Chapter 4 - The Shadows at the Penthouse
I didn't take the flight to Seattle.
When you have spent three years scraping grease off coffee machines to pay off your mother’s hospital bills, running away to another city with fifty thousand dollars feels like trading one cage for another. Besides, the cold truth was simple: if Matteo Ferrante’s men could find my apartment in three hours, the men who wanted to hurt little Marco could find me in Seattle in two days.
I chose the penthouse.
By Friday afternoon, my meager life in Queens had been packed into two cardboard boxes by two silent men named Gianni and Luca. They burned my lease, paid off my landlord with three months’ rent in crisp hundreds, and settled every penny of my mother’s outstanding collections. For the first time since I was eighteen, I was debt-free.
Yet every time I stepped out onto the marble terrace forty floors above Central Park, I felt like a songbird kept in a gilded cage lined with Kevlar.
My days took on a strange, surreal rhythm. Marco woke at seven. We ate breakfast prepared by Mrs. Rossi, who spoke only Sicilian and eyed me with cautious warmth. Marco and I spent the mornings working on his reading, alternating between English and Italian. The boy was bright, wildly imaginative, and fiercely attached to me. He wouldn't let anyone else tie his shoes or read him stories about Roman gladiators before his afternoon nap.
Matteo was rarely home during the day. He existed as a heavy presence: the smell of his cologne lingering in the grand entryway, the murmur of heated phone calls behind the mahogany double doors of his private study late at night, the occasional glimpse of him standing by the panoramic window at 3:00 a.m., nursing a tumbler of bourbon while staring out into the black expanse of the park.
He was distant, polite, and completely untouchable.
Until the second Tuesday.
Marco had fallen asleep early after an afternoon of painting watercolors on the balcony. I was walking down the dimly lit hallway toward my suite when I heard a heavy crash from the study. It sounded like glass shattering against stone.
I froze. My instinct told me to run to my room and lock the door, but the sound was followed by a ragged, choking gasp that made my feet move forward instead.
I pushed the door open.
The study was dark, illuminated only by the city skyline. Matteo was slumped over his massive walnut desk. A crystal glass lay in pieces on the Persian rug, dark liquor soaking into the fibers. His dress shirt was half-unbuttoned, his face drenched in sweat, his breathing coming in shallow, shuddering gasps.
""Matteo?"" I whispered, stepping across the threshold.
His head snapped up. In the shadows, his eyes were wild with pain. One hand gripped the edge of the desk so tightly the wood groaned; the other was pressed hard against his ribs, where a dark, spreading stain was bleeding through the white cotton of his shirt.
""Get out, Nadia,"" he snarled through clenched teeth. ""Call Gianni. Tell him... doctor.""
""You're bleeding to death!"" I rushed forward, ignoring the terrifying darkness in his posture. I grabbed a linen napkin from the side table and pressed it against his side.
Matteo hissed in agony, his hand shooting out to lock around my wrist with bruising strength. For a second, I looked directly into the predator’s eyes—the mafia don who controlled shipping ports and made corrupt politicians disappear.
Then his grip slackened. He looked at my face, at the genuine terror in my eyes, and his shoulders sagged.
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""I can't go to a hospital,"" he whispered, his head dropping back against the leather chair. ""A bullet graze... from the docks. If the board knows I am hit... the family falls apart.""
""I'm not calling a hospital,"" I said, my voice steadying with sudden adrenaline. ""My mother was a hospice nurse, Matteo. I cared for her for two years. Sit back and don't move.""
