Chapter 1 - The Night Marco Carried Her Out
The first thing Alina Vasquez noticed was the blood on Marco Castalano’s collar.
The second was that none of it seemed to be hers.
He came through the smoke-darkened hallway with one sleeve torn at the shoulder, his white shirt almost black beneath his jacket, one hand braced against the wall as if the enormous stone house had tilted beneath him.
Somewhere behind him, men were shouting into radios.
Somewhere farther away, glass broke, followed by the deep mechanical groan of the estate’s security gates being forced closed.
But Marco was looking only at her.
“Alina.”
She was sitting on the floor beside the library door, one shoe missing, her ankle throbbing where she had fallen against the bottom stair.
Her hands would not stop shaking.
A thin line of blood from a cut above her eyebrow had reached her cheek, though she had not noticed it until Marco crossed the room and wiped it away with his thumb.
His own hand was stained red.
“Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know.”
It was the truth.
Her body seemed to belong to somebody else.
Marco crouched in front of her, breathing hard.
He was forty-one, broad-shouldered, dark-haired, feared across half of Chicago, and at that moment he looked less like the man whispered about in courtrooms and private clubs than a man who had arrived one second too late to prevent something he had spent months pretending could never happen.
“Can you stand?”
Alina tried.
Pain shot up her ankle.
Her knees folded beneath her.
Marco caught her before she hit the floor.
For one stunned second, her palms pressed against his chest.
She felt his heart hammering beneath the blood-soaked fabric.
Then his expression changed.
Not anger.
Decision.
He slipped one arm behind her back and the other beneath her knees.
“Marco—”
“I’ve got you.”
She was not a small woman. She had curves her mother used to call generous and dress shops seemed determined to misunderstand. Alina had spent enough of her life being made aware of the space she occupied that being lifted should have embarrassed her.
It didn’t.
Not then.
Marco stood with her in his arms as if the weight did not matter.
Behind him, his security chief appeared.
“West corridor is clear.”
“Car?”
“Garden entrance.”
“Anyone missing?”
“We’re checking.”
Marco’s jaw hardened.
“And the men who came in?”
The security chief glanced at Alina before answering.
“Handled.”
Marco did not ask what that meant.
Neither did Alina.
He turned toward the service stairs.
Her fingers tightened instinctively around his shoulder as another alarm began shrieking somewhere below.
“I need to walk,” she whispered.
“No.”
“Marco.”
He looked down at her.
His face was streaked with blood, his eyes almost silver beneath the emergency lights.
For months, Alina had known those eyes as cold.
Controlled.
Distant.
Now they were none of those things.
They were terrified.
Not for himself.
For her.
He drew her closer against his chest and carried her into the stairwell.
“You’re safe now,” he whispered.
And somehow, those three words frightened her more than everything else.
Because Marco Castalano did not make promises lightly.
And if he needed to promise that she was safe, then somewhere inside the enormous house behind them, someone had decided she was not.
The armored SUV waited beyond the rose garden.
Two guards opened the rear door.
Marco climbed inside without putting her down.
“Hospital?” the driver asked.
“No public hospital.”
Alina stared at him.
“I need a doctor, not a kidnapping.”
His gaze sharpened.
“You need a doctor who won’t sell your location for five thousand dollars.”
Her mouth went dry.
“Who would care where I am?”
Nobody answered.
The car accelerated through the rear gate.
Only when the mansion vanished behind the trees did Marco finally lower her onto the leather seat beside him.
His hands remained at her waist a second too long.
Then he pulled away.
Alina watched him.
There were things about Marco Castalano everyone in Chicago supposedly knew.
That his family had controlled shipping contracts for decades.
That politicians returned his calls before their own spouses’.
That businesses which cheated him rarely remained businesses.
But Alina had worked in his home for eleven months, and what she knew was different.
Marco drank black coffee at five-thirty every morning.
He hated lilies because they reminded him of funerals.
He quietly paid the medical bills of one elderly groundskeeper whose insurance had failed him.
He pretended not to notice when the kitchen staff packed leftovers for their families.
And every Christmas, he stood alone for exactly six minutes in front of the photograph of his parents in the east gallery.
Alina knew the man between the rumors.
Which was why his fear disturbed her.
“What happened tonight?”
Marco looked through the tinted window.
“Someone came for something.”
“What?”
Silence.
“Marco.”
His head turned.
“You.”
The word seemed to remove the oxygen from the vehicle.
Alina stared.
“That makes no sense.”
“I know.”
“I’m your maid.”
“I know.”
“I clean guest rooms and argue with Mrs. Donnelly about whether pillows need six decorative cushions.”
Despite everything, something almost resembling a smile touched his mouth.
It vanished immediately.
“They entered through a service passage. They passed two rooms containing cash, jewelry and documents worth more than most companies.”
“And?”
“They went directly toward the staff wing.”
Cold moved over her skin.
Marco continued.
“One of them had your photograph.”
Alina stopped breathing.
“What photograph?”
He reached inside his torn jacket.
The paper was damp and folded.
He opened it.
Alina recognized the image immediately.
It was her walking home from a grocery store three weeks earlier.
She wore a yellow sweater.
Two bags hung from her hands.
Her face had been circled in black ink.
Beneath it were four words.
ALINA VASQUEZ. TAKE ALIVE.
Her stomach twisted.
“Who took that?”
“We don’t know.”
She looked again.
Then she noticed the symbol in the lower-right corner.
A tiny blue star.
Her heartbeat changed.
Marco noticed.
“You recognize it.”
“No.”
“Alina.”
“No.”
But her voice betrayed her.
He leaned closer.
“Tell me.”
She shook her head.
Images returned from twenty years earlier.
Her mother locking bedroom windows even during summer.
Her mother refusing to answer certain phone calls.
A silver necklace hidden beneath clothes.
And a faded photograph Alina had discovered once when she was fourteen.
There had been the same blue star.
Her mother had ripped the photograph from her hands.
“You never saw this,” she had whispered.
Alina had forgotten.
Or convinced herself she had.
Now the symbol was here again.
Marco watched every change in her expression.
“Your mother?”
Alina’s eyes snapped toward him.
“How did you know?”
“Because fear like that is old.”
Before she could answer, Marco’s phone rang.
He listened without speaking.
His face gradually hardened.
“Search every employee room.”
A pause.
“Everything.”
Another pause.
Then his eyes moved to Alina.
“No. Especially hers.”
Her stomach dropped.
“What happened?”
Marco ended the call.
“They found something.”
“What?”
He hesitated.
And for the first time since she had met him, Marco Castalano looked uncertain about telling the truth.
“A transmitter.”
Alina felt cold.
“Where?”
“Under your bed.”
The SUV fell completely silent.
She stared at him.
“I didn’t put it there.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because if you had betrayed me, you would’ve left before tonight.”
His answer should have reassured her.
It didn’t.
Because another question now mattered more.
If Alina had not hidden the transmitter beneath her own bed—
May you like
someone inside Marco Castalano’s house had.
And whoever it was had been watching her long before the first window shattered.
