Chapter 4 - The Scent of Blood and Gasoline
By 7:30 a.m., the rain had slackened into a greasy fog that hung over the Chicago River.
Meline had not slept. She had spent the remainder of the night in Declan’s guest room, sitting by the window in an oversized cashmere sweater one of Declan’s staff had provided. Every time she closed her eyes, she heard Bradley’s smooth, cultivated voice whispering promises in the dark, each one now twisted into a calculated lie.
A knock sounded on the bedroom door. Liam stood in the hallway, holding a clean cup of black coffee and a fresh pair of dark trousers and sneakers.
“Mr. Fitzpatrick wants to move,” Liam said without preamble. “We have twenty minutes.”
Meline took the coffee. “Move where?”
“Your apartment on Lake Shore Drive,” Liam said. “He wants your personal effects, your passport, and your phone records before the Petrov crew decides to search the premises.”
Ten minutes later, Meline walked into the private elevator bank wearing the borrowed clothes. Declan was already waiting, dressed in an immaculate charcoal wool coat over a dark knit sweater. He looked rested, entirely unbothered by the fact that he had orchestrated an armed standoff hours earlier.
“Drink your coffee,” he said as the elevator descended smoothly. “We need to be in and out before morning traffic peaks.”
“My apartment has a doorman,” Meline said. “A security desk with keycard access.”
Declan cast her a sidelong glance. “Doormen make twenty-two dollars an hour, Meline. Viktor Petrov pays five thousand dollars just for the master key to a service elevator. Don't mistake convenience for safety.”
The black Mercedes was waiting at the private garage entrance. They drove in silence north along Michigan Avenue, cutting through the waking city. When the car pulled up a half-block south of her high-rise building, Declan checked his wristwatch.
“Liam, take the back stairs,” Declan ordered. “Meline and I will take the main lift. Ten minutes maximum.”
“Understood,” Liam replied, slipping out into the drizzle.
Meline led Declan through the revolving doors. The lobby was quiet, marble floors gleaming under recessed lights. The morning doorman, a man named Arthur who had tipped his hat to her for two years, looked up with widened eyes.
“Miss Hayes! Good morning. Mr. Carmichael’s associate was up earlier—”
Declan stepped forward, his hand slipping into his coat pocket with a quiet, menacing authority. “Which associate, Arthur?”
Arthur’s face drained of color. He recognized Declan. In a city where real power operated beneath the surface, men like Arthur knew which faces belonged to headlines and which belonged to silence. “Two gentlemen. Said they were moving some of Mr. Carmichael’s files. They went up about forty minutes ago.”
Declan didn’t wait. He grabbed Meline’s arm and moved swiftly toward the private elevators, punching the keycard into the brass slot. “Liam,” Declan spoke into a small earpiece. “The apartment is compromised. Two hostiles inside. Floor fourteen.”
The elevator ride felt interminable. Meline’s heart hammered against her ribs. “My mother’s jewelry,” she whispered, panic finally breaking through her composure. “Her lockbox is in the master closet. Bradley didn’t know the combination, but if they tear the place apart—”
“Stay behind me,” Declan commanded as the chime rang for the fourteenth floor.
The doors slid open. The carpeted hallway was eerily silent. Apartment 14B stood at the end of the corridor, its heavy walnut door cracked open by an inch. The brass lock was splintered, fragments of wood littering the runner rug.
Declan drew a dark, compact weapon from beneath his coat. The motion was so fluid, so instinctive, that Meline barely registered it until the steel caught the hallway light.
He raised his left hand, signaling her to halt against the wall.
Declan stepped through the door without a sound. Meline leaned around the doorframe, her knuckles pressed against her mouth to stifle a gasp.
The apartment she had decorated with such care over two years was utterly destroyed. Oil paintings had been slashed from their frames; the velvet sofa cushions were gutted, down feathers drifting through the air like snow. Drawers were dumped onto the hardwood floor; books and porcelain vases lay shattered in heaps.
From the master bedroom came the sound of tearing drywall.
Declan moved through the living room like a shadow, his footfalls making no sound on the hardwood. He reached the master bedroom doorway, stepped inside, and spoke:
“Put the crowbar down.”
A sharp shout echoed, followed by a violent thud. Meline flinched as a body slammed against the bedroom wall. A second later, a man came tumbling backward through the doorway, crashing into a shattered coffee table. He was bleeding from a split lip, scrambling to reach a snub-nosed revolver that had skittered across the floor.
Meline didn’t think. Fueled by months of betrayal and the violation of her home, she kicked the revolver with the toe of her sneaker. The weapon slid across the room, disappearing beneath the gutted sofa.
The intruder looked up at her with stunned rage, but before he could rise, Declan’s heavy leather boot planted itself firmly on the man’s sternum, pinning him to the floorboards with crushing pressure.
From the bedroom, Liam emerged, dragging a second man by the collar. The second intruder’s arm was twisted behind his back at an unnatural angle, his face gray with agony.
“Housekeeping is thorough,” Liam muttered dryly.
Declan looked down at the man beneath his boot. “Who told you about this address? Petrov doesn’t have this lease on file.”
The man spat blood onto the floor. “Carmichael... Carmichael gave it to us. He said the hard drive was in the wall safe.”
Meline felt the floor disappear beneath her feet. Bradley had sent them. He had sent Russian muscle to her apartment to recover his stolen records, fully aware that she might have been home asleep when they arrived.
Declan looked over his shoulder at Meline. His face was entirely devoid of warmth, carved from granite. “Find your mother’s box. We have four minutes.”
Meline ran into the bedroom. The closet door had been kicked off its hinges, but the false panel beneath the floorboards near the shoe rack had not been discovered. She wrenched the boards up with her bare hands, splintering her fingernails, and hauled out a small, tarnished steel box. She clutched it to her chest, her breathing ragged.
When she returned to the living room, Liam had zip-tied both men to the heavy legs of the ruined dining table. Declan was standing near the door, pocketing a sleek external hard drive he had retrieved from the rubble.
“We’re clear,” Declan said, his gaze dropping to the steel box in her arms, then rising to her eyes. He saw the cold, sharp shift in her expression—the remnants of the terrified fiancée had vanished, replaced by something hard and unyielding.
“He sent them to hurt me if I was here,” she said, her voice flat, devoid of tears.
“He sent them to clean up loose ends,” Declan corrected. He opened the apartment door, gesturing for her to precede him. “Now you understand why mercy is an expensive luxury in this city.”
As they stepped into the hallway, Meline’s phone vibrated in her pocket.
She pulled it out. The screen displayed an unknown caller ID, followed by a text notification:
*Meline. I know you’re alive. If you want to walk away from this, meet me at Navy Pier, Dock 4. Midnight. Come alone, or Fitzpatrick gets what he deserves.*
Declan glanced over her shoulder, reading the glowing text in the dim corridor light.
May you like
“Well,” Declan said softly, a dark, dangerous spark igniting in his gray eyes. “It seems your former fiancé is ready to negotiate.”
***
