Chapter 2 - THE MAN AT THE DOOR
The bathroom door gave another violent crack.
Lena covered her mouth to keep herself from crying out.
A thin line had appeared in the wood beside the lock.
Outside, Derek stopped pretending to be patient.
“You think locking a door changes anything?” he shouted. “Open it!”
Lena stared at the final message on her phone.
I’m close.
She had no idea who had sent it.
No idea whether the stranger was a cop, a lunatic, or someone even more dangerous than the man outside the bathroom.
But right now, danger arriving from the street felt better than danger already inside the house.
The door shook again.
This time, the frame split.
Lena scrambled backward until her shoulders hit the bathtub.
Her ribs screamed.
She nearly blacked out.
Then she heard something that made Derek stop.
Car doors.
Not one.
Several.
Heavy footsteps crossed the driveway.
Derek went silent.
Lena held her breath.
A knock sounded at the front door.
Three slow knocks.
No pounding.
No shouting.
That somehow frightened her more.
Derek's footsteps moved away from the bathroom.
“Who is it?”
A man's voice answered from the other side.
“Open the door.”
Lena's fingers tightened around her phone.
She knew that voice was not Maya's.
Derek apparently didn't like the command.
“Get off my property.”
Silence.
Then the voice came again, colder.
“You have a woman injured inside that house.”
Lena's heart nearly stopped.
Derek did not answer.
The stranger continued.
“You can open the door yourself, or the people standing beside me will.”
Lena heard Derek curse.
Then something scraped across the entryway.
A drawer opening.
Metal clinking.
Her stomach dropped.
Derek kept a handgun in the hall cabinet.
Lena forced herself upright despite the pain.
She had to warn whoever was outside.
She typed with shaking fingers.
He has a gun. Hall cabinet. Please don't come in.
The reply arrived instantly.
Stay down. Lock the door.
Then another message.
You're getting out tonight.
Lena stared at those words.
Not try.
Not maybe.
You're getting out.
She did not remember the last time anyone had spoken about her life with that kind of certainty.
At the front of the house, Derek shouted, “I told you to leave!”
A second later, everything happened at once.
The front door slammed inward.
Men yelled.
Something crashed.
Derek cursed.
Then came a short struggle followed by silence.
Lena pressed both hands against her ears.
She did not want to know what had happened.
Footsteps came down the hallway.
Slow.
Controlled.
Stopping outside her bathroom.
Lena could barely breathe.
“Lena?”
She froze.
It was him.
The stranger from the messages.
“How do you know my name?”
“I don't.”
A pause.
“It's printed on the package beside your front door.”
Despite everything, a broken laugh almost escaped her.
Then pain crushed it immediately.
The man continued.
“My name is Roman DeLuca.”
The name meant nothing to Lena.
Yet somewhere deep in her memory, she thought she had heard it before.
“Are you alone?” she whispered.
“No.”
“Is Derek—”
“He won't come through this door.”
The certainty in Roman's voice terrified and reassured her at the same time.
Lena crawled toward the lock.
Her fingers shook so badly it took two attempts.
When the door finally opened, she expected to see chaos.
Instead, one man stood several feet away, deliberately giving her space.
He was tall, perhaps late thirties, dressed in a charcoal suit beneath a dark overcoat. His black hair was damp from the rain.
Nothing about him suggested kindness.
His face was sharp, controlled, almost unreadable.
But his eyes changed when he saw her.
They dropped briefly toward the bruising along her side and then returned to her face.
Something cold moved through his expression.
Not pity.
Anger.
Behind him stood two other men.
Farther down the hallway, Derek was on his knees with his hands restrained behind him, furious but unharmed.
“What the hell is this?” Derek shouted. “Who are you people?”
Roman never looked away from Lena.
“Can you walk?”
She tried.
Her knees buckled immediately.
Roman moved, then stopped himself before touching her.
“May I?”
The question stunned her.
Derek never asked before grabbing her.
Roman waited.
Lena finally nodded.
He bent carefully and lifted her as though she weighed nothing.
Pain flashed through her chest, but his movements were surprisingly gentle.
“Hospital,” he said.
One of the men nodded and walked ahead.
Derek exploded.
“You can't take her! She's my girlfriend!”
Roman finally turned.
Everything about his face became colder.
“She is not property.”
“You break into my house, put your hands on me, and steal my woman? Do you know who you're messing with?”
One of Roman's men actually laughed.
Roman didn't.
“No,” he said. “But you're about to learn who you're messing with.”
Derek's face shifted.
Then, suddenly, recognition appeared.
His color drained.
“DeLuca?”
Lena looked between them.
Roman adjusted his hold around her carefully.
Derek's voice became quieter.
“Roman DeLuca?”
The man carrying Lena said nothing.
That silence answered the question.
And suddenly Lena remembered.
DeLuca.
The newspaper articles.
The whispers about construction companies, nightclubs, ports, political connections.
The family prosecutors had been trying unsuccessfully to dismantle for almost twenty years.
Roman DeLuca was not simply wealthy.
He was rumored to control half the criminal world between New York and Philadelphia.
Lena's blood turned cold.
She had texted the mafia.
And the mafia had answered.
Roman carried her toward the entrance.
Derek shouted behind them.
“You don't know who she is!”
Roman stopped.
Lena felt his body go still.
Derek laughed nervously, sensing he'd finally found something useful.
“You think she randomly sent you that message?”
“What are you talking about?” Lena whispered.
Derek looked directly at her.
His smile was ugly.
“Ask him why his number was already saved in your phone.”
Lena frowned.
“It wasn't.”
“Yes, it was.”
“No.”
Roman's eyes sharpened.
Derek leaned forward despite the man holding him.
“Ask her to check the contact history.”
Lena's stomach twisted.
She opened her phone.
The number she'd texted looked unfamiliar.
But when she tapped the information icon, something strange appeared.
The contact had been deleted recently.
A name still remained in the phone's backup data.
R. DeLuca.
Lena stared at it.
“I've never saved this number.”
Roman slowly lowered his gaze to the screen.
For the first time since arriving, his composure cracked.
Just slightly.
“Who gave you this phone?”
“My mother.”
“When?”
“Before she died.”
Roman's expression changed completely.
Derek smiled.
“There it is.”
Lena looked at him.
“What?”
“You still don't understand?”
He laughed.
“I wasn't keeping you in that house because I loved you, Lena.”
Her heart stopped.
Roman turned toward him.
Derek's smile widened.
“I was keeping her alive because someone has been waiting twelve years for her to make contact with Roman DeLuca.”
And in Roman's arms, Lena suddenly realized the worst night of her life might have opened the door to something much bigger.
May you like
Something Derek had been hiding from her all along.
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