Chapter 5 - The Phantom on the Balcony
The work, as it turned out, involved blood.
Not mine, thankfully, but the reality of Damian Vescari’s world was not something that could be hidden behind high walls and cashmere robes forever.
Two days later, the house felt different from the moment I woke. The air had a sharp, metallic edge to it. The guards in the hallway weren't just standing post; they were checking magazines, their faces gray, their eyes scanning the windows with paranoid regularity.
Luca was kept on the second floor, his tutor instructed to run double lessons in French and mathematics behind closed doors.
Around noon, I was walking down the gallery toward the conservatory—my prescribed three hundred paces—when the heavy mahogany doors to the basement level opened.
Marco came out first. His shirt sleeves were rolled to the elbows. His forearms were flecked with dark brown spots that hadn't come from paint.
Behind him walked Damian.
He was buttoning a clean white dress shirt, his face pale and sharp as a straight razor. When he saw me standing at the end of the corridor, his eyes narrowed.
"Emma. You should be in your room."
"What's happening down there?" I asked, my voice steady despite the prickle of terror in my gut. "Marco smells like bleach."
Marco gave Damian a curt nod and slipped past us, heading toward the kitchen without a word.
Damian stopped three feet from me. He finished fastening his cuffs, the gold links clicking like small locks.
"We found the broker," he said bluntly. He didn't try to sugarcoat it. He didn't treat me like a delicate house guest who might faint at the mention of the street.
"The broker?"
"The man who hired the waiter who threw the decanter. His name is Corva. A former logistics contractor for the rail yards in Gary."
My stomach clenched. "Is he... down there?"
"He was," Damian said. "He is no longer in the building."
I didn't ask what that meant. The cold certainty in his eyes told me everything I needed to know.
"Did he tell you who paid him?"
"He gave us a name," Damian said, reaching out and tucking a strand of hair behind my ear with an ease that had become dangerously familiar over the last two weeks. "A man named Victor Brand. An associate of my father’s who believes that my expansion into the south-side terminals is an infringement on his inheritance."
"Victor Brand," I repeated, the name tasting like lead. "Will he try again?"
"He will try," Damian said. "Because he has no choice now. He knows Corva broke. He knows I have his account numbers in the Cayman Islands. A cornered dog doesn't run, Emma. It bites until its teeth shatter."
"Then why are we here?" I asked, stepping closer to him, my fingers instinctively catching the sleeve of his shirt. "If you know he's coming, why are we sitting in this house like targets?"
Damian looked down at my hand on his arm. His expression softened by an infinitesimal degree—a rare, brief glimpse of the human being beneath the emperor.
"Because this house is the only place in the Midwest where I can guarantee your safety," he said. "The perimeter is secured. The cameras are tied into three redundant satellite uplinks. And I have fourteen men between this hallway and the front gates who would die before they let someone step on that lawn."
"I'm not worried about myself, Damian," I said, looking up into his pale, troubled eyes. "I'm worried about Luca. And I'm worried about you."
He went entirely still.
"You shouldn't worry about me, Emma," he whispered. "I am the danger in this equation."
"You're a man who hasn't slept more than three hours a night since I was shot," I countered, refusing to look away. "You're a man who sits in the dark with a glass of Scotch waiting for the world to come for his son. That doesn't make you dangerous. That makes you terrified."
For a moment, I thought I had gone too far. The air between us dropped ten degrees. His eyes flashed with something wild and predatory—the pride of a man who had spent his entire life making other men crawl.
He caught my wrist. His grip wasn't painful, but it was absolute.
"You have a very sharp tongue for a girl who almost died on a tray of flutes," he said, pulling me an inch closer.
"You have a very thick skull for a billionaire," I snapped back.
A beat passed.
Then Damian laughed.
It was the first time I had ever heard the sound. It wasn't the polite, dry chuckle he gave to aldermen at galas. It was a low, genuine rumble that shook his chest, softening the hard lines around his mouth, erasing five years of exhaustion from his face in a single instant.
"God help me," he muttered, shaking his head. "You really aren't afraid of me, are you?"
"I'm terrified of your world," I admitted, my voice dropping. "I'm terrified of what almost happened to Luca. But you? No, Damian. I'm not afraid of you."
He looked at me then with an intensity that made my knees weak. He didn't pull away. His fingers slid from my wrist down into my palm, lacing through mine, his calloused thumb resting against the pulse point that had stopped beating two weeks ago.
May you like
"You should be," he whispered, his voice thick with a warning that had nothing to do with violence. "Because the longer you stay here, Emma, the harder it will be for me to let you go."
***
