Chapter 8 - The Apartment on Mercer Street
Roman wanted Paige moved into the Gallow estate before midnight.
Paige refused before he finished the sentence.
“No.”
They stood in his office beneath the glow of the Boston skyline, the threatening photo still open on Roman’s phone. Rain traced crooked lines down the windows. Somewhere below, the city moved on as if Paige’s life had not just been reduced to a hallway, a door, and a warning from men who knew where she slept.
Roman stared at her. “That was not a suggestion.”
“I’m not luggage, Roman.”
“No. You are a target.”
“Then let me go home with guards.”
“You think I’m sending you back to an apartment building with two broken locks and a landlord who fixes pipes with duct tape?”
Paige folded her arms. “I think I have lived there for four years without your permission.”
His voice hardened. “That was before Declan Vale decided you were a threat.”
“And what happens if I move into your fortress tonight?” she shot back. “Every gossip account in Boston runs with it by morning. Your enemies say I’m your mistress, your weakness, your kept woman, your compromised employee. They stop talking about ledgers and start talking about me.”
Roman’s face went still.
Paige knew she had landed the point.
For all his money and menace, Roman understood reputation. He had lived inside the cage of his own legend for too long not to know how quickly a woman could be turned into a scandal.
Luca, standing near the door, cleared his throat carefully. “There’s another option.”
Both of them looked at him.
“My sister owns a brownstone in Beacon Hill under her married name. Empty garden unit. Private entrance. Secure garage. No connection to Gallow on paper.”
Paige looked at Luca. “You have a sister?”
His expression flattened. “I contain multitudes.”
Despite everything, Paige almost smiled.
Roman did not.
“We move her there tonight,” he said. “Temporary.”
Paige hated that the word temporary made her feel relieved.
They arrived at her Mercer Street apartment just after eleven with Luca, two guards, and a black SUV waiting in the alley. Paige expected to feel embarrassed by the cracked linoleum, the radiator that clanged like a prison pipe, the thrift-store furniture, the stack of medical bills she still kept in a shoebox even though Roman had quietly settled them.
Instead, she felt angry.
This shabby little apartment had held her together when no one else had. It had watched her eat cereal for dinner and cry silently over hospital invoices. It had kept her alive.
Now Declan Vale had made it feel unsafe.
She packed fast.
Clothes. Laptop. Her mother’s recipe box. A framed photo from a summer beach trip before illness stole the softness from their lives. The old shoebox of bills.
Roman stood near the door, saying nothing, watching everything.
When Paige reached for a small ceramic mug on the windowsill, she noticed the window latch.
It was open.
She froze.
Roman saw her body change and moved instantly.
“What?”
“I locked that.”
Luca drew his weapon and signaled the guards.
Paige stepped back as one of them pushed the bathroom door open. Another checked the closet. The apartment was empty.
Almost.
On her kitchen table sat a white envelope.
Paige knew it had not been there when she left for work.
Roman opened it with a gloved hand.
Inside was a photocopy of an old newspaper article dated five years earlier.
GALLOW FAMILY KILLED IN HARBOR TUNNEL EXPLOSION.
Across the article, someone had written in black marker:
ASK ROMAN WHO MISSED THE CAR.
Paige looked up slowly.
Roman’s face had gone bloodless.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
For a moment, he did not answer.
Then he said, “I was supposed to be in that car.”
The apartment seemed to shrink around them.
Roman stared at the article as if it had pulled him backward through time. “My father called a family meeting that night. My brothers, my father, me. Last minute, Declan told me there was an issue at the docks. He sent me to handle it.”
Paige whispered, “So you lived because Declan redirected you.”
Roman’s eyes lifted to hers.
“Or because he needed me alive.”
A sound came from the hallway.
Soft.
A shoe against old wood.
Luca raised one hand.
The next ten seconds happened too fast to understand cleanly. The door burst inward. A masked man rushed Luca with a metal baton. Another came through the stairwell entrance. Paige stumbled back as Roman pulled her behind him, not with panic, but with terrifying precision.
No gunshots.
No shouting.
Just impact, breath, movement.
Luca dropped the first man with a hard strike to the ribs. Roman caught the second by the wrist before he could reach Paige and drove him into the wall with enough force to crack plaster.
The man fell, groaning.
A phone skidded from his pocket.
Its screen was still lit.
A live call.
Roman picked it up.
For three seconds, no one spoke.
Then Declan’s voice came through, smooth as polished bone.
“Roman, this is becoming emotional.”
Roman’s hand tightened around the phone.
Declan continued. “Emotional men make poor kings.”
Paige stepped forward, rage burning through her fear.
“Then it’s a good thing he has an operations director.”
Silence.
Then Declan chuckled.
“You are very brave for someone so easy to erase.”
Roman’s expression changed.
Paige had seen him angry. She had seen him cold. This was something else.
This was the old Roman pressing against the bars.
He spoke quietly. “Run while you can, Declan.”
Declan replied, “Find the Widow Ledger first.”
The call ended.
Luca zip-tied the attackers and called trusted police contacts who owed Roman clean favors, not dirty ones. Paige stood in the wreckage of her apartment, hands shaking, staring at the open window and the article on the table.
Roman approached carefully.
“Paige.”
She looked at him. “Don’t ask me to walk away.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good.”
His eyes softened, and for one brief, impossible moment, all the danger in the room bent around something tender.
Then Paige noticed a detail on the newspaper photocopy.
A tiny handwritten code in the corner.
Not from Declan.
From the original archive.
“Roman,” she said slowly. “This article came from a library microfilm scan.”
“So?”
“So old newspaper archives track retrieval numbers.”
She picked up her laptop with her good hand.
“If someone pulled this article recently, we can find out where.”
Roman looked at her as if she had just turned a match into a sunrise.
May you like
For the first time that night, he smiled.
“Then let’s go hunting.”
