Chapter 3 - The Grand MeridianFriday night arrived wrapped in a freezing drizzle that turned the Chicago streets into black mirrors reflecting neon streetlights and headlights.
Rowena stood in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom, wearing a simple, deep emerald silk dress that she had bought two years ago for an anniversary dinner with Dylan—an anniversary he had spent working late at his downtown office. The color brought out the green flecks in her eyes and contrasted sharply against her pale skin.
She applied a careful layer of makeup, pinned her dark hair up into a loose, elegant knot with a few stray curls framing her face, and checked her reflection one last time.
She didn't look like a woman about to participate in an illicit, underground transaction. She looked like a woman going to a charity gala where she knew nobody.
At 8:30 PM, she drove downtown, her tires hissing against the wet asphalt. She parked in the subterranean garage of the Grand Meridian Hotel—a towering monument of art-deco architecture, polished brass, and quiet, exorbitant wealth.
The lobby was a cathedral of marble and soft jazz, smelling of expensive white lilies and roasted espresso beans. Rowena crossed the expansive floor, her heels clicking softly against the stone, and stepped into a private bank of elevators tucked away in a quiet alcove.
There were no floor buttons inside the car except one: 14.
The elevator didn't rumble or shake; it glided upward with silent, hydraulic perfection. When the doors slid open on the fourteenth floor, Rowena stepped out into a dimly lit hallway carpeted in thick, midnight-blue wool that swallowed the sound of her footsteps.
Suite 1402 was at the very end of the hall.
A single brass sconce cast a warm, amber glow over the heavy mahogany door. Rowena stood before it for three full seconds, her hand hovering over the brass knocker. Every instinct screaming at her to turn around, run back to the elevator, get into her Honda, and drive back to the hospital.
What are you doing? You don't even know who is behind this door.
Then she thought of Cecile’s hospital room. She thought of Dylan’s cold, mocking laugh in the parking garage. She thought of the emptiness waiting for her in the house on Maple Street.
She raised her hand and knocked twice.
The door didn't open immediately. For a moment, Rowena thought perhaps she had the wrong room, the wrong date, the wrong life.
Then, the heavy brass deadbolt clicked back with a mechanical thud.
The door swung inward, opening into a sprawling, penthouse-style suite lit only by the ambient glow of the city lights filtering through floor-to-ceiling glass windows.
Standing in the entryway was a man.
Rowena’s breath caught in her throat.
He was not wearing the casual attire she had vaguely imagined a medical donor or an agency provider might wear. He wore a custom-tailored charcoal three-piece suit, unbuttoned at the top, with a crisp white shirt beneath. His dark hair was brushed back neatly, touched with distinguished silver at the temples, and his face possessed a striking, carved intensity that belonged on a magazine cover or a billboard overlooking Times Square.
But it wasn't his looks that made Rowena freeze in her tracks.
It was his eyes.
They were an arresting, brilliant shade of ice-blue, framed by long dark lashes, and they were staring at her with an expression that carried zero surprise—and a staggering, overwhelming weight of hungry, possessive recognition.
“Rowena,” he said.
His voice was a deep, velvet baritone that vibrated right through the hardwood floor and straight into her chest.
Rowena staggered back half a step, her fingers tightening around the strap of her leather clutch. “You... you know my name?”
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The man didn't move out of the doorway. He leaned one broad shoulder against the mahogany frame, his ice-blue eyes sweeping slowly down her emerald dress and back up to her wide, terrified eyes.
“I’ve known your name for three years, Rowena,” he said softly. “Step inside. It’s freezing out there.”
