Chapter 3 - The Price of the TouchI stared at him in complete, speech-bound shock. "What... what did you say?"
"I said Toby's medical accounts at Mount Sinai have been cleared," Adrian repeated smoothly, reaching into his vest pocket and pulling out an encrypted tablet, sliding it across the mahogany side table toward me.
I looked down at the glowing screen.
Printed in bold green text was an official receipt from Mount Sinai Health System:
ACCOUNT BALANCES FOR TOBY BELLAMY: $84,200.00 — PAID IN FULL.
PRIMARY TRUSTEE: THE MORETTI FOUNDATION.
Tears burned behind my eyelids, my throat locking up so tight I could barely breathe. Eighty-four thousand dollars—a crushing, suffocating mountain of debt that had kept me awake weeping every night for six months—erased with a single tap of this man's finger.
"Why... why would you do this?" I choked out, a single tear spilling over my eyelashes, cutting a clean track through the dust on my cheek. "You don't know me. I'm nobody."
Adrian stepped closer, his long, calloused fingers reaching out gently, reverently, wiping the tear from my cheek with a softness that shattered every expectation I had carried into this estate.
"You aren't nobody, Mara," Adrian whispered, his gray eyes holding mine with an unbroken, eternal weight. "For five years, people in this city have looked at me with fear, greed, or fake smiles. Tonight... you walked up to my table, looked me in the eye, kissed me, and then stood in front of six armed men to protect your coworkers."
He leaned down, his face inches from mine, his warm breath fanning across my lips.
"You asked me if you should have been afraid of me," Adrian murmured into the quiet hall. "The answer is no, Mara. You are the only person in New York who never needs to fear me."
Before I could answer, the heavy double doors of the grand foyer were thrown open with a sharp, echoing crash.
Standing in the doorway, wearing an expensive tailored suit, flanked by four broad-shouldered private security guards, was a tall, silver-haired man whose face was flushed with frantic, arrogant rage.
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It was Harrison Vance—a senior corporate partner at Vance Maritime and the chief executive negotiator for a rival syndicate in Brooklyn.
"Moretti!" Harrison bellowed, stepping into the foyer, his voice echoing off the stone arches. "I hear you canceled our midnight shipping meeting over a girl from a Brooklyn dive bar! Have you lost your mind?!"
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