Page 14 of Taken By the Enforcer

I nod once. “She’ll rest now.”

“Room 214?” Faustino confirms with Leone. He nods. I picture theMirto’scorridor—faded runner, brass numbers screwed crooked into doors, a housekeeping cart squatting like a fat dog outside one. Paolina inside behind a lock she believes can stop the world. Her breathing calming, her fingers unclenching one by one, a shower washing sugar and sin off skin, the curls at her nape frizzing in cheap steam. A bed that is not mine holding her lush body safe for a few hours.

“Two on the exits,” I say. “One watches the desk. I’ll take the rest.”

Marcello lifts a brow. “You going to sit in a lobby chair and read a newspaper like a husband who forgives?”

“I’m going to sit where she can’t see me and listen to the sound the elevator makes when it stops on the second floor.” I look at them both. “When she comes down, she’ll meet me, or she’ll meet the day. I prefer that she meets me.”

Faustino tosses me a key fob. “S-Class out front. You won’t drive it far.”

“I won’t drive it at all,” I say, and tuck the veil from the hotel into my jacket pocket because I took the note and I take the symbol. “When she sees me, she’ll run. I’ll let her. Once. She needs to learn what it feels like to be chased by a man who never stops.”

Marcello chuckles. “You’re a romantic, fratello.”

“I’m a hunter,” I correct. Then I set the empty glass down with a soft click. “And I’m done waiting.”

TheMirtosits in the shadow ofViale della Libertà, a dowdy three-story building that pretends it was elegant once and knows it wasn’t. I park half a block away, walk past a newsstand that peddles lottery tickets and magazines featuring actresses with impossible lips, and nod to a woman watering geraniums on a balcony. Inside, the lobby smells of lemon cleaner and old air-conditioning. A fan ticks at the ceiling. The clerk at the desk looks up,eyes widening, then dropping, survival instincts quicker than fear.

I don’t speak to him. A cracked leather chair in the corner faces the elevator and a wall mirror angled to catch the stairwell. I sit. People become invisible fastest when they act like they belong. Kings and thieves know this trick equally well.

Time lengthens. The mirror shows me distorted, taller, the way carnival glass makes men into myths. Footsteps scrape upstairs, slow and tired. The elevator hums, stops on three, goes nowhere, grinds back to two. A maid’s cart squeaks. Somewhere a TV plays a soap opera argument dripping with betrayal and wild violins.

The elevator shudders, opens, and breathes out a woman in a black T-shirt and denim, baseball cap low, sunglasses oversized, a canvas duffel slung across her chest like a shield, trainers silent. She looks left, then right. Her chin lifts, a small, stubborn tilt I want to kiss. Blood dried like a thin necklace across the top of her foot where the strap cut earlier; she put the trainers on too fast for socks. It makes me love her more.

She doesn’t see me. Instead, her eyes track the door. She walks. Her hand brushes the desk, a ghost tip that leaves two keys she doesn’t want to need again.

Just before she reaches the threshold, wind bellies the awning outside and the street noise swells—voices, the pop of a scooter backfiring, an old man laughing, the click of a woman’s heels. It distracts her for a fraction of a second. She decides in that second to look back.

Her eyes hit the mirror first. Then they ricochet to me.

Everything in the room goes still.

Her breath stops. Mine doesn’t. I rise without hurry because speed is for prey, and I am not prey.

“Paolina,” I say, and my voice comes out quiet and certain, the way a tide speaks when it takes a shore. “Come.”

She makes the only choice she can make: the one that proves she’s exactly the woman I already decided to spend the rest of my life chasing. She bolts.

Out the door, into the late afternoon, down the steps in one flying leap, cap tightening with the force of motion. I let her go, count three heartbeats because I promised myself I would, then I follow.

Hunt begins.

CHAPTER 5

5Months Later — New York City

Paolina

The bellabove the diner door jingles, another gust of January wind knifing through before it slams shut. I tuck the pencil behind my ear, balancing a tray with one hand, and paste on the smile I save for customers who think I’m too young or too soft to handle their complaints.

The Formica counter shines with the same greasy sheen as my apron. The smell of frying bacon and burnt coffee seeps into my skin until I swear it comes out of my pores. Plates clatter. Voices rise and fall. A toddler shrieks in delight as her father flips her a sugar packet like it’s treasure.

This isn’t what Papà imagined for his daughter. Not a Corsetti heiress. Not the girl who used to glide throughballrooms under crystal chandeliers, arm locked with Aldo’s, pretending she wanted the life chosen for her.

But I’d rather be a fallen mafia princess slinging hash in Queens than the wife of Aldo Buratti.

I set down the tray with three burgers, balancing it with the grace drilled into me from etiquette classes. “Order up,” I call, sliding ketchup bottles across the table. “Anything else?”