - Eight Minutes
The bathroom door shook so hard on the first kick that a framed print slid sideways on the wall.
On the second kick, the latch split.
On the third, the entire door flew inward and slammed against the marble vanity hard enough to crack the mirror light above it.
I was already on the floor by then.
My back pressed against the cold tile, my bandaged left arm pinned awkwardly against my ribs, my phone clutched so hard in my right hand that my fingers were numb. My red satin dress was torn at the hem. One of my shoes was gone. My cheek throbbed where Derek had hit me less than ten minutes earlier, and the city lights beyond the high bathroom window kept flashing blue and white from passing traffic like the whole world was pretending not to see what was happening twenty-two floors above it.
Derek filled the doorway in black slacks and a black button-down, smelling like whiskey, cologne, and the rage he carried home every time something in his life reminded him he was not as important as he believed he should be.
Behind him, in the hall, two men in dark suits had just stepped off the elevator and were striding toward our apartment. Derek had not noticed them yet.
He only saw me.
He sneered when he looked at the phone in my hand.
“Who do you think is coming for a broken waitress?”
His voice came out low and mean, the way it always did when he was most dangerous. He liked saving the shouting for when other people might hear. Real cruelty, I had learned, often preferred a conversational tone.
I pressed harder against the wall and lifted the phone to my ear.
“Vincent,” I whispered. “Please save me.”
For one terrible second I thought the line had gone dead.
Then a man’s voice came through the speaker—calm, deep, and so controlled it sounded carved out of stone.
“Stay alive for eight minutes.”
Derek lunged before I could answer. He grabbed my good wrist and twisted, trying to wrench the phone away. Pain shot through my shoulder so fast my vision whited out at the edges.
In the hallway behind him, heavy footsteps hit the marble.
Then came a hard pound from the apartment entrance.
Another.
Another.
Derek froze.
The two suited men in the hall moved fast.
I heard a crash from the living room. The front door. A body striking furniture. One of the men shouted something sharp and low. Derek turned his head toward the noise, and that was all the opening I needed. I jerked my wrist free and crawled backward across the bathroom floor.
Then Vincent Moretti stepped into the doorway.
He was taller than I remembered, or maybe fear had simply changed how everything looked. Dark suit. Dark coat open. Silver at his temples that had not been there three years earlier. His expression was not loud. Not wild. Not cinematic.
It was worse.
It was quiet.
One bodyguard tore Derek away from me and pinned him against the broken doorframe so hard the wood splintered farther. Derek’s whiskey glass hit the floor and shattered near the tub.
Vincent looked at him once.
Then he looked at me.
He shrugged off his coat, crouched beside me, and draped it over my shoulders with a care so gentle it nearly broke me.
“You hurt her,” he said, his gaze returning to Derek. “I’m here now.”
Only then did I start to shake.
Because I knew two things at the same time.
First: Derek was finally afraid.
May you like
Second: the man he had just mocked was the one person in America he never should have forced me to call.
And in the pocket of Vincent’s coat, when it slipped across my lap, I felt the hard square edge of the old black business card I had kept for three years without ever believing I would use it.
