Chapter 1 - One Room
I stopped beside the only bed and whispered, “There has to be another room.”
Enzo Relli stepped inside and placed a brass room key on the dresser.
A tiny number had been scratched beneath 307.
Enzo looked at it once.
“This room wasn’t chosen by accident.”
For several seconds, I forgot about the bed.
I forgot about my soaked dress, the water dripping from my hair, and the fact that the most dangerous man I had ever worked for was standing only six feet away from me.
I stared at the key.
“What does seventeen mean?”
Enzo didn’t answer.
He closed the door behind us and turned the dead bolt.
Click.
Then the security chain.
Click.
The sounds were small.
The effect they had on me wasn’t.
I had worked for Enzo Relli for eleven months, three weeks, and four days.
Long enough to know he never repeated an instruction.
Long enough to know that men twice my size stopped talking when he entered a room.
Long enough to know that he never sat with his back to a door.
But I had never seen him hesitate over a hotel key.
Until tonight.
“Enzo?”
His eyes lifted to mine.
At the office, I always called him Mr. Relli.
Tonight, apparently, terror had destroyed professional etiquette.
He didn’t correct me.
“Put the portfolio down.”
I tightened my arms around the black leather folder pressed against my chest.
“These contracts are why we drove three hours into the mountains.”
“And right now they’re less important than you listening to me.”
Thunder shook the windows.
I flinched.
Enzo didn’t.
He crossed the room and pulled one curtain aside with two fingers.
The storm had swallowed almost everything beyond the glass. Rain raced down the window in silver streams. Every few seconds, lightning revealed bent trees and a road disappearing beneath muddy water.
We weren’t driving anywhere.
Not tonight.
Maybe not tomorrow morning.
Our car had barely reached the hotel before the bridge behind us was closed.
The lobby had been packed with stranded travelers. Families slept on couches. Two businessmen had been arguing over a chair. A hotel employee had apologized repeatedly before handing Enzo the final key.
One room.
I had thought that was the problem.
Then I had seen the bed.
One bed.
Now Enzo was staring at a scratched number as though the real problem had only just begun.
“Do you recognize it?” I asked.
His expression gave me nothing.
“That wasn’t my question.”
“What was?”
“Did anyone touch your portfolio downstairs?”
I thought back.
The receptionist.
The bellman.
A frightened woman with two children had bumped into me near the stairs.
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Enzo held out his hand.
I hesitated.
His gaze dropped to the portfolio.
“Sofia.”
I handed it over.
His fingers brushed mine.
They were cold.
That surprised me more than it should have.
Enzo Relli never seemed cold.
He never seemed tired either.
Or frightened.
Or uncertain.
He seemed carved out of whatever material men used when they wanted the world to believe nothing could hurt them.
Tonight, his black shirt was soaked against his shoulders. Dark hair had fallen across his forehead. Rainwater still traced the side of his neck, disappearing beneath the collar where the edge of a tattoo showed against his skin.
He looked less like the immaculate businessman I worked for every morning.
More like the man people whispered about after he left a room.
The man whose last name opened doors.
And occasionally made people lock them.
Enzo placed my portfolio on the desk and checked the clasp.
Still sealed.
He exhaled.
Only slightly.
I noticed anyway.
“What’s in those contracts that has you worried?”
“You prepared them.”
“I prepared the legal pages you gave me.”
“And?”
“And I know better than to read documents you tell me not to read.”
Something almost like amusement appeared in his eyes.
It vanished immediately.
“That may be why you’re still working for me.”
“That’s comforting.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
Another flash illuminated the room.
I looked toward the bed again.
Enzo followed my gaze.
For the first time since entering, something other than danger entered the silence.
Awkwardness.
There was one king-size bed.
One sofa.
The sofa was beautiful, expensive, and approximately five feet long.
Enzo was well over six feet.
I cleared my throat.
“I’ll take the sofa.”
“No.”
“The floor, then.”
“No.”
I stared at him.
“Those are the available options.”
“The bed is yours.”
“And you?”
“The sofa.”
“You won’t fit.”
“I’ve slept in worse places.”
The way he said it stopped me.
There had been no drama in his voice.
No invitation to ask questions.
Just fact.
I glanced at his tattooed forearm as he rolled his wet sleeve toward his elbow.
There were scars beneath the ink.
Old ones.
I had seen them before without really seeing them.
Tonight, somehow, they looked different.
“You’re freezing,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m standing in wet clothes.”
He crossed to the bathroom.
I heard cabinets open.
A moment later he returned carrying a white towel.
I expected him to toss it to me.
Instead he stopped directly in front of me.
Close.
Too close for a boss.
Too close for a man I had spent nearly a year carefully not thinking about outside office hours.
His eyes moved over my wet hair.
Then my face.
Then back to my eyes.
He held out the towel.
“You’re freezing.”
“I said I’m fine, Mr. Relli.”
“There. That sounds more like my secretary.”
I took the towel.
“You prefer it?”
“No.”
That single word landed strangely.
I looked down.
Bad idea.
His shirt was open at the collar.
Black-and-gray ink crossed the upper part of his chest. Another pattern disappeared beneath the fabric. I had seen Enzo without his jacket hundreds of times, but never soaked from a storm, never this close, never in a room where there was only one bed behind me.
I quickly began drying my hair.
His mouth moved slightly.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“No.”
“You are.”
“I’m wondering how someone who negotiates contracts worth millions can be intimidated by a towel.”
“I’m not intimidated by the towel.”
His eyebrow lifted.
I regretted the sentence immediately.
Then three hard knocks struck the door.
We both froze.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Enzo changed instantly.
The man who had almost smiled disappeared.
He moved between me and the door.
“Bathroom.”
“What?”
“Now.”
“Who is it?”
He turned his head.
“Sofia.”
I went.
Not because he raised his voice.
He didn’t.
That was why I moved.
I stepped into the bathroom but left the door open two inches.
Enzo approached the hotel-room door without making a sound.
“Who is it?”
“Hotel service.”
The voice belonged to a man.
Enzo looked at the clock.
11:43 p.m.
“We didn’t order anything.”
“Extra towels, sir.”
My stomach tightened.
Enzo looked toward the towel in my hands.
The hotel had already stocked six.
“Leave them outside.”
Silence.
Then footsteps retreated down the corridor.
I waited.
Enzo waited longer.
Finally he opened the door only as far as the security chain allowed.
Nobody stood outside.
No towels.
Nothing.
He closed it.
Locked it again.
When he turned, I was standing outside the bathroom.
“I thought you said this room wasn’t chosen by accident.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Then tell me what’s happening.”
He stared at me for several seconds.
“You want the truth?”
“Yes.”
“That number scratched on the key was used years ago by a man who worked for my father.”
I swallowed.
“What happened to him?”
“He betrayed us.”
“And seventeen?”
“The date he disappeared.”
The thunder seemed farther away now.
The danger didn’t.
“Is he dead?”
Enzo’s expression hardened.
“I thought so.”
I looked at the portfolio.
Then at the door.
“Until tonight?”
Enzo didn’t answer.
My phone buzzed.
Both of us looked down.
Unknown number.
One message.
I opened it before Enzo could stop me.
There was no greeting.
No explanation.
Only a photograph.
It had been taken less than a minute earlier.
Through the rain-covered window.
Enzo and I were visible inside room 307.
Someone was outside watching us.
May you like
Beneath the photograph were six words.
TELL ENZO TO OPEN THE PORTFOLIO.
