Chapter 6 - The Velvet Cage
The interior of the armored Maybach was completely silent, insulated from the city noise by double-paned ballistic glass and three inches of reinforced steel. Outside the tinted windows, the gray skyscrapers of the financial district blurred past in the late afternoon rain.
Sadi sat back against the butter-soft leather seats, her bare foot resting on Roman’s knee.
He had taken off his heavy wool overcoat, rolling up the sleeves of his white dress shirt to reveal the dark, intricate tattoos that crept from his forearms up into his collar—marks of a past he never talked about, earned in places that didn't appear on tourist maps. In his hand, he held an ice pack wrapped in a linen towel, pressing it gently against the deep purple contusion blooming across her right calf.
"You should have let Dante handle him outside," Sadi murmured, looking down at his large, steady hands. "You didn't have to ruin Marcus Sterling’s entire firm over a kicked shin."
Roman didn't look up from her leg. His thumb smoothed over the unbruised skin near her ankle. "He didn't just kick your shin, Sadi. He kicked my wife. And he thought he had the right to do it because he remembered you when you were defenseless."
Sadi let out a long, quiet breath, leaning her head back against the leather headrest. "Sometimes I still feel defenseless. You can put me in cashmere, Roman. You can buy the building I shop in. But when he walked up behind me... my body remembered being hungry. It remembered the eviction notices."
Roman paused. He set the ice pack aside and wrapped his hand around her ankle, his grip warm, solid, and immovable. He lifted his gaze, his gray eyes pinning hers with an intensity that made the air between them feel thick.
"Listen to me," Roman said, his voice dropping into that quiet, terrifying register that commanded absolute obedience. "You survived twenty-six years of a world that tried to chew you up and spit you out. You survived on your own. You didn't break. You didn't turn cruel. You are the strongest thing in my life, Sadi."
A faint, sad smile touched the corner of her lips. "I don't feel strong. I feel like a stray you picked up off the street."
"I didn't pick you up," Roman corrected her softly. "You walked into my life and gave me a reason to stop burning everything to the ground."
They had met eighteen months ago. Not at a gala. Not through high-society matchmakers.
Roman had been bleeding out in the narrow, trash-strewn alley behind the all-night diner where Sadi worked the graveyard shift. A rival syndicate had ambushed his convoy, and Roman had crawled into the dark, clutching two bullet wounds in his abdomen, waiting for death or his extraction team.
Sadi had found him while taking out the trash.
Any other person would have screamed. Any sensible person would have run inside and called the police, or simply locked the steel door and pretended they hadn't seen anything.
Sadi hadn't screamed. She had looked at the blood, looked into the cold, dying eyes of a killer, and dragged him inside through the kitchen. She had used clean dish towels, a bottle of cheap vodka, and her own rough knowledge of first aid from years of caring for her ailing mother to plug the holes in his flesh before his men arrived.
When Dante and twelve armed men had kicked the back door open with assault rifles drawn, Sadi hadn't flinched. She had simply stood between the guns and the bleeding man on her kitchen floor, holding a heavy meat cleaver, and said, *“Wash your boots before you step on my clean floor.”*
Roman had fallen in love with her in that exact second.
Three months later, he proposed. Not with a contract, but with an offer: absolute protection, total freedom, and an empire laid at her feet. Sadi had accepted, not out of greed, but because for the first time in her life, someone looked at her like she was irreplaceable.
"What are you going to do to Trevor?" Sadi asked now, breaking the silence of the car.
Roman’s expression went utterly smooth, like marble. "Trevor is already dead, Sadi. He just hasn't stopped breathing yet. Without his uncle’s firm, without his credentials, he is a man with massive debts and zero utility. The creditors will pick his bones clean by morning."
The car smoothly pulled up to the private underground entrance of their high-rise penthouse. The steel security gates rolled down behind them, sealing them away from the world.
"Tonight is the St. Jude Children’s Gala," Sadi said, testing her weight as she slipped her shoe back on. "Marcus Sterling was supposed to be a primary donor. Everyone will know."
May you like
"Good," Roman said, stepping out of the vehicle and extending his hand to her. "Let them know. Let every snake in this city see who wears the crown tonight."
***
