Chapter 5

Vincenzo's POV

Most people, when they found themselves kneeling in a snowstorm in front of four armed men, stopped talking.

But she was still constructing sentences, still choosing her words, still watching my face.

I had learned, a long time ago, to pay attention to people who kept talking under pressure.

Because they were thinking.

And thinking people were either useful or dangerous, and you needed to know which one before you made any decisions.

Still, I let her finish.

Her voice was unexpectedly easy to listen to, low and a little unsteady.

When she looked up at me the makeup was a disaster, but underneath all of it those eyes were the pale, startled blue of a bird that had flown into a window and hadn't quite decided yet whether it was going to survive the impact.

Something in my chest did a thing it had no business doing.

I had no business wanting to protect—wide and unsteady, the kind of eyes that made you want to step between them and whatever was coming next, which was exactly the kind of thinking that got men killed.

"Where did you get the coat?" I asked.

She blinked.

It was a fast blink, the kind that meant the question had landed somewhere unexpected.

"The coat," I said.

The parka she was wearing was not a bar girl's coat. I knew what things cost.

A girl who carried drinks for tips did not own a coat like that.

And a girl who owned a coat like that did not have any business being alone in this part of the city at two in the morning.

"Where did you get it?" I asked.

"A client gave it to me," she said.

"A client?"

"At the club." She nodded, earnest and immediate, the words already assembled and ready. "He left it behind one night. I tried to return it but he never came back for it, so."

A small lift of her shoulders, I recognized that was the kind people gave when they explained a piece of good luck they felt a little guilty about..

"I don't even know what it costs. I never looked it up."

She must have seen the doubt still sitting on my face, because she reached up and unzipped her parka in one smooth motion, pulling it wide open.

Underneath it was a black satin slip dress that looked like it had been purchased from a rack at the back of a party supply store.

"See?" she said. "I'm wearing that under it. Do I look like someone who can afford anything?"

The dress clung to every curve she had—full breasts, a waist I could have spanned with both hands—and my throat tightened.

I swallowed hard against a sudden dry heat that coiled low in my chest and did not move.

I dragged my eyes away before she could catch the split-second flicker of raw, unguarded reaction crossing my face.

"Boss," Rio said, in the tone of a man who had just solved a puzzle that had been mildly bothering him, "I think she works a different kind of shift than the one she's describing."

Rio looked at the coat, then at the dress, then at her face.

"She's a hooker," he said. "Coat's from a client."

Her mouth opened, then closed.

The offense on her face deepened into something that was, genuinely, a little funny.

She looked up at me like I was the reasonable one in this conversation and she was appealing to a higher authority.

I looked back at her.

The wind shifted, just slightly, just enough, and I caught it then—something faint and clean underneath the cold and the exhaust and the chemical bite of her makeup. It did not smell like perfume.

It did not smell like anything I had a name for. It was the kind of thing you registered before your brain caught up, a pull at the back of the throat, a sudden and irrational stillness.

My long-held rule was simple: better to cut loose any potential threat than gamble on mercy.

But that faint, elusive scent tangled around my senses, and against all logic, I found myself softening toward her, even beneath that grotesque, clownish club makeup.

I could not keep my eyes from drifting over her frame.

My gaze lingered a beat longer on the faint birthmark peeking out on the curve of her shoulder where her coat hung loose.

She felt the weight of my unsparing, heated stare.

Her shoulders tensed, and she fumbled quickly, yanking her coat zipper all the way up to her collar to cover every inch of exposed skin.

"Here is what's going to happen," I said.

Something moved in her face. She went very still.

"You have ten minutes before we come after you."

I paused, letting every word sink deep, making certain she understood there was no trick hidden between the lines.

"If we catch up to you, we kill you. If you get fully out of this district within those ten minutes and we lose your trail, you walk away completely unharmed."

A heavy hush settled over the snow-dusted street.

I caught it in her expression—the stunned silence of a person trying to wrap her mind around terms she never imagined she would be offered.

"While I'm on a scooter." There was faint, bitter disbelief laced in her words.

"Those are the hard rules. No loopholes." I kept my tone flat, stripping away any hint of mercy.

Neither of us fooled ourselves.

It was never truly fair.

I still could not parse why I hesitated. This was so far from my usual code—eliminate every potential threat, take zero unnecessary risks.

Yet something about her, that faint strange scent, that grit beneath the terrible club makeup, gnawed at my better judgment. I could not bring myself to pull the trigger outright.

"The clock starts," I said.

She held my gaze one final heartbeat.

No begging, no useless pleas.

She simply spun on her heel and headed for her two-wheeled vehicle.

I kept my eyes locked on her retreating figure, not looking away until she kicked it to life.

"Boss." Marco drifted over to my left, his voice low and cautious.

"Get the car ready."

I watched her silhouette shrink against the snow-blurred pavement as she picked up speed, leaning hard into her first sharp turn.