At 2:13 A.m., She Drank Alone — Unaware The Mafia Boss Had Been Watching Her All Night
## Chapter 3
Meline froze, her eyes widening in sheer unadulterated terror. She couldn’t breathe. The dim lighting of the Obsidian Room suddenly felt like a cage, the mahogany walls pressing closer, the jazz still playing somewhere overhead as though nothing in the world had changed in the last thirty seconds. “You,” she stammered, the pieces clicking together with horrifying speed. “You’re the money, the three million moving through the Caymans. You’re the one he’s laundering it for.”
Declan’s storm-gray eyes flickered with genuine surprise, followed by a dangerous gleam of respect. She figured it out, and quickly. “Bradley was supposed to wash that money quietly,” Declan said, his tone conversational yet laced with poison. “Instead, he got sloppy. He skimmed off the top to fund a lavish lifestyle and an affair with a twenty-two-year-old paralegal. But the worst mistake he made, Meline, was trying to hide his theft by creating a dummy corporation under your name. Hayes Holdings.”
Tears pricked Meline’s eyes. Not from heartbreak, but from profound, paralyzing fear. “I didn’t know,” she whispered frantically, her hands shaking so badly her glass rattled against the marble. “I swear to God, I didn’t know anything about it until today. I left him. I have nothing to do with this.”
“I believe you,” Declan said smoothly. And to his own surprise, he did. He could read people better than anyone in Chicago, and the raw panic radiating from this woman was entirely genuine — not the calculated panic of a co-conspirator caught out, but the pure, uncomplicated terror of someone who had only just learned the ground beneath her had never been solid at all. She was a victim of Bradley’s arrogance.
“Then let me go,” she pleaded, sliding off the bar stool, her legs trembling. “I won’t say a word to the police, to the feds, to anyone. I just want to disappear.” Before she could take a step, Declan’s large, warm hand clamped around her wrist. It wasn’t bruising, but the grip was immovable, and something in the sheer certainty of it, the total absence of hesitation, told her this was a man who had never once in his life failed to keep hold of something he’d decided to keep.
“You can’t leave, Meline,” Declan said, his voice dropping an octave, practically humming with authority. “Why not?” she choked out. “Because—” Declan nodded toward the entrance of the speakeasy.
Meline followed his gaze. Three men had just walked through the heavy velvet curtains at the front door. They weren’t wearing tailored suits like Declan. They wore dark leather jackets, their faces hardened, scarred, and scanning the room with predatory intent. One of them, a massive man with a jagged scar across his jaw, locked eyes on Meline.
“Those men,” Declan murmured, keeping her wrist firmly in his grasp, “belong to the Vulov Bratva, a rival Russian syndicate. Bradley didn’t just steal from me. He borrowed money from them to try and cover up what he stole from my accounts. He owes them heavily.”
Meline’s breath came in short, panicked gasps. The Russians were already walking toward them, shoving past a group of frightened patrons, their boots leaving wet prints across the polished floor, and somewhere behind the bar Harvey had gone very still, one hand hovering near something Meline couldn’t see beneath the counter. “Why are they looking at me?” she asked, her voice cracking. Declan stood up, positioning his broad body between Meline and the approaching enforcers, reaching under his jacket to rest his hand on the cold steel of his holstered weapon.
“Because *krasavitsa*,” Declan said softly, using the Russian word for beauty with dripping irony, “when Bradley realized he couldn’t pay them back, he gave them the deed to Hayes Holdings as collateral, which means to the Russian mob, they now own the company.” He looked down at her, his eyes blazing with a terrifying possessive fire. “And they came here tonight to collect its CEO.”