Chapter 1 - Whispers in the Dark and the Devil's Deal
Sadi had reached rock bottom so completely that she had started talking to herself. Standing over a sink filled with soapy water, she whispered what might have been the most pathetic sentence of her life.
“I need a boyfriend by tomorrow.”
She thought she was alone. She was not.
The man sitting in the shadows did not merely own the sprawling, limestone-clad mansion on the outskirts of the city. He owned half the territory stretching from the North Shore straight down to the industrial ports of South Chicago. For reasons Sadi could not begin to fathom, Roman Rossi—a name whispered in hushed, terrified tones by judges, politicians, and ruthless street captains alike—was about to volunteer.
The kitchen of the Rossi estate was the size of a commercial restaurant, a cathedral of brushed steel, seamless quartz, and white Calacatta marble. At two in the morning, bathed only in the cold blue glow of under-cabinet strip lighting, it felt less like a home and more like a high-end morgue. Sadi leaned her full weight against the edge of the deep farmhouse sink, letting the chill of the wet stone seep through her faded cotton apron and into her stomach. Her feet throbbed in rhythm with her heartbeat. It was the dull, punishing ache born of fourteen straight hours spent hauling heavy laundry baskets, polishing antique silver, and dodging the dismissive glances of armed men who viewed her as nothing more than part of the architectural trim.
She scrubbed an iron skillet with a wire brush, the rhythmic scraping echoing into the vast, cavernous silence of the estate. Down in the soundproofed basement bunker, the night security detail played quiet hands of poker behind reinforced steel doors. Upstairs, in the vast master suite that spanned the entire west wing, the boss either slept or paced beneath the weight of an empire built on violence and quiet control. Sadi made it a strict personal rule never to wonder about Roman Rossi’s nocturnal habits.
Her duty was to clean the messes left behind. She never asked how arterial blood got onto the cuffs of bespoke Italian dress shirts she sent out in unmarked garment bags, and she never dared to touch the heavy, double-locked oak doors of the east wing study.
Her phone buzzed violently on the counter, jarring her out of her stupor.
She ignored it, scraping harder at a stubborn spot of burnt grease. The phone vibrated again, then a third time—sharp, impatient pulses that practically rattled the marble. Sighing, Sadi dried her raw, dish-soap-reddened hands on a lint-free towel and swiped open the screen.
Her mother’s name illuminated the glass like an indictment.
“Are you still bringing a plus one tomorrow? I need to tell the caterer by eight in the morning. It’s $150 a plate, Sadi, and your father’s budget is already stretched thin.”
Two seconds later:
“Chloe is already having a panic attack over the floral arrangements. Please don’t make a scene by showing up alone, hovering by the bar, and moping all evening.”
And then, the coup de grâce:
“Derek and his new fiancée will be at table 4 with the bridal party. I put you at table 12 near the kitchen swinging doors so you don’t feel awkward.”
Near the kitchen doors. Table twelve. Out of sight, out of mind, right next to the clattering bus tubs and the smell of dirty dishwater. It wasn’t an act of maternal consideration; it was quarantine. Sadi was being strategically positioned where her wide frame and unglamorous presence wouldn’t accidentally ruin the soft-focus, pastel-toned aesthetic of her younger sister’s five-thousand-dollar wedding photographer.
Sadi placed the phone face down on the cold counter. A thick, suffocating knot formed in the back of her throat. She swallowed hard, blinking rapidly against the sudden prickle of heat behind her eyelids. She was twenty-eight years old. She worked herself to the bone, paid every cent of her bills, and never asked anyone for a handout. Yet three passive-aggressive lines from the woman who gave birth to her could still strip away all her adult armor, reducing her instantly to the miserable, self-conscious teenager who hid in the high school bathroom during prom.
Derek. Table four.
She hadn’t laid eyes on him in two years—not since the rainy Tuesday afternoon he had packed his gym bags into his Civic and told her, with a sickening mixture of condescension and pity, that he needed a partner who took pride in her appearance. Three months later, he was engaged to an influencer who subsisted on green juice and weighed barely a hundred pounds.
Sadi caught her reflection in the pitch-black window above the sink. Broad shoulders, soft jawline, heavy hips, and a generous bust that stretched the cheap fabric of her domestic uniform. She had spent a decade attempting to shrink, starving herself on fad diets, only to end up feeling like an alien in her own skin. She was large. She occupied space. And tomorrow night, she was expected to walk into the Naperville Country Club and quietly absorb the smirks and pitying whispers of everyone she had ever known.
She gripped the edges of the sink until her knuckles blanched. "I can't do it," she whispered into the empty air, her voice fracturing against the stone. "I just... I need a boyfriend by tomorrow."
"What time is the event?"
Sadi gasped, jumping so violently her hip struck the counter. The breath evacuated her lungs in a frantic rush.
She spun around.
Roman Rossi was sitting at the far corner of the kitchen island, draped in the shadows just beyond the reach of the downlights. He was not in his customary three-piece charcoal suit. He wore charcoal sweatpants and a tight black crewneck that hugged his massive chest and broad shoulders. In his right hand, he cradled a lowball tumbler of dark amber scotch, the ice melting slowly in the quiet room.
He didn't look like an untouchable crime lord at that moment; he looked like a predator resting between hunts. His dark, impenetrable eyes pinned her to the spot.
"Mr. Rossi," Sadi stammered, clutching her apron against her chest like a shield. "I... I’m so sorry. I didn't realize you were down here. I’m almost finished with the prep dishes. I’ll leave immediately."
"I didn't tell you to leave, Sadi. I asked you a question." His voice was low, gravelly, and carried the weight of an absolute monarch. He lifted the glass, taking a measured sip as the ice clinked against the crystal. "What time is the dinner tomorrow?"
Her face burned with intense humiliation. "It’s nothing, sir. Truly. Just a family thing. Rehearsal dinner for my sister. I was just venting out loud. I apologize for disturbing you."
"Table twelve. Right by the kitchen." Roman didn't raise his voice, but the words hit like a physical slap.
Sadi's heart dropped straight into her stomach. He had read the glowing screen before she had flipped it over. "That was private," she whispered, her pride flaring before her survival instincts could stop her.
No one in Chicago snapped at Roman Rossi. Men who spoke out of turn in his presence usually ended up buried under fresh concrete in the rail yards.
Roman didn't flinch. A faint, almost imperceptible tilt of his head was the only indication he had heard her tone. He set his glass down onto the quartz surface with a dull, heavy thud.
"You make my espresso at precisely 5:30 every morning," he said calmly, measuring each word. "You remember that I take it with two drops of cold water and a grain of sea salt. Last month, when the Department of Justice raided this house with thirty armed agents and a battering ram, you didn't cry. You didn't run to the neighbors. You took a broom and swept up the broken drywall while they were still shouting through their megaphones."
"That's... that's just my job, sir."
"You are observant. You are exceptionally quiet. And you do not ask questions about things that do not concern you." Roman pushed himself up from the barstool.
At six-foot-three, his frame was overwhelming. He moved with a silent, fluid grace that seemed impossible for a man of his size. He walked slowly around the island, his bare feet making no sound against the heated slate tiles, stopping barely two feet from where she stood frozen.
The intoxicating scent of cedarwood, expensive tobacco, and clean, raw power surrounded her.
"You require a boyfriend by tomorrow," Roman stated, his dark eyes locking onto hers. "Someone to sit at table twelve, hold your hand, and ensure that the coward at table four chokes on his prime rib."
Sadi wrapped her arms tightly across her midsection, painfully conscious of the grease stain on her apron, her unwashed hair pulled up in a chaotic bun, and the complete lack of glamour in her exhausted face. "Please don't mock me, Mr. Rossi. I've had a very long day, and I don't have the stomach for jokes."
"Do I look like a man who tells jokes, Sadi?" His face remained an unreadable mask of hard angles and sharp jawline. "I don't have a sense of humor. What I have is an operational complication. Tomorrow evening at eight o’clock, the heads of the Moretti syndicate are hosting a mandatory sit-down at a warehouse in Cicero. If I attend, negotiations will fail within five minutes, and I will be forced to eliminate two men myself. It will be loud, it will be bloody, and federal investigators will spend the rest of the quarter breathing down my neck."
Sadi stared at him, her mouth slightly parted. He was outlining cold-blooded murder with the precise detachment of an accountant reviewing a ledger.
"On the other hand," Roman continued, closing the remaining distance between them until she had to tilt her head up to meet his gaze, "if I am sitting in an aggressively lit banquet hall in Naperville, surrounded by fifty suburban civilians, eating rubbery chicken breast and listening to your mother complain about centerpieces, I possess an unbreakable alibi. My captains can clean up the Moretti situation quietly, and I remain completely beyond reproach."
The kitchen grew utterly silent, save for the hum of the sub-zero refrigerator.
"You... you want to come to my sister's rehearsal dinner?" Sadi's voice shook. "As my date?"
"As your fiancé," Roman countered smoothly. "A date is temporary. A date can be dismissed. A fiancé implies that you have moved on to something vastly superior. It implies permanence."
"You don't even know me!"
"Sadi Miller. Born in Oak Park. Twenty-eight. Never arrested. Poor credit utilization due to sixteen thousand dollars in student loans for an art history degree from an unaccredited college." Roman rattled off the facts without missing a beat. "I know everything about everyone who crosses my threshold. I know you spend your lunch breaks reading paperback novels in the garden shed because you think the guards are making fun of your weight. They aren't, by the way. If they did, I would cut out their tongues."
The casual violence in his tone sent a shiver straight down her spine, mingling with a strange, forbidden heat.
"You can't just use my life as a tactical distraction," she said, though her resistance was crumbling fast.
"Everything in this world is a transaction, Sadi." Roman reached out. She tensed, expecting a push or a command, but his large, calloused fingers merely retrieved her phone from the counter. He wiped a stray water droplet from the screen with his thumb and pressed the device into her trembling hand. "You can walk into that room tomorrow alone, sit by the kitchen door, and let them feed on your shame. Or you can let me take the wheel."
Sadi looked down at her cracked phone, then up into the merciless, handsome face of Chicago’s most feared man. The thought of Derek’s smug smirk and her mother’s pitying glances made something reckless and wild ignite in her chest.
"If you do this," Sadi whispered, her chin lifting slightly, "you have to follow my rules. No firearms at the table. No threatening my relatives. And you have to act like you actually want me."
May you like
Roman's gaze drifted slowly down to her lips, lingering there for a beat that made the air vanish from her lungs, before rising back to her eyes.
"I am an expert at getting what I want, Sadi," he murmured, his voice dipping into a lower, dangerous register. "Be ready by 5:45 sharp. And text your mother to move our seating assignment to table four."
