Chapter 3 - Confinement and CoffeeThe heavy oak door clicked shut, sealing out Sal, his armed thugs, and the rest of the dangerous underworld that followed Roman Bianchi like a shadow.
The silence that rushed back into my apartment felt heavy, suffocating, and charged with an entirely new kind of electricity.
I turned around slowly from the door, my arms still crossed over my chest, glaring at the mafia boss who had just effectively turned my tiny, insignificant apartment into his personal command center and medical ward.
“Did you seriously just tell your most violent lieutenant that I am ‘taking care of you’?” I demanded, my voice rising an octave. “Are you completely insane? Do you want Sal and his psychotic friends knocking on my door every four hours to check if I’m giving you your antibiotics?”
Roman walked slowly back toward the living room, wincing slightly as he adjusted to the pull of the stitches beneath my old black hoodie. He lowered himself onto my sofa with deliberate care, leaning his head back against the cushions and closing his eyes for a long moment.
“Sal is many things,” Roman said, his voice low and raspy, “but he is loyal to a fault. If I told him you saved my life, he would view you as a sacred entity. If I told him you were keeping me safe, he would die before letting anyone harm a hair on your head.”
“I don't want a mafia hit squad viewing me as a sacred entity, Roman!” I threw my hands up in exasperation. “I want to go back to my boring, miserable life where the most dangerous thing I deal with is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist spilling craft IPA on my apron!”
Roman opened one dark eye, fixing me with a gaze that was entirely too intense for six in the morning. “That life is gone, Nora. The moment you pulled a knife-wielding mafia boss into your living room and stitched up his side instead of calling a body bag, your life intersected with mine. In my world, intersections are permanent.”
“That sounds suspiciously like a threat.”
“It’s a statement of fact.” Roman shifted, his eyes scanning the cluttered room before locking back onto mine. “You make terrible coffee, by the way. I could smell it from the kitchen. It tastes like burned rubber and desperation.”
I stared at him, jaw slack, before letting out an incredulous laugh. “You are sitting in my thrift-store living room, wearing my oversized high school track hoodie, recovering from an assassin’s blade, and you’re insulting my drip-brew coffee?”
“I have expensive tastes.”
“Clearly. Next time, I’ll let you bleed out on the welcome mat and save myself the critique.”
A genuine, rare smile touched the corners of Roman’s mouth—not the cold, calculated smirk he used on his enemies, but something softer, darker, and devastatingly charming. It transformed his harsh, dangerous face into something arresting.
“There won't be a next time,” he said quietly, his eyes holding mine with a gravitational pull I couldn't escape. “Because you’re not going to let me die, Nora. We both know that.”
Before I could come up with a suitably scathing retort to hide how fast my heart was suddenly beating, a violent, heavy thud echoed from the ceiling directly above us.
Thud. Thud. Scratch.
I froze. Roman’s eyes snapped up toward the ceiling, all traces of amusement vanishing from his face in a single heartbeat.
“What is that?” Roman murmured, his hand instinctively dropping toward his side again.
May you like
“That,” I whispered, a cold knot forming in my stomach, “is Mrs. Gable from Apartment 5B. She’s eighty-two, legally blind, and obsessed with feeding stray raccoons through her fire escape.”
“No,” Roman said, his voice dropping into a sharp, analytical whisper as he rose slowly from the sofa, ignoring the strain on his stitches. “Raccoons don't wear leather shoes, Nora. And they don't pick locks.”
