By the time Sloane Jenkins realized the men in the black van had kidnapped the wrong woman, her wrists were already tied behind her back.
The burlap hood over her head smelled like dust, rain, and somebody else’s fear.
She couldn’t see anything.
She could only hear the tires hissing over wet Chicago pavement, the low growl of the engine, and two men breathing somewhere in the darkness around her.
Then one of them spoke.
“O’Donnell’s going to pay for his princess.”
Sloane stopped struggling.
Princess?
Her heart had been pounding so hard she could barely think, but that word cut through the panic.
Sloane Jenkins was twenty-eight years old. She was a bookkeeper at a small property-management company in River North. She lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Logan Square where the radiator clanged every night at 2:13 in the morning.
She had $342.70 in checking.
Her most valuable possession was probably her laptop, assuming anyone was willing to overlook the coffee stain across the keyboard.
And the only male waiting anxiously for her to come home was Meatball, her overweight orange tabby, whose emotional range extended from hungry to personally offended.
Nobody had ever called Sloane a princess.
“You have the wrong person.”
Silence.
Sloane swallowed.
“I heard what you said. O’Donnell? My name is Jenkins.”
The man beside her shifted.
“Quiet.”
“I’m serious.”
“Good for you.”
“I’m not whoever you think I am.”
Nobody answered.
Sloane forced herself to breathe through her nose.
Think.
Twenty minutes earlier, she had left work late after fixing a reconciliation error that her manager, Doug, had somehow blamed on “the system” despite the fact that the system had not accidentally typed the same invoice twice.
Rain had been coming sideways.
Her cheap umbrella had broken that morning, so she’d grabbed the expensive black umbrella sitting in the office lost-and-found after asking everyone twice whether it belonged to them.
Then a van had pulled beside the curb.
A man had called, “Sloane?”
She had turned.
That had been her mistake.
Now she understood.
They had been looking for a Sloane.
Just not her.
The van slowed.
Sloane’s stomach dropped.
A gate opened somewhere outside with a metallic rumble.
They drove another thirty seconds before stopping.
A door slid open.
Cold air rushed inside.
Hands grabbed her arms.
“Easy,” she snapped instinctively. “I can walk.”
One of the men actually laughed.
“That’s cute.”
“I’m glad my kidnapping is entertaining.”
The laughter stopped.
Good, Sloane thought.
If she was going to die, at least somebody could be uncomfortable.
They led her through a building.
Even blindfolded, she could tell it was enormous. Her shoes clicked across what sounded like stone. The air smelled faintly of cedar, expensive polish, and fresh flowers.
A door opened.
She was pushed into a chair.
Rope tightened around her ankles.
Then everyone left.
For several minutes, Sloane heard nothing.
Her fear changed shape.
The chaos of the kidnapping had given her something to fight against. Silence was worse.
Silence gave her imagination room.
She thought about Meatball.
It was ridiculous.
She might be sitting in a room waiting to be murdered, and she was worried her cat would miss dinner.
But Meatball had been abandoned once already. She’d found him behind a laundromat three years ago, half-starved and furious at humanity.
“You better knock over the food container,” she whispered beneath the hood. “You’re fat enough to survive a couple days.”
Footsteps sounded outside.
Sloane went still.
The door opened.
These footsteps were different.
Slow.
Unhurried.
Nobody spoke until a man with a deep voice said, “Take it off.”
The hood disappeared.
Light slammed into Sloane’s eyes.
She blinked hard.
Then her vision cleared.
The room looked like something out of a European palace dropped into the middle of Chicago. Marble floors. Gold detailing. Crystal chandeliers. Tall arched windows overlooking acres of manicured grounds.
Three men in dark suits stood near the walls.
Another stood beside her.
And directly across the room was the man who had ordered the hood removed.
Tall.
Broad-shouldered.
Controlled.
He wore tailored black trousers, and his shirt and jacket had apparently been discarded somewhere before he entered. Black-and-gray tattoos covered his chest, shoulders, and arms. His hair was swept back from a face that might have belonged on a billboard if not for the pale scar cutting along his jaw.
But it was his eyes that frightened her.
They weren’t angry.
Anger she understood.
His were calm.
The kind of calm that came from being the most dangerous person in every room.
He studied Sloane once.
Then looked at the man beside her.
“Leo.”
“Yeah, boss?”
“You were told to bring me Sloan O’Donnell.”
“That’s who we grabbed.”
The boss slowly lifted a photograph.
Sloane could see a young brunette in a white dress standing beside a yacht.
He looked from the photograph to Sloane.
Then back to Leo.
“Does this woman look like a twenty-two-year-old socialite who spends half her weekends in Miami?”
Leo’s confidence evaporated.
“She had the umbrella.”
Sloane stared at him.
“The umbrella?”
Leo pointed toward an expensive black umbrella leaning against the wall.
Realization hit her.
“It was a Christmas present.”
Everyone looked at her.
Sloane cleared her throat.
“Technically, not to me. Somebody left it at my office.”
The boss closed his eyes for one second.
That single second seemed more terrifying than yelling.
“Where did you take her?”
“Outside the Halsted building.”
The boss’s gaze sharpened.
“There are forty businesses in that building.”
Leo said nothing.
Sloane couldn’t help herself.
“Forty-three.”
The boss looked at her.
She wished immediately that she had kept quiet.
“I do bookkeeping for the management company,” she explained.
His gaze remained on her.
Leo muttered something under his breath.
Then he reached beneath his jacket.
“She isn’t connected, boss. I’ll clean it up.”
Sloane saw the shape beneath his coat.
A gun.
The room suddenly became very small.
“No…”
The word escaped before she could stop it.
The boss didn’t raise his voice.
“No.”
Leo froze.
“Boss—”
“I said no.”
His hand came out empty.
Sloane’s breath shook.
The boss crossed the room toward her.
Every survival instinct told her to move, but the ropes made that impossible.
He stopped in front of her.
Up close, the scar along his jaw was more visible.
So were the tiny signs that his composure required effort.
He wasn’t emotionless.
He was disciplined.
That was different.
He put the photograph on the marble table beside an untouched silver coffee service.
“Wrong girl,” he said.
Relief surged through Sloane so quickly she almost laughed.
“Great. Glad we cleared that up.”
Then his eyes settled on hers.
“But you’re staying.”
The relief died.
Sloane stared at him.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“You can’t keep me.”
Something almost amused flickered through his expression.
“You’re currently tied to a chair inside my house.”
“That doesn’t make it legal.”
“No.”
“At least we agree on something.”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
One of the guards looked away, perhaps hiding a reaction.
Sloane leaned forward as far as the restraints allowed.
“I’m not connected to O’Donnell. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what this is about. Let me go, and I’ll walk out of here.”
“You’ve seen my face.”
“I can forget it.”
“No,” he said quietly. “You can’t.”
“I’m an accountant. Forgetting things people desperately want me to remember is basically part of my job.”
That time, the corner of his mouth actually moved.
Barely.
Then it disappeared.
“Untie her.”
Leo frowned.
“Boss?”
The man looked at him.
Leo immediately obeyed.
When the ropes came free, Sloane stood and rubbed her wrists.
She found her handbag on a nearby chair and grabbed it.
Then she headed toward the door.
Two guards stepped in front of it.
She stopped.
“Seriously?”
The boss poured himself a glass of water.
“What’s your full name?”
“You kidnapped me. I’m not filling out a survey.”
“Your purse already answered most of my questions.”
Sloane’s stomach sank.
He knew who she was.
“Then why ask?”
“I wanted to see whether you’d lie.”
“I’m beginning to think you have trust issues.”
He took a drink.
“Sloane Jenkins. Twenty-eight. No criminal record. No husband. No children. You work for Marlowe Property Management.”
Her blood chilled.
“How do you know all that?”
“My people are efficient when they aren’t kidnapping the wrong woman.”
Leo stared at the floor.
Sloane almost laughed despite herself.
Almost.
“Okay. You know I’m nobody.”
The boss’s expression changed.
“Don’t say that.”
The words were unexpected.
Sloane frowned.
“What?”
“You’re not nobody.”
For one strange second, neither of them spoke.
Then Sloane shook it off.
“My cat needs food.”
He blinked.
“Your what?”
“My cat. Meatball.”
One of the guards coughed.
Sloane looked toward him.
“Do you have something against his name?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Good.”
She turned back.
“If I’m apparently your prisoner, somebody needs to feed him.”
The boss studied her as if trying to decide whether she was serious.
She was.
Finally, he looked toward a guard.
“Daniel.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get the address. Feed the cat.”
Sloane narrowed her eyes.
“You’re sending a mobster to feed Meatball?”
Daniel looked mildly offended.
“I like cats.”
“Fine. There’s wet food in the cabinet beside the fridge. Half a can. He’ll tell you he hasn’t eaten in weeks. He’s lying.”
Daniel nodded solemnly.
“Understood.”
The absurdity nearly broke through Sloane’s fear.
Then the boss turned away.
“Take Ms. Jenkins upstairs.”
Sloane’s head snapped up.
“Wait.”
He stopped.
“How long are you keeping me?”
He didn’t answer.
“That’s a pretty important detail.”
Still nothing.
“Do I at least get your name?”
The guards exchanged glances.
The man turned slowly.
“Adrian Vale.”
Something about the name hit Sloane.
She had heard it before.
Not from newspapers.
From invoices.
Her face must have changed because Adrian noticed.
“What?”
Sloane’s mind raced.
Vale.
Vale Holdings.
Vale Development.
Vale Security.
She had processed payments to those companies for years.
And there was another name buried inside Marlowe’s books.
O’Donnell.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars moving through properties that made no financial sense.
Adrian took one step closer.
“You recognize my name.”
Sloane should have lied.
But Adrian had already established that he was good at spotting lies.
“I’ve seen it.”
“Where?”
“At work.”
The room became silent.
Adrian’s expression hardened.
“What exactly have you seen?”
Sloane remembered the strange ledger entries she had flagged three weeks earlier.
Transfers.
Shell vendors.
Properties owned on paper by companies connected to both Vale and O’Donnell.
And one payment she had been planning to ask Doug about tomorrow morning.
A payment for $1.8 million.
Authorized under her employee credentials.
Except Sloane had never authorized it.
She looked at Adrian.
“I think,” she said slowly, “you kidnapped the wrong woman for the right reason.”
For the first time since he had entered the room, Adrian Vale looked genuinely surprised.
And somewhere downstairs, a phone began to ring.
---