But Luca was different.
She saw it now.The difference between how she felt about them ...and how she felt about Luca.
And that realization settled quietly, decisively, into her chest.
****
Grant Havelock hatedlosing control.
It wasn’t the fact that Mara Collins got away that bothered him—it was the disruption.The way one frightened employee had managed to knock over a carefully balanced stack of favors, payments, and silence.
He stood in his office with the lights low, jacket draped over the back of his chair, fingers tapping once against the glass as the city glowed below.Phones buzzed.Names came and went.Doors that usually opened for him stayed closed.
Annoying.
“She’ll surface,” he said to no one in particular.“They always do.”
In his mind, he replayed the moment she’d looked at the drive and understood what it meant.Not just numbers—leverage.Routes.Schedules.She didn’t know what it meant, but she knew something was wrong.Seriously wrong, and that he was responsible for it.Hell, he had always thought she might have her suspicions that his work wasn’t exactly legal, but she had stuck to her lane and did her job.
She had run away from him.Defied him.
That would be corrected.She was pretty enough, a little larger than he liked them, but she would still fetch a nice profit.
He began making plans the way he always did—quietly, methodically.Pressure applied through intermediaries.Promises made and broken.A reminder to anyone thinking of protecting her that loyalty was expensive and defiance was worse.
When he got her back, it wouldn’t be rushed.Control was the point.The lesson would be unmistakable.
Not if.
When.
He smiled, thin and certain, and picked up the phone.
Chapter Five
Luca felt the nighttighten long before the first punch landed.
