Chapter 2 - THE DESCENT IN GLASS AND STEEL
Dominic closed the folder.
He set it on the mahogany desk.
The metal clips struck the polished wood with a crisp snap.
He turned toward me.
His eyes were pale gray.
They slid across my collarbone, down to my lap, then paused at my right sleeve.
“You’re quiet today,” he said.
My fingers curled against the fabric of my trousers.
“I have work to finish, Mr. Vane.”
He smiled.
It did not reach his eyes.
“Good girl.”
He walked past my desk.
The scent of bergamot and expensive tobacco trailed behind him.
The same scent that had drifted into the rainy alley behind the diner.
The door clicked shut.
The lock engaged automatically.
Matteo did not move from his high-backed chair.
He sat silhouetted against the gray harbor fog.
The harbor was freezing.
Sheets of sleet lashed against the glass sixty floors above the pier.
“Stand up, Clara.”
His voice was low.
It carried no anger.
That made it terrifying.
I lifted my hands from the keyboard.
My right wrist screamed with white-hot needles.
I pushed myself up from the chair.
“Sir?”
He stood.
He was broad-shouldered, towering over the desk in an unbuttoned charcoal vest.
His black shirt was rolled to the forearms, revealing jagged knife scars across his left wrist.
He did not touch the folder Dominic had left behind.
“You’ve entered forty-two manifests this morning,” he said.
He stepped around the mahogany desk.
His leather oxfords made no sound on the imported rug.
“Every single line entered with your left forefinger.”
My heart hammered against my ribs.
“My left hand is faster.”
“You’re a liar.”
He stopped two feet in front of me.
Up close, the wound beneath his shirt still radiated faint antiseptic.
I had stitched that wound four nights ago with fishing line and veterinary penicillin.
“Follow me,” he commanded.
He turned toward the private executive elevator.
I had no choice.
I stepped into the elevator behind him.
The mirrored doors slid shut.
A seamless cage of bronze and brushed glass.
The floor dropped beneath our feet.
Sixteen floors flashed past on the digital display.
Forty-four.
Forty-three.
Forty-two.
Matteo hit the emergency stop button.
The elevator shuddered to a dead halt between floors.
The hydraulic cables groaned once and went silent.
The amber maintenance light blinked overhead.
“Matteo,” I whispered.
It was the first time I had spoken his first name aloud.
He turned on me.
He stepped into my space until my back hit the cold mirrored glass.
“Who touched your arm, Clara?”
“No one.”
“Look at me.”
I forced my chin up.
His amber eyes burned with lethal clarity.
“You winced every time the printer jammed,” he murmured.
“You held your breath when Dominic walked past your desk.”
“And you kept your right arm glued to your ribs like a broken wing.”
He reached out.
His hand was warm, calloused, scarred.
He caught my right wrist through the black silk blouse.
Pain tore up my radial nerve.
A ragged gasp tore from my throat.
My knees gave way.
He caught my waist with his left arm before I could strike the floor.
He held me flush against his chest.
With his right hand, he pushed back the cuff of my borrowed blouse.
The silk slid up my forearm.
Beneath the fabric lay no simple sprain.
A thick layer of gray industrial tape bound my wrist.
The skin beneath was black, violet, and mottled with dried blood.
And along the inner radius ran an old surgical scar.
Four inches of neat, knotted suture marks.
A signature I knew better than my own name.
Matteo’s thumb brushed the raised scar tissue.
His body went completely rigid.
“Dr. Clara Vance,” he whispered.
The air evaporated from my lungs.
“Former chief trauma resident at Boston General,” he said.
His thumb pressed gently against the scar.
“The woman who vanished two years ago after refusing to falsify an autopsy for the Moretti family.”
I could not breathe.
“You know who I am,” I choked out.
“I have looked for you for twenty-four months,” Matteo said.
His voice dropped into something raw, broken, and terrifying.
“Dominic told me you drowned in the Charles River.”
He looked into my eyes.
“And Dominic was the man who ordered my execution in that alley.”
A heavy metallic scrape echoed from the top of the elevator shaft.
Cables whined.
The emergency stop light flickered and died.
A voice crackled through the cabin’s ceiling speaker.
Dominic’s voice.
“I told you to take an escort to the shipyard, Matteo.”
“Now you won’t even make it to the lobby.”
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The main suspension cable snapped with a sound like a cannon blast.
The elevator plunged into freefall.
