Chapter 2 - The Scent of Iron and Silk
The private medical suite on the thirty-fourth floor of the Duca Tower did not look like a hospital. It looked like a minimalist sanctuary of white marble, brushed stainless steel, and soft, recessed lighting that cast no shadows.
Dr. Arthur Vance, a man in his late fifties with slicked-back gray hair and the cold, efficient hands of a former military surgeon, worked with a silence that was almost hypnotic.
"Hold still," Vance said, his voice flat as he used a pair of long, stainless-steel forceps to probe the wound on my shoulder.
I sat on the edge of the examination table, naked from the waist up except for a white towel pinned securely across my chest. The borrowed black dress lay in a torn, blood-soaked heap in the stainless-steel biohazard bin by the door.
A sharp, white-hot spike of agony shot down my back as the metal tips found the fragment.
I didn't scream. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted my own copper-flavored blood, my right hand gripping the edge of the leather examination table so hard my knuckles turned the color of lard.
"She doesn't make noise, does she?" Isabella observed from her armchair in the corner.
The old woman had refused to go to her own wing until the doctor was finished with me. She was wearing a thick silk robe the color of dried pomegranates, holding a hot cup of chamomile tea that one of the kitchen staff had brought her ten minutes ago.
"Noise doesn't take away the pain, Mrs. Duca," I gritted out through clenched teeth, sweat dripping from the tip of my nose onto the white towel. "It just tells the person hurting you that they're doing it right."
Dr. Vance paused for a fraction of a second, his eyes sliding up to meet mine over his surgical mask. "Your father was a violent man, Miss Carter?"
"My father was an amateur," I said coldly. "He used his fists. Glass is cleaner."
Tink.
The three-inch fragment of Bohemian crystal hit the stainless-steel tray with a bright, musical ring. Blood welled up instantly from the pocket it left behind, but Vance was already there with a suction tube and a tray of curved needles threaded with black nylon.
"Seven stitches," Vance announced, his hands moving with practiced, rhythmic precision. "The muscle belly is nicked, but the shoulder capsule is intact. You'll have a permanent scar, three inches long, running parallel to your clavicle."
"Good," a deep voice spoke from the shadows near the door.
I hadn't heard the door open.
Marco was leaning against the doorframe, his dark wool coat gone, his white tuxedo shirt unbuttoned at the collar and the cuffs rolled up twice to reveal his thick, hair-dusted forearms. He was holding a glass of amber liquid—straight rye, by the smell of it—and his eyes were fixed entirely on the red, jagged line Vance was currently sewing shut on my collarbone.
"Good?" I asked, my voice slightly breathless from the stinging bite of the needle. "You think a scar is good, Mr. Duca?"
"A scar is an accounting record, Lena," Marco said, stepping into the white room.
The bright LEDs hit his face, highlighting the deep, dark circles beneath his eyes and the fresh smudge of black soot along his left jawline. He looked exhausted, dangerous, and entirely too large for the sterile space.
"It shows what you took and what you survived," he continued, stopping beside the examination table. He didn't look at Dr. Vance. "Is she clean?"
"No infection," Vance replied, tying off the last knot with a sharp snip of his scissors. "I’ve given her a local anesthetic and a booster for tetanus. She needs forty-eight hours of absolute rest, no heavy lifting, and a course of broad-spectrum antibiotics."
"She stays on this floor," Marco commanded.
"I have a room on the twentieth floor," I said, pulling the towel higher up over my shoulder as Vance applied a thick square of sterile gauze and tape over the wound. "With the rest of the domestic staff."
Marco set his glass down on Vance’s stainless-steel tray with a sharp clink.
"You don't live on the twentieth floor anymore," Marco said. "Gianni is moving your things to the master suite on the thirty-fifth floor right now."
I froze. Vance froze. Even Isabella lowered her teacup, her dark eyes narrowing with sudden, intense scrutiny.
"The master suite?" I repeated, my voice dropping an octave. "That's your wing."
"It's the safest wing in the building," Marco replied, his tone leaving no room for negotiation. "It has six-inch reinforced steel plating behind the drywall, an independent air-scrubbing system, and three guards posted at the elevator core twenty-four hours a day. After what happened at the ballroom, every news outlet in the Midwest is running your photo from the camera flashes outside the lift."
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and tossed it onto my lap.
The screen was bright, displaying the digital front page of the Chicago Tribune.
The headline was written in massive, bold black type:
BLOOD AT THE GALA: DUCA MATRIARCH SAVED BY MYSTERY WOMAN
Below it was a high-resolution photograph taken the second the elevator doors opened in the loading bay.
The flash had caught us in stark, brilliant contrast: Marco, broad and terrifying, stepping out with his gun partially drawn; Isabella behind him; and me—small, pale, wrapped in Marco’s massive eight-thousand-dollar cashmere coat, my head tucked against his chest while his hand rested securely at the small of my back, holding me against him as if I were a piece of private property he was prepared to defend with his life.
The caption beneath the photo was even worse:
Rumors swirl around the unidentified woman who took cover with Marco Duca’s mother during tonight's deadly attack. Sources inside the Duca organization confirm she has lived at the Gold Coast penthouse for eleven months, though her identity remains closely guarded by the mob boss.
"They don't know my name," I whispered, staring at the digital image.
"They don't know it yet," Marco said. "By noon tomorrow, some low-level clerk at the department of labor or some thirsty reporter with a friend in tax records will figure out who Lena Carter is. They will find your old apartment in Springfield. They will find your bank account. They will find out that you have no family to protect you."
He leaned down, placing both hands on the edge of the examination table, trapping me between his arms. The heat radiating from his chest was overwhelming, washing over my bare skin and making the fine hairs on my arms stand up.
"And when Matteo's friends realize that you are the reason my mother is still breathing," Marco whispered, his face three inches from mine, "they will come for you to finish what they started."
"I can leave," I said, my voice barely a thread. "I can take a bus to Denver. I can change my name again—"
"No," Marco cut me off, his voice dropping into a register that made the glass instruments on the tray hum slightly. "You don't run. Not anymore."
"Why?" I demanded, my temper finally snapping through the haze of pain and local anesthetic. "Because it looks bad for your reputation? Because the great Marco Duca can't let his mother's nurse get slaughtered in an alley in Iowa?"
"Because you belong to this house now," Marco said, his thumb reaching out and pressing firmly against the base of my throat, right over my thrumming carotid artery. "Whether you wanted to or not, Lena, when you bled on that floor, you signed a contract with me. I don't lose things that are mine. And I don't let broken men from my own bloodline touch what I protect."
Isabella set her teacup down on the side table with a slow, deliberate motion.
"Marco," the old woman spoke, her voice carrying the cold authority of forty years of mafia politics. "Have you spoken to Matteo yet?"
Marco didn't break eye contact with me. "Not yet."
"Don't leave him in the cellar too long," Isabella said, standing up with the help of her silver-headed cane. "Cold makes men brave. Warm him up first."
"Caruso is already warming him," Marco replied smoothly.
Isabella nodded once, her face an unreadable mask of old world cruelty. She walked over to the side of my examination table, reached out her thin, spotty hand, and laid it gently over my uninjured knee.
"Thank you for my life, child," Isabella said softly. Her accent was thick, heavy with the dust of southern Italy. "In my world, when a person saves your life, they own a piece of your soul. My son is a hard man. He was raised by wolves, and he rules wolves. But he does not break his word."
She looked up at Marco. "Take her upstairs. Put her in the corner room with the view of the lake. She likes the water."
"I know," Marco said quietly.
My head snapped toward him. "You know?"
Marco didn't answer. He simply reached down, grabbed the heavy cashmere coat from the back of a chair, and wrapped it around my shoulders once more, covering my bare skin and the white surgical dressing Vance had applied.
Before I could protest, he slid his left arm beneath my knees and his right arm behind my back, lifting me off the examination table in one smooth, effortless motion.
"Marco!" I gasped, my right arm instantly flying up to wrap around his neck for balance. "I can walk! My legs aren't injured!"
"Your shoulder is stitched," he said, walking out of the medical suite and into the private elevator corridor without dropping a beat. "And the floor is marble. If you slip, Vance will have to redo his handiwork, and I don't have time to wait for him."
The private elevator keycard clicked. The doors slid open with a soft chime.
Inside the small, wood-paneled cab, the air was warm and smelled of lavender polish. Marco stood in the center, holding me against his chest as if I weighed no more than a bundle of silk. His heart was beating beneath my cheek—a slow, heavy, iron rhythm that felt entirely disconnected from the chaos of the night.
I looked up at his jaw. The faint scar through his left eyebrow was jagged, white against his olive skin.
"How did you get that?" I asked, pointing a finger toward his eyebrow.
Marco glanced down at me, his eyes softening by a fraction of a percent. "My father."
"He hit you?"
"He threw a crystal decanter at my head when I was fourteen because I told him his underboss was stealing from the docks in Milwaukee," Marco said flatly. "I was right about the underboss. But my father didn't like fourteen-year-olds telling him how to run his family."
"What happened to the underboss?"
"I killed him when I was eighteen," Marco said, as casually as if he were discussing the weather. "And I buried him under the dock he was stealing from."
I let out a long breath, resting my forehead against the cool silk of his unbuttoned shirt. "You're a terrible man, Marco Duca."
"I know," he murmured, the elevator doors sliding open to reveal the thirty-fifth floor—a vast, open-plan penthouse with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the dark, violent expanse of Lake Michigan. "But I'm the terrible man who keeps you alive."
He carried me across the dark walnut floors of the living room, past a massive stone fireplace where a fire was crackling softly, and into a bedroom that was three times the size of my entire previous apartment.
The bed was massive, framed in dark teak wood and piled high with white Egyptian cotton sheets and a heavy charcoal duvet. The room was dark, saved only by the amber light of the fire coming from the adjoining sitting area and the distant glow of the Chicago skyline through the rain-streaked glass.
Marco set me down on the edge of the mattress with an extraordinary, almost jarring gentleness.
He didn't pull back immediately. He remained leaning over me, his hands resting on either side of my hips, his face framed by the dark glass of the window behind him.
"Gianni left three sets of clothes in the wardrobe," Marco said, his voice dropping into that low, intimate register that made my throat feel dry. "Silk. No buttons. Easy for you to put on with one hand."
"Thank you," I whispered.
He reached down, his fingers lightly brushing the edge of the blanket, pulling it up over my legs. "There is an alarm button on the nightstand. It connects directly to my phone and Caruso's desk downstairs. If you hear anything—anything at all—you press it."
"Where are you going?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.
Marco stood up to his full height, his face falling back into the cold, terrifying lines of the Don who was about to go to work.
"I have a cousin to talk to," he said.
He turned toward the door, but before he took a step, I reached out with my good hand and caught the hem of his white shirt.
He stopped, looking down at my fingers wrapped in the cloth.
"Don't do it because of me," I said, my eyes fixed on his. "If you kill him... do it for your mother. Do it for your family. Don't put my name on his grave."
Marco looked at my hand on his shirt for three long seconds. Then he reached down, took my fingers in his, and raised my hand to his mouth, pressing his lips lightly against my knuckles.
His breath was hot, his skin dry and warm.
May you like
"Your name is already on it, Lena," he whispered.
He released my hand, walked out of the room, and closed the heavy oak door behind him, leaving me alone with the sound of the rain against the glass and the terrifying, beautiful weight of a man who had decided I was worth burning a city down for.
