Chapter 4
The alley behind the Obsidian Club smelled of wet asphalt and rotting citrus.
To Sloan, it tasted like freedom.
The heavy steel security door slammed shut behind them and cut off the muffled thump of the club’s bass. The sudden quiet was jarring. She stood on the damp pavement with the October wind biting through the liquor-soaked fabric of her uniform, and shivered, wrapping her arms around her chest. The adrenaline that had carried her out of the lounge was evaporating, leaving behind a cold, hollow terror.
Roman didn’t stop. He walked with long, purposeful strides toward a black armored SUV idling at the mouth of the alley. His two guards peeled off the brick walls and flanked him. The broader one opened the rear door.
Roman slid into the leather interior.
He didn’t look back. He didn’t offer a hand.
Sloan hesitated. The alley was dark. The streetlights from the avenue bled in across the wet ground and lit the exhaust pluming from the SUV’s tailpipe.
She had just walked away from her only source of income. She had just bruised the ego of a man who knew exactly where she lived. And she had done it by following the head of the city’s most violent criminal organization into the night.
“You can stand out there and freeze.” Roman’s voice drifted from the dark interior, flat and entirely calm. “Or you can get in. But make a choice. I don’t wait.”
Sloan swallowed the lump in her throat and climbed into the heavy vehicle. The guard shut the door, sealing them inside a vault of tinted glass and soundproofed steel.
The SUV pulled away from the curb.
Inside, it smelled of expensive leather, peppermint, and the faint metallic tang of gun oil.
Sloan pressed herself against the passenger-side door, keeping as much distance as the back seat allowed. Roman stared out the window at the neon blur of the city, hands resting lightly on his thighs, jacket still buttoned. He looked entirely relaxed — as though he had not just shattered a man’s wrist and claimed a stranger as his wife in front of a dozen witnesses.
“My wrist hurts,” she said.
The words tumbled out before she could stop them. Her voice was raspy, shaking slightly. It was a pathetic thing to say — but the silence was suffocating her, and the throbbing in her arm had become unbearable.
Roman turned his head slowly. Streetlights washed over the harsh angles of his face, casting the scar over his eye into deep shadow.
He didn’t offer sympathy. He simply reached out, palm up.
“Give it to me.”
She hesitated, then extended her arm.
His fingers wrapped around her wrist. His touch was jarringly warm, his calluses scraping her skin — but his grip was meticulously careful, a stark contrast to Preston’s brutal wrenching. He pressed his thumb gently against the swelling.
She flinched, sucking in a sharp breath.
“No fracture,” he murmured, eyes dropping to the shallow cut on her thumb where the blood had crusted dark. “Deep tissue bruise. You’ll need ice. The cut needs iodine.”
He let go.
The loss of his body heat made her shiver again.
“Why did you do it?” she asked, her voice regaining a fraction of its normal strength. “Why did you call me your wife?”
Roman shifted his gaze back to the window.
“Preston Hayes is a parasite. He’s been skimming off the top of a shell corporation I use to move freight through the eastern docks. Five hundred thousand dollars over six months.”
Sloan stared at him.
“You broke his wrist over five hundred thousand dollars.”
“I don’t care about the money.” His tone deadened. “I care about the precedent. If a rat nibbles at the grain and you don’t kill it, the other rats learn the silo is unguarded.”
“So you were going to hurt him anyway.” Her mind worked furiously, assembling the pieces. “But why involve me? Why *say* that?”
Roman finally looked at her fully. The intensity of his dark eyes pinned her to the leather.
“If I gut a legitimate businessman over a suspected dock dispute, the Federal Port Authority gets involved. They audit manifests. They look at my ships. Business halts for months.” He leaned back, and the leather creaked under his weight. “But if I destroy a man because he laid hands on my wife — because he disrespected my family in public — that is a crime of passion. The police look the other way. The federal investigators write it off as underworld theatrics. And the rest of the city learns a very public lesson about what happens when you touch something that belongs to Roman Costa.”
Sloan’s stomach plummeted.
She wasn’t a woman rescued from a dragon. She was a smokescreen — a loophole in a mob boss’s public relations strategy.
“I don’t belong to you,” she said.
Her voice trembled, but she forced her chin up.
Roman’s eyes dropped to the spilled scotch still clinging to the hem of her ruined skirt.
“You didn’t belong to yourself either,” he said, “kneeling on that floor.”
The honesty of it hit her like a physical blow. She wanted to argue. She wanted to scream at him. But the words wouldn’t come, because he was right — she had been a slave to her father’s debt, a hostage to Preston’s cruelty, a ghost haunting the corners of a uniform.
“Where are we going?” she asked quietly, looking away.
“My home.” Roman straightened his cuffs, expression blank. “We have logistics to discuss.”
May you like
“Logistics?”
“Yes.” He watched the city slide past. “We are getting married tomorrow. I suggest you get some sleep.”
