Chapter 2 - THE MARK ON HER WRIST
Harper woke to the smell of rubbing alcohol and cedarwood.
She gasped, her eyes flying open, her hands immediately flying up to protect her face from the blow she expected.
But there was no fist. There was no screaming.
She was lying in the center of a massive king-sized bed on charcoal-gray silk sheets. The room was vast, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the glittering sprawl of downtown Chicago. Moonlight spilled across the mahogany floor.
Panic seized her throat. She tried to sit up, and a firm medical bandage wrapped tightly around her torso stopped her cold.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
She froze.
“Two cracked ribs on the left side. One fully fractured on the right.”
The voice came from the shadows in the corner. A tall figure stepped into the dim light of a crystal bedside lamp.
Gabriel Rossi.
He had discarded his suit jacket and tie. He wore only a crisp white button-down with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, revealing the dark creeping ink of his syndicate tattoos. In his hand, a crystal tumbler of whiskey.
Memories flooded back. The tray. The dining room. The fall.
“Oh my God,” Harper whispered. Her heart hammered against her battered ribs. She scrambled back against the tufted leather headboard, ignoring the searing pain. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about the drinks. I can pay for them. Please don’t—”
Gabriel held up a hand.
His tone was neither angry nor kind. It was simply an immovable force.
He walked over and sat in the heavy armchair beside the bed.
“No one cares about the bourbon, Harper.”
She flinched at the sound of her name.
“How do you know my name? Where am I? I need to leave.” Her voice climbed. “If I’m not home by three in the morning, he’s going to—”
She cut herself off. Her eyes went wide. She clapped a hand over her mouth.
Gabriel took a slow sip of whiskey.
He reached into his pocket and set her cracked phone on the bedside table.
“If you’re not home by three,” he said, “Mitchell is going to do what? Break the rest of your ribs? Burn the other wrist?”
Harper’s breath hitched. The silence in the room became suffocating.
“You don’t understand,” she whispered. “You don’t know him.”
“I know him intimately.”
Gabriel leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and his dark eyes locked onto hers.
“Mitchell Reed has been laundering money for my organization for four years. I pay him very well. I bought him his house. I bought him the ring he used to bash your cheekbone in.”
All the blood drained from Harper’s face.
She was trapped. She had collapsed in front of the one man on earth more dangerous than her abuser — and it turned out her abuser worked for him.
This was it. He was going to call Mitchell to come and collect his mess. Or worse, he was going to decide that a woman who had seen too much in his house was a loose end.
“Please.” A tear spilled over her lashes, carving a track through the dried makeup. “Please, Mr. Rossi. I won’t say anything. Just let me go. I’ll disappear. If you give me back to him, he’ll kill me. He told me he would.”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened. A muscle feathered in his cheek.
He stood up slowly and walked to the edge of the bed.
Harper squeezed her eyes shut and braced for violence.
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Instead, she felt the gentle, surprisingly warm weight of his hand cup the side of her unbruised cheek.
Her eyes flew open.
“Look at me, Harper,” he said softly.
She looked up into eyes that were notorious for possessing no mercy. And right now they held a burning, terrifying, protective fury.
“In my world, there are rules,” Gabriel said. His thumb brushed away her tear. “We are violent men. Yes. But we do not touch women. We do not touch the innocent. Mitchell has broken a sacred law of my house.”
He pulled his hand away and picked up her phone.
“But there’s something else, isn’t there? A man like Mitchell doesn’t beat his girl just for the thrill of it. He’s an accountant. A coward. He beats you to keep you quiet.”
He turned the cracked screen over in his fingers.
“What do you know, Harper?”
She swallowed hard. She looked at the door. Then back at him.
If she told the truth, there was no going back. She had signed papers she had not read. She had lived in a house that was not hers, with a man who was not hers, and she had learned over three years that the truth was the most dangerous thing a woman could carry.
But looking at the cold, absolute certainty in Gabriel’s face, she understood that he was offering her the one thing she had not had in three years.
Protection.
“Two months ago,” Harper began, her voice shaking, “Mitchell forced me to sign a stack of documents. He held my hand to the paper. They were incorporation forms for a holding company in the Caymans. Keystone Logistics.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed instantly.
The syndicate had been bleeding cash for six months. His internal auditors could not find the leak. They had blamed the port, then the casinos, then each other, and two men had been dismissed over it.
“He’s been funneling money,” Harper whispered, clutching the silk sheets. “Millions. Whenever you route cash through the downtown casino project, he skims fifteen percent into Keystone. He put my name on all the director documents. He said—” She stopped. Swallowed. “He said if the syndicate ever found out, the paper trail would lead directly to me. I would take the fall.”
She looked at her own wrist.
“He hits me so I don’t go to the police.”
A deafening silence fell over the penthouse.
Gabriel stared at the city lights, processing an absolute betrayal.
Mitchell had not just abused a woman. He was using her as a human shield to steal from the Rossi syndicate.
The cracked cell phone on the nightstand buzzed loudly, vibrating against the wood.
*Caller ID: Mitchell.*
Harper gasped and shrank back into the pillows.
Gabriel looked at the phone. A slow, chilling smile touched the corner of his mouth — the smile that had preceded the downfall of many powerful men in Chicago.
He reached out and answered it, pressing the phone to his ear.
“Harper! Harper, you stupid bitch!”
Mitchell’s slurred, venomous voice barked through the receiver.
“You didn’t come home. When I find you, I’m going to make last night look like a joke. Where the hell are you?”
Gabriel did not raise his voice. He did not have to.
“She’s with me, Mitchell.”
The line went dead silent. The panicked breathing on the other end was audible.
“M-Mr. Rossi. Boss. Why — why do you have Harper’s phone?”
“Pack a bag, Mitchell,” Gabriel said softly, and his voice echoed with a terrifying promise. “Mateo and Leo are already on their way to your house. I’d suggest you don’t run. It only makes them angry.”
He hung up and dropped the phone into his glass of whiskey, watching it drown in the amber liquid.
He turned back to Harper, who was staring at him in sheer disbelief.
“Get some sleep, Harper,” he said, and turned off the bedside lamp, plunging the room into moonlight. “Mitchell Reed is a dead man. And nobody will ever lay a hand on you again.”
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He did not leave.
He sat in the armchair by the window all night, and she could see the outline of him against the glass, and she did not sleep for a long time, and when she finally did, it was the first deep sleep she had had in three years.
