He said my name like it was an apology and a warning wrapped into one.
“Don’t panic,” Luca murmured, as if my pulse wasn’t already sprinting, as if my skin wasn’t already too tight. “But we need to talk about why they’re watching you.”
I stared at him, then at the phone, then back at him, trying to make the room rearrange itself into something normal again. It wouldn’t. It stayed exactly as it was, too warm, too close, too charged, and now threaded through with something colder.
“How do you know my name?” My voice came out steadier than I felt.
His jaw tightened. “You’re going to hate the answer.”
“That depends.”
“It depends on whether you want the truth or comfort.”
I held his gaze and felt that familiar, infuriating thing happen again, the part of me that responded to him not because he was beautiful or confident, but because he was direct. He didn’t dress it up. He didn’t soften it to make it easier to swallow.
“The truth,” I said. “Always.”
He nodded once, like he’d expected that. Like he’d chosen me because of it.
“My name isn’t Luca,” he said quietly.
The air punched out of my lungs. It was ridiculous how much that one sentence changed the atmosphere, like a perfume turning sour on the skin.
“Then who are you?” I asked.
He didn’t answer at once. He looked at the phone again, and there was a flicker in his expression that wasn’t fear, but calculation. Not the arrogant kind. The kind that comes from experience. The kind that says, I have done this before and it rarely ends cleanly.
“Close the curtains,” he said.
“What?”
“Please.” His voice stayed calm, but there was steel under it now. “And lock the door.”
I should have told him to leave. I should have listened to the message and sent him straight back into the corridor. But the message had come from the same number as him, and that fact kept catching in my brain like a splinter.
You should not be alone with him.
If the warning was real, it meant someone knew I was here. If someone knew I was here, then the danger wasn’t Luca standing in my room with his hands visibly empty. It was whatever had reached into my quiet and found me anyway.
I crossed the room, drew the curtains, and turned the lock. The click sounded final.
When I turned back, he hadn’t moved. He stayed where he was, giving me space, letting me choose the distance between us, and that shouldn’t have mattered, but it did.
“Better,” he said softly. “Thank you.”
“Now talk,” I said. “And don’t try to manage me.”
A corner of his mouth lifted, but there was no humour in it. “I’m not trying to manage you. I’m trying to keep you alive.”
My stomach dropped.
“Stop,” I said. “You don’t get to say things like that as if you’re ordering a drink.”
He took a breath, slow and controlled. “Okay. Then I’ll say it properly. There are people who are looking for you. Not because you’re important in the way the world likes, but because you’re inconvenient to them. You’re a loose end.”
I felt my hand curl into a fist without my permission.
“A loose end to who?”
He stepped closer, then stopped, the last space left untouched as if it were sacred. “To the man you ran from.”
My throat went dry. My mind tried to refuse the sentence, tried to pretend it didn’t know what he meant.
“I haven’t run from anyone,” I said, and even to my own ears it sounded like a lie you tell yourself because the alternative hurts too much.
His gaze stayed steady. “Your passport doesn’t match your booking.”
I froze. Completely.
“My what?”
“Your name,” he said gently. “The one you gave the hotel. It’s not your real one.”
My skin went cold and my heart did that sharp, ugly lurch, the one that isn’t fear alone but recognition. I didn’t speak because if I opened my mouth, something too real might fall out.
He watched me, waiting. Not pouncing. Not pressing. Waiting in the way that made me hate him and want him at the same time.
“You checked my booking,” I said finally.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His jaw tightened again. “Because you looked like someone who needed a door that locks, and I’ve learned not to ignore that.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is,” he said, and his voice dipped lower. “It’s just not one you like.”
I took a step back, putting a clean distance between us, and the room felt suddenly smaller, not because he moved but because I did.
“You’re security,” I said. “Or you work for the hotel.”
“No.”
“A policeman.”
“No.”
“A journalist.”
His expression hardened. “Absolutely not.”
I swallowed. “Then what are you?”
He hesitated, then reached into his jacket slowly, the movement deliberate, careful, giving me time to panic if I wanted to. He pulled out a slim wallet and opened it, holding it out at arm’s length like a confession.
I didn’t take it. I didn’t need to. I could see enough.
A badge. Not uniformed, not theatrical, but official enough to make my mouth taste metallic.
“Private intelligence,” he said. “Corporate investigations. Risk. That sort of thing.”
I stared at it until my eyes blurred. “So you came to my door because I nearly hit you with my suitcase,” I said flatly.
“No.” He closed the wallet and put it back, then lifted his hands again, palms open, as if he knew exactly how he looked to me now. “I came to your door because you were flagged.”
My pulse turned savage.
“Flagged by who?”
He didn’t answer immediately. That alone was an answer.
“By him,” I whispered.
He nodded once. “By him.”
The room tilted slightly, not physically, but inside me. I could feel the old instincts awaken, the ones that know how to survive by becoming small, by being agreeable, by disappearing.
I had promised myself I’d never do that again.
“You lied,” I said, and the betrayal burned in my throat.
“Yes,” he said, and he didn’t flinch from it. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it.”
“I know.”
I held his gaze, searching for the tell that would make him simple. Men like him are easier when you can label them. Predator. Hero. Threat. Ally. The problem was he didn’t sit neatly in any box. He looked like a man who had done bad things for good reasons, and the kind of man who wouldn’t pretend otherwise.
“Why?” I demanded. “Why me? Why tonight?”
He took a breath. “Because your file landed on my desk yesterday.”
My blood went cold. “My file.”
“You used to work for a foundation,” he said quietly, watching me as he spoke. “You handled accounts. Transfers. Charitable grants.”
I didn’t speak. My silence was a knife in my own hand. I didn’t want to confirm anything. I didn’t want to give him more than he already had.
He continued anyway.
“Someone moved money through your work. Dirty money. You didn’t authorise it, but your name is attached to the paper trail. That makes you useful. It also makes you dangerous.”
I felt bile rise, sharp and bitter.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “I didn’t take anything.”
“I believe you,” he said, and his voice softened. “But belief doesn’t protect you from men who don’t care what’s true.”
My phone buzzed again on the bedside table, as if it had been waiting for that exact sentence.
A new message lit the screen.
Don’t let him take you out of the room.
I stared at it, then looked up at him.
His gaze flicked to the phone and his face changed, just slightly, like he was hearing a voice he didn’t want to hear.
“You know them,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Who?”
He hesitated, and I felt rage sharpen into something cleaner.
“You don’t get to keep doing that,” I said, voice low. “No half truths. Not now.”
His expression tightened. “It’s not a person. It’s a team.”
“A team.”
“A unit,” he said. “They’re not your friends. They’re not my friends. They’re a problem that thinks it can be the solution.”
I let out a laugh that held no humour. “So who is the monster here, Luca, because I’m losing track.”
His gaze held mine, steady, and for a moment the heat that had been building between us earlier tried to push itself back into the room, the want and the tension and the way he looked at my mouth like he could already taste me.
Then he spoke, and the words cut straight through it.
“The man you ran from,” he said quietly, “is in this hotel.”
Everything inside me went still.
“No,” I whispered. “No, he isn’t.”
“He checked in an hour ago,” Luca said. “Different name. Different passport. Same habits.”
My skin turned cold in a way that felt like my body remembered before my mind allowed it.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, and it came out shaky now, the first crack.
“Because you have two choices,” he said. “And you need to choose fast.”
“What choices?”
He stepped closer again, then stopped, his restraint almost unbearable.
“You can stay here,” he said, “and hope the lock is enough.”
“And the other?”
“You come with me,” he said. “Not out of the hotel. Not downstairs. Somewhere safer. Somewhere they can’t reach you easily.”
“Who,” I said, voice turning sharp, “is they in that sentence.”
His eyes darkened. “Both sides.”
I swallowed, hard. “And why should I trust you?”
He held my gaze and for the first time his confidence frayed into something that looked like honesty without armour.
“Because if I wanted to hurt you, you’d already be hurt,” he said. “Because I didn’t touch you when you opened the door. Because I told you to say no and I meant it.”
My heart hammered. My skin felt too loud.
“And because,” he added, quieter now, “I want you. But I want you alive more.”
The phone buzzed again, and this time it was a call. Unknown number. Not the warning line. A different one.
Luca’s eyes went to the screen.
Then to me.
And he said softly, “Don’t answer that.”
Of course I did.
I lifted the phone, pressed it to my ear, and before I could speak, a voice slid through the line like oil.
“Hello,” the man said, amused and intimate, as if he had earned the right to sound that close. “Did you really think changing your name would make you invisible?”
My stomach dropped so hard I tasted metal.
Luca didn’t move. He didn’t speak.
He just watched me as if he was waiting to see whether I would run, whether I would break, whether I would choose.
The voice on the line chuckled.
“I’m coming up,” he said. “And you’re going to open the door for me.”
I looked at Luca, and the room seemed to narrow down to one brutal, impossible question.
If the monster is on the other side of the door, what does that make the man standing in front of me?
To be continued...
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Seraphine Ashe 💋