Chapter 3
He shot up out of the booth.
“I told you not to screw it up.”
His hand lashed out and clamped around Sloan’s wrist. His grip was vicious — fingers digging into bone, twisting her arm sharply. The bottle slipped from her grasp and thudded onto the mahogany, spilling amber across the polished wood.
Sloan gasped. Pain flared up her arm.
“Let go of me.”
She tried to wrench free. He was running on adrenaline and rage, and his grip was iron.
“You’re embarrassing me.” He pulled her closer, his hot, stale breath hitting her face. “You ruin everything you touch. You’re nothing. Just like your old man.”
“Let her go.”
The voice was barely more than a whisper.
But it carried a weight so absolute that the ambient music of the club seemed to stutter and die.
Preston froze. He kept his grip on Sloan’s wrist — and turned his head, slowly, toward the man across the table.
Roman hadn’t raised his voice. He hadn’t drawn a weapon. He hadn’t even stood up.
He was just looking at Preston’s hand wrapped around Sloan’s wrist.
The look in his eyes was no longer cold. It was black fire — the expression of a man calculating, with genuine interest, how many seconds it would take to crush a human trachea.
“I’m — she’s clumsy, Mr. Costa. I’m handling it.”
Preston gave Sloan’s arm another jerk, as if to prove it.
Roman moved.
He didn’t scramble out of the booth. He flowed upward, unfolding his massive frame until he towered over the table, and the sheer physical presence of the man was suffocating.
Across the lounge, his two guards took a synchronized step forward, hands slipping inside their jackets.
The entire club stopped breathing.
Roman reached across the table and closed his hand over Preston’s wrist.
Preston let out a sharp, pathetic whimper.
Sloan watched, wide-eyed, as the color drained out of his face. Roman wasn’t holding him. He was crushing the bones. The pressure was visibly agonizing — Preston’s knees buckled slightly against it.
“I won’t say it again,” Roman said, dropping into a register that vibrated in Sloan’s chest.
“She’s — she’s just a waitress,” Preston gasped. “She owes me —”
“Take your hands” — Roman leaned in, until his face was inches from Preston’s terrified eyes — “*off*” — a pause — “my wife.”
The words landed in the room like a live grenade.
Silence. Total, paralyzing silence.
Sloan stopped breathing. The pain in her wrist vanished, replaced by a roaring in her ears.
*His wife.*
She looked at Roman, her mind short-circuiting. She had never spoken to him. She had never been within ten feet of him. The closest she had ever come to the Costa Syndicate was reading terrifying headlines in the morning paper.
Preston’s mouth opened and closed like a dying fish. His eyes darted between Roman’s dead, furious stare and Sloan’s pale, shocked face.
“Your — your —”
He couldn’t get the word out.
Roman tightened his grip one fraction of an inch.
A sickening *pop* sounded from inside Preston’s wrist.
Preston shrieked — high and thin and childish — and released Sloan instantly, stumbling backward and clutching his arm against his chest, tears of pain springing to his eyes.
Sloan staggered back a step, cradling her bruised wrist.
A large, warm hand wrapped gently around her elbow, steadying her. Roman stood beside her now, heat coming off him in waves, shielding her from the rest of the room. He didn’t look at her. He kept his eyes pinned on Preston, cowering against the back of his booth.
“The South Ward routes belong to me,” Roman said quietly.
The calm was far more terrifying than any shout.
“Your logistics company belongs to me. As of tomorrow morning, your bank accounts, your assets, your very life belong to me.”
“You can’t do that.” Preston sobbed, looking around the lounge for help. No one moved a muscle. “We had a meeting. We were doing business. We —”
“We were.” Roman agreed. He reached into his coat, drew out a pristine white handkerchief, and carefully wiped the hand that had touched Preston — then let the cloth fall onto the spilled scotch. “Then you touched what is mine.”
He turned his head at last and looked down at Sloan.
The lethal violence in his eyes banked instantly — replaced by something deep, heavy, and entirely unreadable. He looked at her bruised wrist. Then at the blood drying on her thumb.
“Come,” he said softly.
He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned and walked toward the exit, and the crowd parted for him like water.
Sloan stood paralyzed for exactly two seconds.
She looked at Preston, whimpering on the floor, cradling his broken wrist like a wounded animal. She looked at the heavy oak doors, at the dark, imposing figure of the man waiting in front of them.
She didn’t know what game she had just been dragged into.
She didn’t know what it meant to be claimed by a monster to escape a parasite.
But as she dropped the bloody towel onto Preston’s expensive shoes, she knew one thing with perfect clarity.
May you like
She was never coming back here.
Sloan turned, squared her shoulders, and followed her husband out into the dark.
