Chapter 3 - The Cage of Silk
The Grand Royale rose above the skyline like a monument to cold, untouchable wealth. At precisely eight fifty-five, Bella stepped out of an elevator lined with smoked glass and brass trim directly into the private penthouse on the eighty-second floor.
She wore a dark green slip dress she had bought from a thrift store two years ago for a friend's wedding. It was simple, cut straight, and clung to her lean frame. She carried herself upright, her chin tilted up, refusing to show the vertigo turning her stomach to lead.
The penthouse was a cathedral of minimalist glass and dark wood. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the glowing grid of the rain-slicked city below. In front of an open gas fireplace sat Aleandro, clad in an open-collared black silk shirt, sipping amber scotch from a cut-crystal tumbler.
"You wore the green," he remarked, not turning around as the elevator doors whispered shut. "It suits you. Angry, but elegant."
"How do you know about my brother?" Bella demanded, skipping the pleasantries. Her heels clicked sharply against the polished Italian marble as she marched toward him. "Did you put someone in my apartment? Did you dig through my trash?"
Aleandro turned his head, looking over the back of the sofa with a faint, amused glint in his dark eyes. "I know everything that breathes in my district, Bella. A girl with hands that quick doesn't serve pasta unless she's running from something or fighting for someone. Marco Rossi. Seventeen. Aplastic anemia with atypical cell progression. His specialist is Dr. Charles Vance."
"Don't speak his name," she warned, stopping five feet from him.
"I bought his clinic this morning," Aleandro said softly, taking another sip.
Bella froze, the breath leaving her lungs in a sharp gasp. "You what?"
"Dr. Vance’s research wing was facing a two-million-dollar deficit. The board was preparing to cancel the clinical trial on Friday." He stood up, tall and commanding, towering over her with effortless menace. "I funded the entire five-year grant today at three in the afternoon. Your brother's bed is secured. His medicine is paid for until he either walks out healthy or draws his last breath."
Bella stared at him, feeling the room tilt beneath her feet. The suffocating terror of the last two years—the bills, the eviction notices, the late-night sobbing over spreadsheets—vanished in a single sentence, replaced by an even darker, more terrifying dread.
"Nothing is free with men like you," she whispered, her voice cracking slightly. "What do you want from me?"
Aleandro stepped closer, the scent of expensive sandalwood and rain radiating from his skin. He reached out and caught a loose strand of dark hair near her ear, twirling it slowly around his index finger.
"Salvatore Bianke wasn't the only snake in my grass," he murmured, his dark eyes dropping to her lips before returning to her defiant gaze. "A faction in New Jersey thinks I've grown soft. They think I sit behind desk glass while the empire rots. Tomorrow night, there is an underworld summit at the Bellagio Club. Every Don on the Eastern seaboard will be watching me."
May you like
"And?"
"They expect me to bring a terrified trophy. A broken doll who trembles when I raise my glass." His hand dropped from her hair to trace the line of her collarbone, his touch burning like dry ice. "I don't need a doll, Bella. I need the girl who looked into my eyes, grabbed my wrist, and told me not to dare her. You are going to be my fiancee for the next six months."
