Chapter 23: PENTHOUSE QUARTERS
Chapter 23: PENTHOUSE QUARTERS
Steve didn’t wait for me to argue. He didn’t even give me the space to line up a single smart-ass remark. He just stood there in my apartment like a decision in human form, turned toward Dante, and said, “Fifteen minutes.”
That was it.
Fifteen minutes later, I was in the back of the Rolls with a duffel bag that looked sad enough to need therapy, headed toward a building where people didn’t just live... they invested in square footage like it was a religion.
He called it “simplifying logistics.”
I called it what it was, moving me into his penthouse because someone planted a bug in my living room and, apparently, that meant my address was now as private as a Times Square billboard.
The elevator didn’t stop for other floors. Of course it didn’t. We went straight to the top, the doors sliding open on a space that could’ve doubled as the set of a luxury magazine shoot and a spy movie.
Floor-to-ceiling glass walls spilling out into the city. Manhattan glittering below like someone had scattered a box of diamonds on black velvet.
The kind of furniture you don’t sit on without wondering if your jeans are too cheap for it.
“Pick a room,” Steve said, already moving past me.
“Pick a... what, like a menu?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “There are four guest suites. Take your pick.”
Four. Guest. Suites. My entire apartment could fit into one of them with space left over for a yoga studio.
I ended up choosing the one on the far side, because if I was going to live in someone else’s castle, I at least wanted the illusion of a moat. It had a king-sized bed I could lose my phone in, an en suite bathroom with a tub big enough to drown in (tempting), and a balcony that made me feel like I was perched on the edge of the world.
When I came back out, Steve was in the kitchen. And by kitchen, I mean an architect’s fever dream of marble counters, stainless steel, and appliances so sleek they probably had their own social media accounts.
He was making drinks. Not with a shaker or anything, this wasn’t a Tom Cruise movie... but with the kind of absent, precise movements of someone who’d done it a thousand times.
“You drink?” he asked, without looking at me.
“Define drink.”
“Do you consume alcohol in quantities small enough to remain useful afterward?”
I leaned against the counter. “Occasionally. When not being relocated like a witness in a mob trial.”
One corner of his mouth twitched... blink and you’d miss it. He slid a glass toward me. Amber liquid. Ice clinking. Smooth as the man himself.
“This isn’t charity,” he said. “It’s convenience.”
“Oh, so I’m here because it’s convenient for you?”
“Yes.” No hesitation.
I took a sip anyway. Whatever it was, it burned in a good way.
The rest of the night slid into this weird, low-grade domesticity I didn’t see coming. Steve worked late in his office, door open, city light bleeding across the floor... while I sat on the couch pretending to read but mostly just cataloging how strange this felt.
Me. On a couch that cost more than my car. A glass of expensive whiskey sweating on the coffee table. Dante somewhere in the background like a perfectly tailored shadow, materializing only to refill Steve’s drink or murmur something too low for me to catch.
It should’ve felt awkward. It didn’t. It felt… inevitable.
Around midnight, I finally drifted to my room, the whiskey buzz smoothed out into something lazy. The sheets were stupidly soft. The mattress was the kind that swallowed you whole. I told myself I’d sleep like the dead.
I lied.
Because at 3 a.m., I woke up.
Not the kind of waking where you roll over and drift back. The kind where your body decides this is important.
It was the voices. Muffled, but sharp in tone. Coming from down the hall.
I padded out barefoot, moving slow. The penthouse was all glass and shadow at that hour, the city outside breathing in lights. The sound led me to Steve’s office.
The door was almost shut. Almost.
“…she should know,” Dante’s voice, low but firm.
“No,” Steve. Harder. Clipped. “Not yet.”