Chapter 9: The Devil's Tailor

POV: Sloane

The dark leather of the ledger book was decaying copper and forgotten things.

It was lying on my marble kitchen island, a hideous ugly rotting object in the blaze of the pendant lights. I had been gazing at the hand written columns six hours. My coffee was ice cold. My eyes burned.

The numbers were staggering. Silas Thorne did not merely operate a local crime syndicate, he owned the city infrastructure. He owned the port authority. He had three judges in the appellate court. And he owned Briarwood University board of directors. All the extortion, all the payouts, all the blood shed to keep the Ice Devils out of prison, was written with black ink.

It was a wet dream of a federal prosecutor. And it was what my handler, Agent Harris, had sent me to the dark to discover.

But I couldn't touch my phone.

I could not see justice because whenever I looked at the book, I could not. I saw Roman. His chest, which seemed to me to be phantom-hot, was pushing me against the rusted wall of the warehouse. I tried the bloody mint-flavoured wreck of his mouth. He had given me the gun to kill his whole bloodline, and in that, he had put my hands around the barrel.

You're an accomplice now.

The front door of my house had an electronic deadbolt, which clicked.

It wasn't a forced entry. It was the ditty-da of a cloned keycard.

I didn't flinch. I had my hand right under the rim of the kitchen island, and my fingers were cold on the steel of the hidden Glock 19, taped there. But I didn't draw it. Nothing informed me any more than the heavy, rhythmic beating of combat boots on my hardwood floor.

Roman Thorne walked into the kitchen.

He brought the cold with him. His suit was made to fit, black, and appeared to be more expensive than my automobile, the jacket unbuttoned around the neck of a dark shirt. His hair was dark, slightly wet due to the rain and it curled at its ends. In his left hand he held a slick black garment bag. A box of a velvet jeweler, in the other.

He looked at me. Then he looked at the blank one on the counter.

Feds you have not called, he thought, and his voice was an awful low jagged gravel that set my pulse soaring.

I am going through the data, I said, lying. I moved before the book, and crossed my arms in front of my silk camisole. And I will change my locks to-morrow. Why and how did you clone my keycard, Roman?

"I own the building, Sloane. I own the locks." He threw up the garment bag, so very close to the ledger. And now I have your weekend, mister.

I stared at the black bag. Zipper was glittering in the lights. "What is that?"

"Armor," he said simply.

He bridged the gap between us in a horrifying, predatory manner. I didn't back away. I defended myself by his coming close to me, his huge body crowding me against the marble island.

The warmth that exuded him was pure attack. He smelled of rain, too costly perfume, that dark, heavy violence I was growing to be sick and addicted to. He touched, his taped knuckles rubbing themselves against the nakedness of my shoulder. My spine was shuddering violently at the touch.

My father has heard you were checking into the archives, My dear old," Roman said, his eyes, which are as black as night, closing on my mouth and then flicking up. "He thinks you're a liability. He wants to test you."

My stomach sank down the bottomless well. "Test me how?"

There is a charity gala being held by the Petrov syndicate this Saturday night. Neutral ground. All the created men and dirty politicians and rival bosses within three states will be at that ballroom. Roman stepped closer. His thigh rubbed against mine, heavy and slow-moving as it was, it gave me a rush of hot awareness that ran down to my very heart. "Silas ordered me to bring you."

"I don't do mobster proms, Roman."

"You don't have a choice." His hand slipped down my shoulder, to the nape of my neck, and his long fingers fell about my neck. It wasn't a choke. It was a strong, jealous grip that clenched me to the spot. Unless you want to go, my father will think there is something you are hiding. He will bypass me entirely. He will send Volkov to this apartment and they will not bother knocking.

My breath hitched. "You gave me the ledger. Suppose he believes I am a danger, why not mention it to him that it is lost?

Roman bent forward, his face was within millimeters of mine. Since Silas examines his vault the next day. And when he finds the book has disappeared, I must have you sitting right on his elbow in a roomful of witnesses so that he cannot be able to blow a bullet through your head.

The fact of the trap would smash in on me. The absolute, suffocating threat. He had been using an opposing mafia party to protect me against his father.

"You're insane," I breathed.

"I'm surviving," he rasped. "And so are you."

He pushed me aside and undone the garment bag.

The dress inside was a weapon. It was a full-length dress of blood-red silk. It was a low cut neckline, a cut which would expose the whole of my thigh, and pretty much the same amount of back. It was aimed at attracting all the eyes in the room. It was meant to give me an appearance of being part of the Devil.

Roman ordered it to be put on Saturday at nine, and the thumb of his stroking him was making the sensitive part of the skin at the bottom of my head itch. "I'll pick you up. You stay by my side. You smile for the cameras. And when any of the Petrov men gaze at you, you be leave me to it.

I can manage myself, I grumbled and I despised the way my voice sank in the weighty, dominating rumble of his.

​"Not in that room, you can't." His lips touched my ear shell, and he leaned closer. With the touch my evil, liquid fire was spurting in my stomach. And you are my property in that room. You are doing the part very well, Sloane, or we both die.

​He drew away, with glowing round eyes. The velvet box was placed by him on the red silk.

​Wear the diamonds, I ordered, he said.

​He didn't try to kiss me again. He didn't need to. The sexual tension in the kitchen was so raw and heavy that it was choking. He wheeled and moved toward the front door leaving me without breath and trembling against the counter.

​However, no sooner had the hand of Roman reached the doorknob, when a sound broke the heavy silence of the apartment.

​Bang. Bang. Bang.

​It had been a stinging, dictatorial strike. The type of knock that wanted to gain access.

​Roman froze. His attitude changed immediately to haughty prince and deadly killer. His hand lost its hold on the waist of his trousers and his fingers clutched something in a hidden position.

​"Sloane Mercer?" A low voice that was submerged in the wood of the door barked. "It's Agent Harris, FBI. Open the door. We can see what is going on the perimeter and we are aware that you are in.

​The blood bled out of my face.

​My handler. He was here. Now.

​I glanced round at the front door, where Roman stood, with a gun in his hand, the eyes as black as a starless night. Next I gazed down at the kitchen island, and there lay the worst secrets of the Thorne family with their mouths agape beside a blood-red mafia dress.

​Had I opened up that door, Roman would have spent the rest of his life in prison, or he would have shot a federal agent in my corridor.

​Provided I did not open the door, my profession, my liberty, and my life as an informant were lost.

​Roman slowly turned his head, looking at me over the room with his dead, bloody eyes. He didn't raise the gun at me. But he gave a twitch of the eyebrow, a challenge of horror.

​Choose, sweetheart.

​Will Sloane sell out the Devil to rescue herself, or will she reach the point of no return and shelter a mobster in her house, in the FBI?