Chapter 3 - The Safe House
Dante did not take me to his home.
He took me to a private apartment above a law office three miles from the ballroom.
There were cameras at every entrance.
Two guards stood downstairs.
Another waited outside the elevator.
I should have been terrified.
Instead, for the first time in months, I could breathe.
A woman named Sofia brought me ice for my wrist.
She looked to be in her fifties.
Elegant.
Calm.
Kind without being intrusive.
“You can lock the bedroom door from inside,” she told me.
“No one enters without your permission.”
That sentence nearly made me cry.
Dante stood across the room.
He had removed his jacket.
Without the ballroom around him, he looked less like a legend and more like a tired man carrying too many years.
“You should call the police,” he said.
I stared at him.
“I thought men like you didn’t say that.”
“Men like me?”
“Mafia bosses.”
Sofia almost choked on her coffee.
Dante raised an eyebrow.
“At least you’re direct.”
“Chicago talks.”
“Chicago exaggerates.”
“Does it?”
“No.”
That answer surprised a laugh out of me.
It was the first time I had laughed all night.
Then Dante became serious.
“You need a record of what Nolan did.”
I looked down.
“I’ve covered for him before.”
“You don’t have to anymore.”
My throat tightened.
Dante placed a phone on the table.
“It’s clean.”
I frowned.
“He can track mine?”
“He already was.”
Everything inside me went still.
Dante slid my phone across the table.
Marco had removed the case.
A tiny black device sat beside it.
“A tracker?”
“More than that.”
Marco leaned against the wall.
“It was transmitting your location.”
I looked at Dante.
“Nolan put that there?”
“Maybe.”
That word scared me.
“Maybe?”
Dante unfolded the cocktail napkin from the ballroom.
SHE KNOWS NOTHING.
“Whoever Nolan looked at tonight knew you were important enough to monitor.”
“I’m not important.”
Dante’s gaze held mine.
“Someone disagrees.”
I thought about Nolan’s strange absences.
His locked office.
The calls he always took on the balcony.
The night he screamed when I accidentally opened one of his desk drawers.
Then I remembered something.
“There’s a key.”
Dante leaned forward.
“What key?”
“In Nolan’s apartment.”
I swallowed.
“He keeps it taped underneath the bottom drawer of his desk.”
“What does it open?”
“I don’t know.”
Marco looked at Dante.
Dante looked at me.
And suddenly I understood.
He wanted the key.
So did I.
May you like
Because after two years of being terrified inside that apartment, I finally wanted to know what Nolan had been protecting.
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