Chapter 1 - The Man Waiting at the Bottom of the Stairs
Sadie stared through the narrow opening of her apartment door.
The stranger’s gloved hand remained pressed against the wood.
“The man I work for is her son,” he repeated. “He insists on thanking you personally.”
“I don’t want thanks.”
“That makes two of us,” Sadie said, and tried to close the door again.
The big man sighed.
Then a second voice came from the stairwell.
“Carmine.”
One word.
Quiet.
Controlled.
The gloved hand disappeared immediately.
Sadie opened the door another inch.
A man stood three steps below the landing.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, and soaked from the rain. Dark hair was pushed back from a rugged, square-jawed face. A black overcoat hung open over a charcoal suit. He had the heavy, restrained presence of someone who did not need to raise his voice to make a room pay attention.
He also looked furious.
Not at Sadie.
At her hands.
His eyes dropped to the blistered palms she had failed to hide.
“You went to work like that?”
Sadie frowned. “Who are you?”
“Dominic Castile.”
The name meant nothing to her.
Carmine looked almost offended on his behalf.
Sadie shrugged. “Okay.”
For the first time, Dominic seemed uncertain.
“You saved my mother.”
“I pulled an old lady out of a burning building.”
“My mother.”
“Still an old lady.”
Carmine coughed to hide a laugh.
Dominic’s mouth moved slightly, not quite a smile.
Then he looked at the ruined gauze on Sadie’s kitchen counter.
“You need a doctor.”
“I need rent.”
“You need both.”
“I’m not going anywhere with two men who threatened to remove my door.”
Carmine opened his mouth.
Dominic stopped him with a glance.
“You’re right.”
Sadie blinked.
That was not the answer she expected.
Dominic reached slowly into his coat and removed a business card.
No title.
Only a name and a number.
“Call the hospital listed on the back. Ask for Dr. Lena Morris. She will examine your burns and lungs. No charge.”
Sadie took the card but did not lower the chain.
“What do you want?”
“Nothing.”
“Nobody with men like these wants nothing.”
Carmine muttered, “She’s observant.”
Dominic ignored him.
“My mother is alive because you went into a building everyone else was running away from.”
“I didn’t see anyone running.”
“That is not the point.”
“It kind of is.”
Dominic exhaled.
“You’re in danger.”
There it was.
Sadie’s grip tightened on the door.
“From you?”
“No.”
“Convincing.”
“The people who set that fire know Rosa survived.”
Sadie’s stomach dropped.
“You said set.”
Dominic’s face became still.
Sadie understood immediately.
“That wasn’t an accident.”
“No.”
The apartment suddenly felt smaller.
The rain at the window sounded louder.
Dominic continued.
“If they learn a civilian pulled her out, they may assume you saw something.”
“I didn’t.”
“They may not care.”
Sadie thought about the old woman coughing against her shoulder, the second-floor hallway glowing orange.
Then another memory surfaced.
A shape outside the rear window.
A man.
Standing in the alley before the sirens arrived.
She had forgotten him in the smoke.
Dominic saw the change in her expression.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Sadie.”
She hated the way he said her name as though he had earned it.
“There was someone behind the building.”
Carmine straightened.
Dominic stepped closer but stopped outside the chain.
“Describe him.”
“I couldn’t see his face.”
“Height?”
“Tall.”
“Clothes?”
“Dark jacket. Baseball cap.”
“Doing what?”
“Watching.”
Carmine exchanged a look with Dominic.
Sadie’s chest tightened.
“He saw me come out with your mother.”
Dominic did not lie.
“Probably.”
“Great.”
“You should leave this apartment tonight.”
“No.”
“Sadie.”
“No.”
“This is not stubbornness. It is survival.”
“Easy for you to say. You probably have six houses.”
Carmine looked at the floor.
Sadie pointed at him. “That means yes.”
Dominic’s expression softened by a fraction.
“I have somewhere secure.”
“I’m not moving into a stranger’s house.”
“You ran into a burning one.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“The person inside needed me.”
The words stopped him.
Dominic Castile was not accustomed to people doing something simply because another human being needed help.
A pounding sounded from below.
All three froze.
A door slammed on the first floor.
Then footsteps rushed up the stairs.
Carmine moved first.
He stepped in front of Dominic.
The second suited man reached inside his jacket.
Sadie backed away.
“Who is that?”
Dominic’s voice changed.
“Inside. Now.”
“No—”
The stairwell light went out.
Darkness swallowed the landing.
A voice shouted from below.
“Fourth floor!”
Carmine swore.
Dominic pushed Sadie gently but firmly behind the apartment door.
“Lock it.”
“You’re outside.”
“Lock it.”
Something crashed on the third floor.
Sadie heard running.
Then a sharp struggle.
Not gunfire.
Bodies hitting walls.
A man cursed.
Carmine grunted.
Sadie’s heart hammered.
She grabbed the cheap metal flashlight beside her sink.
Then she heard Dominic shout.
“Stay down!”
A stranger burst onto the landing.
He saw Sadie through the half-open door.
“There!”
He lunged.
Sadie slammed the door into him.
The chain snapped.
He forced his shoulder through.
She swung the flashlight.
It struck his forearm.
He grabbed her wrist.
Pain exploded through her burned hand.
Sadie cried out.
Then Dominic was there.
He seized the man by the collar, pulled him away from Sadie, and drove him hard into the wall.
The stranger swung wildly.
Dominic blocked the blow and hit him once in the stomach, then once across the jaw.
The man collapsed to one knee.
Dominic did not keep hitting him.
He pinned him against the floor until Carmine arrived.
“Enough,” Dominic said.
Sadie stared.
Rainwater dripped from Dominic’s hair. His breathing was heavy.
His knuckles were red.
But his eyes were on her.
“Are you hurt?”
“My hand.”
He looked at her wrist.
The skin around the burn had split.
His face hardened.
“That’s it.”
“What?”
“You can hate me tomorrow.”
He lifted the torn chain from the floor.
“But tonight you’re not staying behind a door that no longer locks.”
Downstairs, sirens began to approach.
Sadie looked at the man Carmine was restraining.
Then at her broken door.
Then at Dominic.
“You called the police?”
“Before we came upstairs.”
That surprised her.
“You actually use police?”
“Occasionally they are useful.”
Sadie almost laughed.
Instead she grabbed her coat.
Outside, freezing rain washed the blood from Dominic’s knuckles.
Across the street, a black sedan waited with its headlights off.
Sadie stopped.
Dominic followed her gaze.
The sedan started.
Then sped away.
Carmine swore.
Dominic looked at Sadie.
“Did you recognize it?”
“No.”
But something bothered her.
The rear window.
A small white hospital parking permit.
St. Catherine’s Medical Center.
The nursing school Sadie had abandoned two years earlier.
May you like
And suddenly the fire no longer felt like a stranger’s war.
It felt connected to the life she had been trying very hard to forget.
