Chapter 2 - The Empty Side of the Bed
By sunrise, thirty-seven people were looking for me.
I didn’t know that yet.
I was sitting in the corner of an all-night diner on West Madison Street with my duffel wedged between my boots and a cup of coffee cooling between my hands.
The waitress had asked if I wanted anything to eat.
I said no.
Ten minutes later, she brought me toast anyway.
“You look like you need it, honey.”
Those six words nearly made me cry harder than anything Nico had said.
Kindness felt strange when it came without a price tag.
I thanked her and forced myself to eat.
My phone was gone.
I had thrown the SIM card into a trash can six blocks from the penthouse and switched off the device before eventually leaving it inside a public restroom.
Maybe that was dramatic.
Maybe paranoid.
Three years with Nico had taught me something important.
If Nico Moretti wanted to find someone, he usually did.
Back at the penthouse, he was proving that reputation.
Security footage filled every screen in his study.
Arthur stood near the bar watching Nico replay the same clip.
12:45:18.
Service elevator doors opened.
I stepped inside wearing my old gray hoodie.
12:45:23.
I adjusted the duffel on my shoulder.
12:45:25.
The doors closed.
Nico rewound it.
Watched again.
And again.
Arthur finally said, “That won’t change.”
Nico ignored him.
“Pull street cameras.”
“We are.”
“Traffic cameras.”
“Already happening.”
“Train stations.”
“Yes.”
“Airports.”
Arthur’s jaw tightened.
“Yes, Nico.”
“What about bus terminals?”
“We’re checking.”
Nico finally turned.
“Then why don’t I know where she is?”
“Because she doesn’t want you to.”
The room became silent.
Any other man might have regretted saying it.
Arthur didn’t.
Nico’s eyes hardened.
“Be careful.”
“No.”
Arthur walked closer.
“You need somebody in this building who isn’t afraid of you.”
“I don’t need a lecture.”
“You needed one three years ago.”
Nico’s hands curled.
Arthur continued before he could interrupt.
“You said you’d forget her name.”
“I was talking.”
“She was listening.”
“I didn’t know she was outside.”
“That makes it worse.”
Nico looked as if Arthur had struck him.
Arthur pointed toward the frozen security image of me.
“You didn’t say something cruel because you were angry at her. You said it because you thought she’d never hear it.”
Nico’s voice dropped.
“I didn’t mean it.”
Arthur gave him a long stare.
“Then why was it so easy to say?”
There was no answer.
By seven in the morning, Nico’s men confirmed I had not used any airport under my name.
No train ticket.
No hotel reservation.
No purchase on Nico’s cards.
No cash withdrawal from the accounts he had given me access to.
One of the men entered the study.
“We checked the safe.”
Nico’s expression sharpened.
“I already checked it.”
“There’s something else.”
The man placed a folder on the desk.
Financial statements.
Nico frowned.
“What is this?”
“Miss Quinn’s account.”
My account.
Not the one Nico had created.
My old checking account.
The one I had maintained quietly for three years.
There wasn’t much in it.
A few thousand dollars from savings I had kept before meeting him.
Occasional payments from freelance design work I had done without telling Nico because I missed feeling useful.
Nico stared at the transaction history.
“You knew about this?” he asked Arthur.
“No.”
“She was working?”
“Apparently.”
“Why?”
Arthur almost laughed.
“Because people like having something that belongs to them.”
“She had everything.”
“No,” Arthur replied. “She had everything you bought.”
Nico’s face changed.
That distinction had never occurred to him.
He looked around the study.
Imported wood.
Handmade furniture.
A painting purchased at auction.
A bottle of scotch that cost more than the diner’s waitress probably earned in a month.
Everything in his world could be acquired.
Until me.
At 8:30, Nico entered our bedroom again.
Sunlight had begun filtering through the curtains.
He stood on my side of the bed.
The pillow was slightly indented.
A paperback novel rested on the nightstand, folded corner marking the page.
Reading glasses.
A half-empty glass of water.
Normal things.
He picked up the book.
There was a receipt inside from a neighborhood bookstore.
Cash purchase.
$14.82.
He sat on the edge of the mattress.
For perhaps the first time, he noticed how little of me existed in that bedroom.
His watches had a cabinet.
His suits filled an entire wall.
His shoes were arranged by color.
My belongings had slowly compressed themselves into corners.
Nico opened the bedside drawer.
Lip balm.
Hair ties.
A notebook.
He froze.
For one terrible second, he thought I had left him a letter.
I hadn’t.
It was an old sketchbook.
He opened it.
Floor plans.
Furniture ideas.
Rough drawings of restaurants, apartments, a children’s library, a lake house.
Work I had done quietly at night.
On one page I had written:
Someday, something of my own again.
Nico read the sentence twice.
Then Arthur appeared at the door.
“We found where she was at 1:20.”
Nico stood instantly.
“Where?”
“A camera near Wacker. She was walking west.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“What happened after?”
“We lose her near a transit station.”
“What station?”
Arthur gave him the address.
Nico grabbed his coat.
Arthur blocked the doorway.
“You’re not going.”
“Move.”
“If we find her, what exactly are you planning to do?”
“Bring her home.”
Arthur didn’t move.
Nico stepped closer.
“I said move.”
“And I’m asking you what happens when she says no.”
The question hung between them.
Nico’s entire life had been built around obedience.
Employees obeyed.
Soldiers obeyed.
Business partners learned to cooperate.
Doors opened.
Problems disappeared.
But I wasn’t territory.
I wasn’t a contract.
Arthur knew it.
Nico was only beginning to.
“I need to talk to her,” Nico said.
“Maybe.”
“She’s mine.”
Arthur’s expression darkened.
“No.”
Nico stared at him.
Arthur spoke slowly.
“She chose to share a life with you. That never made her yours.”
For a moment, anger flashed across Nico’s face.
Then something else replaced it.
Fear.
Real fear.
Not fear of enemies.
Not fear of losing money.
Fear that Arthur was right.
Nico looked back toward my nightstand.
“What if she doesn’t come back?”
Arthur’s voice softened.
“Then you finally live with one decision you can’t threaten, buy, or negotiate your way out of.”
Across town, I paid the diner bill with cash.
I had slept maybe twenty minutes with my head against the booth.
My next decision was simple.
I needed somewhere Nico would not immediately think to look.
Hotels were too easy.
My old apartment was gone.
My parents lived out of state, and going there would put them in the middle of something they had never understood.
There was one person left.
Someone I had pushed away because maintaining friendships became complicated after Nico.
I found a pay phone inside a train station.
It took me three attempts to remember her number.
When she answered, her voice was sleepy.
“Hello?”
I closed my eyes.
“June?”
Silence.
Then, “Norah?”
My throat tightened.
“Yeah.”
“Oh my God.”
“I know it’s been a long time.”
“Two years, eight months.”
I almost smiled.
June had always counted everything.
“I’m sorry.”
“What happened?”
I looked through the glass toward the city.
“Can I ask you for something first?”
Another silence.
Then her voice changed.
Warm.
Careful.
“Anything.”
“I need somewhere to stay.”
“You’re coming here.”
“June—”
“That wasn’t a question.”
Twenty-five minutes later, she pulled up in an aging blue Honda.
June Park climbed out before the car had fully stopped.
She was still wearing pajama pants beneath a long coat.
She looked at the duffel.
Then at my face.
She didn’t ask about Nico.
She simply hugged me.
I stood rigid for half a second.
Then collapsed against her.
For the first time since hearing the words behind the study door, I cried.
Not elegantly.
Not quietly.
I cried like someone mourning a person who had never actually existed.
June held me.
“I’ve got you,” she whispered.
And for once, those words didn’t frighten me.
Because June wasn’t promising ownership.
She was offering shelter.
By ten that morning, Nico received another update.
“We think she got into a blue Honda.”
“Plate?”
“Obscured.”
“Driver?”
“Woman. Asian. Early thirties, maybe.”
Nico’s eyes narrowed.
Arthur recognized the description first.
“June.”
“Who?”
“June Park.”
Nico looked at him blankly.
Arthur almost looked disgusted.
“Norah’s friend.”
Nico searched his memory.
Nothing.
Three years with me.
He couldn’t name my closest friend.
That realization hurt him more than he expected.
“Find the address.”
Arthur didn’t move.
Nico looked up.
“I said find it.”
“I heard you.”
“Then do it.”
Arthur studied him.
“You really want to know the first thing she’s going to feel if twenty men arrive outside her friend’s apartment?”
Nico knew the answer.
Fear.
Not love.
Not relief.
Fear.
He turned toward the windows.
Chicago stretched beneath him.
Somewhere down there, I was beginning the first morning of a life without him.
And for the first time since becoming powerful enough to make half the city nervous, Nico Moretti discovered what helplessness felt like.
Then his phone rang.
The caller said six words that changed the search completely.
May you like
“Boss, somebody else is looking too.”
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