Page 24 of The Assassin’s Captive (The Roma Syndicate #5)

SERENA

I wake to cold sheets and an empty bed. Lorenzo's gone. The space beside me holds only the faint warmth of his body and the memory of his hands on my skin. I run my fingers across the indent his head left in the pillow, already cooling in the morning air.

The house feels different without him in it. Larger, more hollow. The silence presses against my eardrums until I can hear my own heartbeat. I lie here thinking for a few minutes as my eyes fully wake up.

This new reality I'm living in is frightening, so much so that I almost wanted to deny the truth of it.

But I'm not one to get wrapped up in denial and hide from things.

I'm practical and I face challenges head-on, which is what makes me a great prosecutor.

But the softer side of me, the side that harbors fear of death and pain, it's weaker.

I find comfort in the idea that Lorenzo and I are together in this because it means I'm not alone.

It's just a bonus that he faces life head-on like me.

I dress in yesterday's clothes. The fabric feels foreign against skin that still remembers his touch. Each movement sends phantom sensations through me—the scrape of his beard against my throat, the weight of his body covering mine, the way he whispered my name in the darkness.

None of this makes sense.

I shouldn't feel this connection to him. This pull that grows stronger every hour I spend in his presence. He kidnapped me, threatened me, and stripped away every defense I've spent years constructing around myself.

But when the prowler appeared in the alley last night, when Lorenzo's body became a shield between me and the danger lurking outside, I felt safer than I have in weeks.

I know he wasn't ready to plunge into a dangerous situation just to guard his property.

He was on guard for me, to protect me. And I know when it comes to Costa, Lorenzo will do the same.

I know by the way he looks at me when I'm letting him in.

The kitchen is bathed in pale sunlight when I finally make my way downstairs. The coffee machine fills the air with the scent of rich espresso. I lean against the marble counter, letting the warmth of the cup seep into my palms as my mind spirals through everything that's happened.

The leak in my office. The threats against my adoptive parents. The way Lorenzo's voice turned raw when he told me about my real identity. All of it feels surreal, as if I'm watching someone else's life unravel from a distance like a movie played out on a screen.

But the ache between my thighs reminds me this is real. All of it.

I'm reaching for my second cup when I notice the small black device sitting on the kitchen table. A burner phone, its screen dark and lifeless. Lorenzo must have left it here before he disappeared this morning.

A plan forms in my thoughts as I stare at it.

He made a mistake. A horrible, dangerous mistake.

I know I shouldn't touch it. I know this is exactly the kind of breach that will send him into a rage. But the need to know what's happening to my life burns through me with an intensity that drowns out all rational thought.

The phone comes to life at my touch, my fingers trembling as I dial a number I know by heart.

Antonio Ricci—my paralegal and the man closest to me at the office—answers on the third ring.

"Pronto?"

"Antonio, it's Serena."

There is a short pause, long enough for his mind to connect to what I've just said, and then he replies, "Serena? Madonna mia , where are you? Everyone's been?—"

"I can't tell you that." The words rush out of me. "But I need to know what's happening. My cases, my office?—"

"Serena, you need to listen to me very carefully.

" Antonio's voice carries a panic I've never heard from him before.

"Someone got to the director of public prosecutions.

There's a gag order on your disappearance.

Complete media blackout. No one's allowed to talk about it, no one's allowed to investigate it. "

The room tilts around me. "What do you mean, gag order?"

"I mean someone with serious power made phone calls, and suddenly, you don't exist. Your cases are being quietly reassigned. Your office has been sealed. And people are starting to whisper."

My throat constricts. "Whisper about what?"

"About how you're related to Costa." The words tumble out as if Antonio is afraid to speak them. "The whole courthouse thinks you're crooked, Serena. They think you always have been. That this disappearance is all part of some elaborate scheme."

The phone slips in my sweat-slick palm. "That's insane. They know my record. They know the cases I've built against organized crime."

"Do they? Because right now it looks like you vanished the moment your connection to Emilio Costa came to light. It looks like you've been compromised from the beginning. Like every case you touched was tainted."

The kitchen spins around me. I grip the counter’s edge, my knuckles white against the dark marble.

"There's more," Antonio continues, his voice dropping to a whisper.

"A reporter has been sniffing around. Irene Bellandi.

She's been asking questions about your adoption records, your family history, your sudden rise through the prosecutor's office.

If you don't come back soon, she's going to publish whatever story she can piece together from the scraps. "

My breath comes in short, sharp bursts. "I can't come back. Not yet."

"Then you're finished. Your career, your reputation, everything you've worked for—it's all gone. People are saying you were planted in the prosecutor's office years ago. That every major conviction you secured was orchestrated to eliminate Costa's competition while making you look clean."

The accusation hits me in the gut, and I pull out a chair and sink into it. Years of eighteen-hour days, of building airtight cases, of turning down lucrative private sector offers to serve the public—all of it reduced to whispers of corruption and conspiracy.

"How long do I have?" I whisper.

"Days. Maybe less. The director is under pressure to formally declare you missing or presumed dead. Once that happens, there's no coming back from it. You'll be a ghost."

"Antonio—"

But the line goes dead, leaving me alone with the devastating reality of what my life has become.

I set the phone on the table with trembling hands, staring at the black screen. My life is over. Everything I knew, everything I worked for, it's all vanished because of a fact I can't control. I'm beginning to understand how easily the wool can be torn out from under someone.

I'm trapped between a world that now sees me as corrupt and a man who holds my life in his hands. The career I built through years of relentless dedication is crumbling while I hide in the house of a killer who may be the only person left who believes in my innocence.

The irony would be laughable if it weren't so devastating.

Footsteps in the hallway come in faintly, breaking through my stupor, and I turn to see Lorenzo emerge from the shadows, his face carved from stone. His eyes go immediately to the phone inches from my hands, and I watch understanding dawn across his features.

The temperature in the room drops ten degrees.

"What did you do?"

The question is quiet, deadly. I force myself to meet his gaze.

"I called someone at the courthouse. I needed to know what was happening to my life?—"

"You needed to know what?" He moves toward me with predatory grace, each step calculated and controlled. "How many people you could endanger? How quickly you could unravel every security measure I've put in place?"

"I didn't tell anyone where I am." The words come out defensive, desperate. "I swear to you, Lorenzo. I would never?—"

But he's already reaching for the phone, his fingers closing around it with bruising force. "You used my phone. My network. My security protocols."

"I know, but?—"

"There is no but." His voice is ice and fury. "There is only the fact that you just made yourself traceable. You just painted a target on both our backs because you couldn't control yourself for one morning."

He's right, and I know it. But the desperation clawing at my chest won't let me admit it.

"My life is falling apart," I whisper. "My career, my reputation, everything I've ever worked for. They think I'm crooked. They think I've been working for Emilio Costa all along."

"And now they might be right," Lorenzo says coldly. "Because you just proved you can't be trusted with the most basic operational security." His eyes narrow at me. "What happened to being allies, Serena?"

The words are a blade sliding between my ribs. I watch as he turns away from me, the phone disappearing into his jacket pocket. When he looks at me again, the man who held me through the night is gone. In his place stands the assassin who kidnapped me.

"Get back to the bedroom," he says.

"Lorenzo, please?—"

"Now."

The command in his voice leaves no room for argument.

I rise and walk toward the hallway on unsteady legs, my heart hammering against my ribs.

Behind me, I hear him following, but the heaviness of his boots on the floor scares me.

He has been stern with me, forceful, direct—threatening even.

But he's never been angry like this. And I'm afraid of what it means.

He ushers me into the bedroom and stands with the doorknob in his hand. "I'll be back," he says through the open door. "Don't do anything else stupid while I'm gone." When he pulls it shut, I hear the lock click and my heart sinks.

His footsteps fade down the hallway, leaving me alone in the room where he made me forget, for a few precious hours, that I was his prisoner.

I sink onto the edge of the bed, my head in my hands.

The sheets still carry his scent, still hold the memory of his weight pressing me into the mattress.

But that warmth feels like a lifetime ago now.

The hopelessness crashes over me in waves, each one darker and more crushing than the last. I thought I'd reached bottom when Lorenzo first took me from my apartment. I was wrong.

This is what drowning feels like. This is what it means to watch everything you've ever built crumble while you're powerless to stop it.

And the worst part? The man I've started to trust—the man I've started to want—just locked me away like I'm nothing more than a problem to be contained.