The phone stayed pressed to my ear like it belonged there, like my hand had been trained to hold it in place while the rest of me tried not to fall apart.
“Hello,” the voice murmured again, amused, intimate, as if we were lovers sharing a secret instead of enemies sharing a threat. “Did you really think changing your name would make you invisible?”
Behind me, Luca did not move. He didn’t rush me, didn’t snatch the phone, didn’t try to take control of my choice. He simply watched, and the calm in him was infuriating, because my body wanted something solid to lean against and my mind wanted something sharp to blame.
“What do you want?” I managed.
A low chuckle. “You.”
The word slid under my skin with practiced ease, and for a second I was back in a different life, a different room, a different man with the same confidence. Power wears many faces but it speaks with one voice, as if it has never been told no before.
“I’m coming up,” he continued. “And you’re going to open the door for me.”
My stomach dropped. My fingertips went cold around the phone.
Luca’s gaze flicked to the lock, then to me. A silent question. A reminder that I still had the door, still had the chain, still had the right to say no.
I swallowed. “No.”
The man on the line exhaled as if I’d disappointed him, not surprised him. “You always were stubborn.”
The way he said it, as if he had known me for years, as if the history between us was a private joke, made my skin prickle.
“Who are you?” I asked, even though my body already knew.
“You know who I am,” he said softly, then turned the knife. “Or you wouldn’t be hiding behind a new name in a hotel you didn’t even choose.”
My throat tightened.
Luca’s jaw flexed once. He looked almost bored by the man’s theatrics, which told me this wasn’t new to him. He’d been in rooms with men like this before. He knew the patterns. He knew the games.
The voice on the phone lowered. “Open the door. We’ll talk like adults.”
I laughed once, short and ugly. “Adults don’t threaten women through hotel corridors.”
Another chuckle, almost fond. “You make it sound so crude.”
“It is crude.”
“Darling,” he sighed, as if I were being difficult about the weather, “I’m trying to be civil. You have something that belongs to me.”
My blood went still.
I didn’t look at Luca. I couldn’t. If I did, I might break, and I needed to be sharp, not fragile.
“I don’t have anything of yours,” I said.
“You do,” he replied. “You just don’t know it yet.”
The phone went quiet for a beat, the kind of pause that tries to make you fill it with fear. I refused. I held my breath and waited for him to speak again, like I was training myself not to react.
“You’re not alone,” he said at last, and the satisfaction in his tone made my skin crawl. “I can hear him.”
My grip tightened on the phone.
Luca’s eyes darkened, and for the first time I saw a crack in his composure, not fear, not panic, but recognition of a line being crossed.
“You’re recording this call,” Luca said, voice calm as glass.
The man laughed. “Oh. Clever.”
Luca didn’t flinch. “Leave her alone.”
There was a beat of silence, then the voice turned curious, delighted. “So it is you.”
Luca’s gaze didn’t move from my face. “Yes.”
A slow inhale on the other end of the line. “I wondered who would pick up her scent first.”
My stomach twisted. “Stop talking about me like I’m an object.”
“You always were dramatic,” the man said, and I could hear the smile in it. “Open the door, and I won’t have to be.”
Luca held out his hand, palm up, not demanding the phone, simply asking for it. Offering me the relief of not being the one who had to hold the poison.
I gave it to him.
He put the call on speaker and set the phone on the table by the window, where we could both see it, where it could not be turned into a secret. It was a small act, and it did something to my chest. A boundary made visible.
“We’re not opening the door,” Luca said. “And you’re leaving the corridor. Now.”
The man hummed. “Or what?”
“Or you’ll have a problem you can’t buy your way out of,” Luca replied, still calm. “I’ve already sent your voice to someone who enjoys problems like you.”
A pause.
I watched Luca’s face carefully, trying to figure out whether he was bluffing. He didn’t look like a man who bluffed. He looked like a man who moved quietly and left other people to deal with the consequences.
On the phone, the man’s amusement thinned.
“What do you want?” Luca asked.
“Her,” the man said again, sharper now, less playful. “She belongs to me.”
Luca’s jaw tightened. “No one belongs to anyone.”
“Oh, spare me,” the man snapped. “She took something from me. She walked away with it.”
I felt my pulse slam. My tongue went dry.
Luca’s eyes flicked to me, a question without words: Do you want me to say it? Do you want me to expose it?
I forced air into my lungs. “Say it,” I whispered.
Luca turned back to the phone. “The money,” he said flatly. “The transfer that got pinned to her name. The one you used to wash your hands clean.”
Silence.
Then, very softly, the man said, “Careful.”
Luca’s expression didn’t change. “You set her up. You planned for her to be the loose end. Now you want to tie it off.”
My stomach rolled, because hearing it said out loud made it real in a way my mind hadn’t wanted to accept. I wasn’t hunted because I was special. I was hunted because I was convenient.
The voice on the phone returned to silk. “You’re interfering in something you don’t understand.”
“I understand enough,” Luca said. “You’re on camera in this hotel. Your voice is on this call. Your car is registered in the underground garage under a name you’ve used before. You have two minutes to disappear, or you’ll be dealing with authorities in three different countries.”
The man laughed once, but it sounded strained. “You think you can scare me.”
“I’m not trying to scare you,” Luca said. “I’m giving you an option.”
I felt my breath catch. Option. Choice. The same language Luca had used with me from the beginning.
On the phone, the man’s voice dropped to something cold. “This isn’t over.”
“It is for tonight,” Luca said. “And if you come near her again, I will make it permanent.”
The line went dead.
The quiet that followed felt heavy, like the room was holding its breath to see what would happen next.
I stared at the phone, as if it might light up again just to prove me right about how unsafe the world could be.
Luca exhaled slowly, then looked at me as if I were the only thing in the room that mattered.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“No,” I said, and the honesty hurt. “But I’m here.”
He nodded, as if that was enough for now.
“I lied to you,” he said, voice low. “I’m not sorry about wanting to protect you. I am sorry about the way I did it.”
I swallowed. “What now?”
“Now,” he said, “you come with me.”
My spine went rigid. “Out of the room.”
“Not out of the hotel,” he corrected immediately. “Down the hall. My suite. There are cameras, there’s security, and there’s a second exit that doesn’t lead to the lift. I won’t touch you. I won’t close a door you don’t want closed. I just want you somewhere he can’t reach.”
I should have said no. I should have insisted on staying where I was, behind my lock, behind my chain.
But the warning messages, the call, the way the voice had known exactly where I was, made the lock feel like a fantasy.
I took a breath. “Okay.”
Luca didn’t move fast. He didn’t rush me. He waited while I grabbed my coat, waited while I checked the chain myself, waited while I took my phone and slid it into my pocket like a talisman. He stepped to the door and listened for a moment, then opened it a fraction and looked out.
Empty corridor.
He held the door open, and I stepped through.
He walked me down the hall without touching me, but close enough that I could feel him there, close enough that if I stumbled he would catch me. It should have felt clinical, professional.
It didn’t.
It felt like being watched by a man who was holding himself back on purpose.
At his suite, he swiped a card and pushed the door open, then stepped aside so I could enter first. Again, the choice was mine.
Inside, the space was quiet and warm and minimal, all dark wood and clean lines, the kind of wealth that doesn’t need to prove itself. Luca didn’t look at the room. He looked at me, as if the only thing he cared about was whether I was steady.
“Sit,” he said gently, nodding to the sofa. “I’m going to call someone. Then I’ll come back.”
I sat because my legs had finally remembered they were legs.
He moved to the far side of the room, phone in hand, voice low. I didn’t catch every word, only enough to understand what mattered.
He was making it real. He was involving people. He was not keeping me in a private story where he could rewrite the ending.
When he returned, he stopped a careful distance away.
“You’re safe tonight,” he said. “He won’t come back here.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he doesn’t like witnesses,” Luca said. “And because I just gave him too many.”
The air between us shifted. Not into comfort. Not into peace. Into something else. Something tight and alive.
I stared at him, at the calm strength of him, at the control he held like a weapon he only used when he had to.
“You knew,” I said softly. “When you came to my door.”
“I suspected,” he admitted. “I didn’t know it was him until the message. Until the call.”
I let my head fall back against the sofa, and for a moment I wanted to cry, wanted to collapse into the simplest version of relief.
But my body did something else instead.
It leaned toward him.
Because danger does strange things to you. It burns away the polite lies and leaves the truth exposed.
I looked at him again. “What happens now, Luca?”
He held my gaze, and the softness beneath his confidence returned, the same gentleness that had made him wait in the corridor instead of knocking like he owned my attention.
“Now you tell me what you want,” he said. “And I listen.”
My pulse beat hard in my throat.
I could say I want you to go. I could say I want to be alone. I could say I want to pretend this never happened.
But my body was honest in a way my life had not allowed for a long time.
“I want,” I began, and my voice wavered. “I want to feel like I’m not alone in my own skin.”
Luca’s gaze softened. He took one step closer and stopped, leaving the last space untouched.
“Then we do it your way,” he murmured. “We go slow. We keep it clean. You say stop, I stop.”
My breath caught.
He lifted his hand halfway, not touching, only offering. “May I?”
I stared at his hand, at the patience in it, at the way it asked instead of taking.
“Yes,” I whispered.
His fingertips brushed my jaw, feather light, like he was testing whether I would flinch. I didn’t. I leaned into it, and the relief of that simple contact was so sharp it nearly undid me.
“Good,” he murmured, and his thumb traced the line of my chin as if he were memorising the shape of my yes.
The heat between us built quietly, steadily, not rushed, not stolen, but earned in the space of one honest touch.
Then his phone buzzed.
He didn’t look away from me, but I saw the tension return to his shoulders.
I swallowed. “Answer it.”
He hesitated, then crossed to the table and glanced at the screen. His expression hardened.
“It’s him,” he said.
My blood ran cold.
Luca silenced the call without answering, then turned back to me, eyes dark.
“He’s not done,” he said.
I sat very still, my skin still warm where Luca had touched me, my body caught between craving and fear.
Luca walked back slowly, like he was approaching a wild animal he didn’t want to startle.
“He wants an ending,” he said quietly. “And I think I know how to give him one.”
I stared at him. “How?”
Luca’s gaze held mine, steady and dangerous.
“We stop running,” he said. “And we set the trap.”
To be continued...
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Seraphine Ashe 💋