Ellie's POV
Ellie stared at the blue box in her hands. It was light. Innocent. It felt like a live grenade.
The maid had left without another word. The silence of the penthouse pressed in, heavy and watchful. Her fingers, cold and trembling, picked at the perfect silver bow. It came undone with a soft shush. She lifted the lid.
Inside, nestled on a bed of rich, black velvet, was a single rose. Its petals were the color of a starless midnight, dry and brittle, curled in on themselves like dead spiders. It was not just black; it was extinct. A dead black rose.
A card, the size of a business card, lay beside it. The script was elegant, looping, beautiful.
No good deed goes unpunished.
The air left her lungs in a rush. This wasn't from Nicholas. This was from them. The Costas. They knew where she was. They could reach into this fortress, past the locks and the guards, and leave a message on her pillow. The "protection" was a transparent lie. The cage had no roof.
A hot, sharp anger ignited in her chest, burning away the icy fear. She was tired of being scared. Tired of being a pawn, a problem, a thing to be moved or removed.
She stormed out of her room, the box clutched in her hand like a weapon. Nicholas was in the kitchen, pouring coffee into two mugs. He looked up as she approached, his expression unreadable. He pushed one mug across the massive island toward her.
She ignored it. She slammed the blue box down on the marble countertop. The dead rose rattled inside its velvet coffin.
"I want to leave," she said, her voice trembling with fury, not fear.
"You can't."
"I'm not a prisoner!"
"You are a witness in protective custody," he said, his voice infuriatingly calm. He took a sip of his coffee. "The door is locked for your safety. Have some coffee. Then we'll talk."
She shoved the box closer to him. "What is this?"
He looked at the rose, then at her. His face showed no surprise. "A message. Marco screened it. It was clean. No toxins, no trackers. Just a message. Letting it through tells us nothing. Stopping it might have told them we were scared." He met her gaze. "It's from the Costas. An intimidation tactic. Classic, really."
His calm analysis made her angrier. "The woman last night. Sophia. She said I was a problem. That I should be 'removed.'"
He didn't flinch. "Sophia is my lawyer. She's pragmatic. She assesses risk. She sees you as one."
"And what do you see me as?"
He held her gaze for a long moment. "A complication I'm responsible for."
It wasn't kind. It wasn't warm. But it was honest. It was marginally better than 'a problem to be removed.' Somewhere in that cold calculus, there was a thread of obligation. A thread she could pull on.
Reluctantly, she pulled the coffee mug toward her, wrapping her hands around its warmth. She didn't sit.
"Tell me," she demanded. "Who are you, really? And why did someone try to turn you into fireworks?"
He leaned back against the counter, considering her. He seemed to be deciding how much of the truth she could stomach. "My name is Nicholas Pellagrini. My family… has interests. Shipping, restaurants, real estate." A pause, heavy with everything unsaid. "And sometimes, those interests overlap with other families who want what we have. The Costas. The bomb was their opening move in a new… disagreement."
"A mafia war," Ellie stated flatly. The words felt absurd in her mouth.
"A crude term," he acknowledged. "But yes."
"And I'm in the middle of it because I have a conscience."
"Because you have eyes," he corrected softly. "And because you acted. That makes you unique in my world. Now, drink your coffee. It's getting cold."
Before she could take a sip, Marco entered from the hallway. His face, usually an impassive mask, was pale. The look in his eyes sent a new chill straight through Ellie's core.
"Boss," Marco said, his voice tight. "We have a problem."
Nicholas set his mug down. "What?"
"The security feed from the restaurant alley last night. It was looped. For a full three minutes before the explosion, the camera shows an empty, quiet alley. Someone inside Giovanni's helped them. They had to physically disable the camera and plant the fake feed."
The chill in Ellie's chest spread, freezing her in place. It wasn't a random attack in a random place. It was planned. Executed with inside help. Someone at her job, maybe the friendly hostess, the quiet dishwasher, the sous-chef who always gave her an extra bread roll, had helped plant a bomb.
Nicholas's jaw tightened. A muscle flickered in his cheek. The calm facade cracked, showing the furious, dangerous man beneath for just a second. "Who?"
"We're running checks on all staff now," Marco said. "But it means their reach is precise. They have eyes where we eat." His gaze flicked to Ellie, and the implication was clear. They had eyes on her before she ever pulled him from the car.
Nicholas stood up straight, his body radiating a new, alert tension. "Change all protocols. Full sweep of this apartment. Assume we are compromised until proven otherwise." He turned his dark, intense eyes on Ellie. The weight of his gaze was like a physical pressure. "Do not leave this apartment. Do not open the door for anyone but Marco or me. Do you understand?"
She nodded, her throat too tight to speak.
The rest of the day was a blur of quiet terror. Marco and a man she didn't recognize swept the apartment with strange electronic devices. Nicholas was in and out of his office, his phone glued to his ear, his voice a low, continuous murmur. Ellie wandered the vast spaces like a ghost, jumping at every small sound from the building's plumbing.
She ended up, as she always did when the world was too much, drawn to the only place that ever made sense: a kitchen. This one was a stranger's, a showpiece, but it was still a kitchen. Her fingers itched to do something, to create order out of the chaos screaming in her head.
She opened the giant, stainless steel refrigerator. It was fully, perfectly stocked, like a photograph in a magazine. She pulled things out without a conscious plan. An onion. A clove of garlic. A package of ground beef. A can of tomatoes from the pantry.
Her hands moved on muscle memory alone. The rhythmic chop-chop-chop of the knife on the board was a meditation. The sizzle of the onion hitting the hot olive oil was a promise. She lost herself in the motions. Brown the meat. Crush the garlic. Add the tomatoes, the herbs, and the splash of red wine she found. Let it all simmer and bubble and become something greater than the sum of its parts.
It was her father's spaghetti sauce. The only thing he could make that tasted like love. The rich, red scent began to weave through the sterile, filtered air of the penthouse, a bold and delicious invasion.
She was stirring, lost in the simmering sound, when she felt it. That prickle on the back of her neck. The shift in the air. She was no longer alone.
She turned slowly, the wooden spoon in her hand. Nicholas stood in the kitchen doorway, leaning against the frame. He had changed out of his suit into dark jeans and a simple gray sweater. He looked younger and utterly exhausted. But his eyes weren't on her. They were fixed on the large, bubbling pot on the stove, then drifted to the flour-dusted counter where she'd rolled out fresh pasta dough. He didn't speak for a long moment. Finally, his eyes lifted to hers. They held no calculation, no cold assessment. Just deep, genuine surprise. "You can cook," he said, the statement soft, almost to himself.