Chapter 5 - The Alleyway on Dearborn
The ground-floor receiving room was designed for business—neutral gray walls, a single mahogany table, and a security monitor displaying every angle of the brownstone’s exterior.
When Luca pushed open the door, Marco Reynolds was standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the private courtyard. He looked frantic. His coat was half-unzipped, his hair was wet from the melting sleet, and his hands were trembling as he gripped the back of an empty chair.
Two of Luca’s men—massive, silent professionals in dark wool coats—stood flanking the doorway, their hands resting easily at their sides, blocking any path back to the street.
"Where is she?" Marco demanded, spinning around as Luca walked in. "I know she's here. One of your lawyers served me with an injunction two hours ago—a total asset freeze and a five-hundred-foot stay-away order! You think you can steal my girlfriend just because you have money?"
Luca didn't answer right away. He walked over to the mahogany table, picked up a silver letter opener, and turned it over slowly in his fingers. The silence in the room was absolute, broken only by the hum of the radiator.
"Girlfriend," Luca repeated, the word tasting like something offensive on his tongue. "Is that what you call a woman whose wrists you bruised because she laughed at a colleague's joke?"
Marco’s face flushed a deep, violent crimson. "That was a private matter between us! She provoked me! She’s always leading men on, making eyes at people in offices, pretending she's some innocent watercolorist when she's actually—"
Before Marco could finish the sentence, Luca moved.
There was no warning, no buildup. In one fluid, devastating motion, Luca crossed the room, grabbed the front of Marco’s coat, and slammed him back against the heavy limestone window frame with a force that rattled the glass panes.
Marco gasped, the air rushing out of his lungs in a sharp, pathetic wheeze, his feet dangling an inch off the floor as Luca’s forearm pressed hard against his windpipe.
"You will never," Luca whispered, his face inches from Marco’s eyes, his voice dropping into a register so cold and terrifying that the two guards instinctively took half a step back, "use that word to describe her again. You will never speak her name in public, in private, or in your sleep. If you so much as look in the direction of this brownstone for the rest of your natural life, Enzo will find you in whatever gutter you're hiding in and he will break your fingers one by one until you forget how to hold a camera."
Marco clawed frantically at Luca’s wrists, his eyes bulging, his face turning the color of an eggplant. "I... I can't... please..."
Luca held him there for three agonizing seconds—long enough for Marco to understand the absolute, unbridgeable chasm between the world he thought he controlled and the world he had just stumbled into.
Then Luca dropped him.
Marco hit the hardwood floor with a heavy thud, coughing violently, gasping for air as he scrambled backward on his hands and knees like a dog driven from a porch.
Luca smoothed the cuffs of his white shirt, his breathing completely even, his pulse apparently untouched by the violence he had just dispensed. He looked down at Marco with the cold, scientific detachment of a man examining an insect on his shoe.
"Enzo," Luca said without turning around.
The head of security stepped forward. "Boss."
"Escort Mr. Reynolds out through the service alley. Make sure he understands that if he drops his camera equipment while leaving, it will be considered an abandoned hazard and disposed of accordingly."
"Understood," Enzo said, grabbing Marco by the back of his wet coat and hauling him upright with casual, effortless strength.
As they dragged him toward the heavy oak service door, Marco looked back over his shoulder, his eyes wide with a new, permanent terror. He didn't look angry anymore. He looked like a man who had finally realized he was swimming in an ocean he had mistaken for a puddle.
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"She'll leave you," Marco wheezed, spitting blood onto the rug. "She's normal. You're a monster. She'll figure it out and she'll run."
Luca didn't even dignify the words with a glance. He walked to the window, watching through the glass as Enzo marched Marco out into the sleet and shoved him into the back of an unmarked van.
