“I Need You” — The Mafia Boss Shows Up Drunk At My Door. Now He Wants Me
The knock came at 2:14 a.m. It wasn't the polite tap of a neighbor, nor the frantic pounding of a drunk who had the wrong floor. It was a heavy, dead sound. Flesh hitting cheap wood. I should have kept the deadbolt thrown. I should have looked through the peephole and walked right back to my bed. But I opened it. And there he was.
Roman Bianchi, bleeding on my welcome mat, reeking of expensive Scotch and copper. "I need you." He slurred. Then he collapsed. He hit the linoleum with a sickening thud that I felt in the soles of my feet. For 10 seconds, I just stared at him. Roman Bianchi. He was a ghost story they told in the financial district.
A name whispered in the kitchens of the restaurants I couldn't afford to eat at. I knew him because he owned the building my dive bar was in. I knew him because twice a month, he sat in the back booth, drank water with lemon, and watched the room like he was calculating the price of our souls. We had spoken exactly once. I spilled a drop of coffee on his cuff.
He looked at me, dead-eyed, and told me to breathe. That was it. Now he was face down in my hallway, bleeding onto a rug I bought at Target for $12. My first instinct was the phone. It was sitting on the entry table, a cheap piece of plastic that could summon the police in three digits. But you don't call the cops on a Bianchi.
Not unless you want your teeth mailed to your mother. The police wouldn't arrest him. They'd probably apologize for the inconvenience, shoot me for making a mess, and carry him out on a silk stretcher. I cursed, a harsh, ugly sound in the quiet of my apartment, and dropped to my knees. "Roman," I said, slapping his cheek. His skin was freezing, clammy with shock.
"Hey, wake up. You can't die here. My landlord will keep my deposit." He groaned, a wet, rattling sound. I grabbed him by the shoulders of his suit jacket. Tom Ford, ruined, sticky with dark arterial blood, and pulled. He was pure dead weight, 200 lb of muscle and violence. I planted my bare feet against the doorjamb for leverage, and hauled him backward.
My spine screamed. My breath hitched. Inch by agonizing inch, I dragged him out of the public hallway and into my living room. I kicked the door shut and threw the deadbolt. My hands were shaking. I looked down at them. They were painted crimson. "Damn it," I breathed, wiping them on my sweatpants. I didn't have a medical degree.
I was 2 years into nursing school when my father's gambling debts caught up with us, forcing me to drop out and start pulling double shifts to keep my kneecaps intact. But I knew enough to know that a man bleeding this much had a clock ticking down to zero. I rolled him onto his back. He grunted, his eyes fluttering open for a fraction of a second.
They were dark, unfocused, and terrifyingly empty. "Hold still," I muttered, mostly to myself. I ripped his shirt open. The buttons popped, scattering across the cheap laminate flooring like tiny white teeth. The wound was on his left side, just below the ribs. It wasn't a bullet hole. It was a slice, deep and jagged.
A knife. Someone had gotten close. Someone he probably trusted. You don't get a blade that deep into a man like Roman Bianchi from the front unless he lets you into his personal space. I ran to the bathroom and grabbed my kit. It wasn't a standard first aid box. When you live in a neighborhood where gunshots are background noise, you keep heavy duty gauze, butterfly stitches, and medical superglue under the sink.
I knelt beside him again, pouring saline directly into the gash. Roman roared. It wasn't a scream. It was an animalistic sound of pure fury. His eyes snapped open, and before I could blink, his hand shot out. His fingers clamped around my throat. His grip was like a steel vice. I choked, my hands instantly flying to his wrist, clawing at his skin.
"You!" he rasped. His breath was hot, heavy with the smell of top-shelf liquor and iron. His eyes finally focused on my face. Recognition flickered beneath the pain. The bartender. "Let go!" I wheezed, digging my nails into his arm. He stared at me. His chest heaving, blood bubbling from the wound with every frantic beat of his heart.
For a second, I thought he was going to snap my neck just on instinct. Then the tension broke. His eyes rolled back, and his hand fell away, hitting the floor limply. I collapsed backward, coughing violently, sucking air into my burning lungs. I sat there for a long minute, watching his chest rise and fall unevenly.
Part of me wanted to leave him. Let him bleed out. The city would be safer. I would be safer. But I'm not a killer, not even by omission. I crawled back to him. I packed the wound with gauze, applying brutal pressure until my arms ached and my wrists went numb. He didn't move again. Once the bleeding slowed to an oozing sluggishness, I began the ugly, crude work of pulling the edges of the skin together.
I used the butterfly strips, layering them thick, sealing the smaller tears with the medical glue. It was a butcher's job, but it would hold his insides on the inside. When I was done, my living room looked like a slaughterhouse. Bloody towels were piled in the corner. Empty saline bottles rolled across the floor.
I sat back on my heels and looked at him. Without the terrifying aura of power, he just looked like a man. A pale, exhausted, broken man. His dark hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. The hard lines of his jaw were slack. I found an old Afghan on the back of my sofa and threw it over him. It was aggressively yellow, crocheted by my grandmother, and it made him look absurd.
A mob boss under a daisy patterned blanket. I didn't sleep. I dragged a kitchen chair to the corner of the room, made a pot of black coffee, and sat in the dark. I watched his chest rise and fall. I waited for him to die, or to wake up. I wasn't sure which one scared me more. The garbage trucks arrived at 5:30 a.m.
Their hydraulic brakes squealing like slaughtered pigs. Light began to bleed through my blinds, a dirty gray illumination that made my apartment look even cheaper than it was. I was on my third mug of coffee. It tasted like battery acid, but it kept my eyes open. Roman shifted. The movement was small at first.
A twitch of his fingers, a slight turn of his head. Then the pain registered. He hissed, a sharp intake of breath through clenched teeth, and his eyes snapped open. He didn't thrash. He didn't panic. That was the most unsettling part. He woke up in an unfamiliar environment, severely wounded, and his first reaction was absolute freezing stillness.
His dark eyes darted around the room, taking in the peeling paint, the stack of unpaid bills on the counter, the blood-soaked towels in the corner. Finally, his gaze landed on me. I sat in the kitchen chair, my hands wrapped around the warm mug, watching him back. I didn't say anything. Let him figure it out.
He slowly pushed himself up onto his elbows. The yellow Afghan pulled around his waist. He looked down at his side, inspecting my crude patch job. His face was a mask of cold calculation. He touched the butterfly stitches, his jaw ticking. "You didn't call a doctor." His voice was gravel, rough from sleep and dehydration. "Doctors ask questions," I said.
My voice was surprisingly steady. "And they fill out police reports for knife wounds." He swung his legs off the floor, sitting up fully. He swayed slightly, the blood loss catching up with him, but he grounded his feet and forced himself upright. He looked at me, really looked at me, for a long time. "Nora," he said.
A chill ran down my spine. I had never introduced myself to him. I was just the girl wiping down the bar. "You know my name." "I know the names of everyone who works in my buildings." He leaned back against my cheap sofa, ignoring the fact that his ruined shirt was sticking to the upholstery. "I also know you dropped out of nursing school, which explains the surprisingly competent stitch job.
" "It's not stitches, it's glue and tape. You need to go to a real hospital, or a private clinic, or wherever it is people like you go when you get stabbed by your friends." A dark amusement flashed in his eyes. "People like me, criminals," I said flatly. I was too exhausted to be polite. "Mobsters, sociopaths, pick your noun.
" He didn't get angry. He actually smiled. It was a small, dangerous thing that didn't reach his eyes. "You have a sharp tongue for someone sitting 10 ft away from a man she just called a sociopath." "You're welcome, by the way, for saving your life." "Why did you?" he asked. The amusement vanished. The question was a scalpel, cutting straight to the bone.
"You know who I am. You know what I do. You could have locked your door. You could have let me bleed out in the hallway. Why didn't you?" I took a sip of my terrible coffee. I looked away from him, staring at the dust motes dancing in the gray light. "Because I have to clean the hallway," I lied. "And blood stains.
" "Bullshit." "Because I'm not a murderer." "Also [ __ ] Everyone is a murderer under the right circumstances. He pushed himself to his feet. He staggered, catching himself on the arm of the sofa. He was easily a foot taller than me, broad and imposing, even when he was half dead. He took a slow, agonizing step toward me.
I didn't move, but my heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. He stopped a few feet away, looming over my chair. Up close, the smell of copper was overpowering, but beneath it, I could smell something else. Cedar, spice, the scent of a man who owned the world he walked in. You saved me because you didn't want to see a man die, he said softly, leaning down.
His face was inches from mine. That is a severe liability in my world, Nora. I'm not in your world. You are now. I froze. What? I knocked on your door because you were the closest person I knew who wouldn't immediately sell me out to the men who did this to me. It was a gamble. His eyes locked onto mine. They were obsidian, pulling me in, drowning me.
You won the gamble for me, but you also saw me vulnerable. You know I'm weak right now. You know I'm bleeding. I won't tell anyone, I said quickly. The cynicism fractured, revealing the raw panic underneath. I don't care about your wars. I just want to go to my shift tonight and pay my rent. He reached out.
I flinched, but he just traced a heavy thumb along my jawline. His touch was burning hot. You don't get to walk away, he murmured. I owe you my life. In my world, that is a debt that binds us, And I always keep what is mine. He stepped back, breaking the physical contact, but leaving a heavy, suffocating tension in the air. Get me my phone from my jacket pocket, he ordered.
The vulnerability gone, replaced entirely by the boss. Then pack a bag. You're coming with me. I'm not going anywhere with you. Roman looked at me. A terrifying calm settling over his features. The men who did this know I was in this neighborhood. By noon, they will be kicking down doors looking for the trail of blood. Do you want to be here when they find this apartment? I looked at the bloody towels, at my ruined rug.
I looked at the monster standing in my kitchen. I put my coffee mug down, and I went to pack a bag. I packed exactly what you pack when you expect to never see your apartment again. Three pairs of jeans, a handful of shirts, clean underwear, and my toothbrush. I didn't grab photographs. I didn't grab the cheap jewelry my mother left me.
If I survived this, I could buy new things. If I didn't, sentimentality wouldn't save me. Roman was waiting by the door when I zipped the duffel bag. He had put his ruined suit jacket back on, buttoning it over the bloody shirt to hide the mess. He leaned heavily against the frame. His face the color of wet ash.
Ready? He asked. Do I have a choice? No. He pushed off the wall. Keep your head down. If someone sees us, you look at the floor. You don't speak. We took the stairs. The elevator in my building had been broken since August, a fact I cursed with every step. I kept my shoulder wedged under his armpit, bearing a third of his weight.
He was a furnace of fever and pain, his breath hitching every time his left foot hit a riser. The smell of iron was fresh again. He was bleeding through the gauze. "You're tearing the glue." I whispered fiercely as we hit the second floor landing. "Keep moving." He grunted, his fingers digging into my collarbone.
We spilled out of the stairwell and into the alley behind the building. The cold morning air hit me like a slap. The sun wasn't fully up, casting the city in a bruised violet twilight. The alley smelled of stale beer and rotting cardboard. It was my normal, but the massive matte black SUV idling next to the dumpsters was not.
A man was standing by the rear passenger door. He wore a dark wool overcoat and a look of professional indifference. He didn't rush forward to help. He simply opened the door wider as we approached. "Arthur." Roman breathed, practically collapsing into the leather seat. "Mr. Bianchi?" The man replied. His eyes slid to me.
They were pale, dead eyes. "And the girl?" "She comes with us." Arthur didn't ask questions. He motioned for me to get in the other side. I hesitated, my hand gripping the strap of my duffel bag so tight my knuckles ached. This was the threshold. Getting into that car meant I was officially an accomplice. It meant I was a loose end.
But I remembered Roman's words. "The men who did this will be kicking down doors." I slid into the backseat. Arthur shut the door, sealing us in a tomb of quiet leather and tinted glass. The engine revved, a deep muscular growl, and we pulled out of the alley. Roman leaned his head back against the seat, his eyes closed.
The adrenaline of escaping was fading, leaving nothing but the brutal reality of a punctured torso. He looked worse than he had in my living room. His lips were taking on a bluish tint. "Where are we going?" I asked. "Safe house." Arthur said from the front. His voice was completely devoid of inflection. "30 minutes.
" "He doesn't have 30 minutes." I said, leaning over Roman to check his side. The jacket was soaked through. The black fabric hid the color, but it was heavy and wet to the touch. The patch job I did was meant to get him to a trauma ward, not on a cross-country road trip. "Do not touch him.
" Arthur warned, his eyes flicking to the rearview mirror. "Shut up, Arthur." Roman muttered without opening his eyes. "Let her look." I unbuttoned the jacket. The butterfly stitches were holding, but the skin around the wound was swollen and angry, leaking fresh blood from the edges. The tissue was severely traumatized. "You're bleeding internally.
" I said, keeping my voice low. "The outside is sealed, but whatever that blade hit inside is still leaking. If your blood pressure drops any further, you're going to go into hypovolemic shock. You need a transfusion. Now." Roman finally cracked an eye open. He looked at me, a strange, hazy intensity in his gaze. "You're very calm.
" "I'm terrified." I corrected him. "But panicking doesn't clot blood." "In my center console." Arthur said, breaking the silence. "There is a medical kit under the false bottom. It has IV bags, O negative. I didn't wait for permission. I scrambled over the center console, practically crawling into the front seat to tear open the compartment.
Sure enough, beneath a layer of spare magazines for a handgun, there was a vacuum-sealed trauma kit. I grabbed two bags of saline, a bag of blood, and a handful of tubing. I fell back into my seat and ripped the plastic open with my teeth. "Give me your arm," I ordered Roman. He offered his right arm without a word.
He didn't flinch as I tied off his bicep with a piece of rubber tubing. I found a vein, thick and prominent against his pale skin, and slid the needle in. I taped it down fast, hooked up the bag of O negative, and held it high above my head to let gravity do the work. "Squeeze your fist," I told him. "Pump it.
" He flexed his fingers. The dark red liquid began to travel down the tube. I sat there in the back of the speeding SUV, holding a bag of blood like a macabre Statue of Liberty, watching the city blur past the tinted windows. "You're a very useful hostage, Nora," Roman whispered. "I'm not your hostage." "Keep telling yourself that.
" His eyes drifted shut again, but the rhythm of his breathing began to steady as the fresh blood hit his system. "You're in the game now." The SUV wound its way up the coastal hills, leaving the smog and grit of the city far below. We pulled through a set of heavy wrought iron gates that opened silently, creeping up a long gravel driveway flanked by ancient twisting oaks.
The house wasn't a mobster caricature. There were no marble lions or gaudy columns. It was a fortress of concrete and dark glass built directly into the side of a cliff. Arthur parked by the front entrance. Two men in dark clothes stepped out of the shadows before the engine even cut off. They moved with military precision, opening Roman's door and hauling him out.
I scrambled out after them, still clutching the half-empty IV bag. "Take him to the sterile room," Arthur barked. "Call Dr. Evans. Tell him to get his ass here 5 minutes ago." They practically carried Roman inside. I followed, completely ignored by the men swarming the driveway. The interior of the house was freezing, the air conditioning blasting.
The floors were polished slate. The walls were bare concrete. It looked less like a home and more like an expensive mausoleum. They hauled Roman down a long hallway and into a room that looked terrifyingly like a surgical suite. Bright overhead lights, a stainless steel table, monitors lining the walls. The mafia didn't just have safe houses, they had shadow hospitals.
"Put him down," a new voice commanded. An older man with thinning gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses rushed into the room, rolling up his sleeves. Dr. Evans, presumably. He didn't look like a mob doctor. He looked like a pediatrician. I stood in the doorway, awkwardly holding the blood bag as they stripped Roman's ruined clothes away.
Dr. Evans leaned over the wound, prodding the edges of my glue job. He frowned, pushing his glasses up his nose. "Who did this?" he asked, not looking away from the injury. "I did," I said. The doctor finally looked at me. His eyes swept over my blood-stained sweatpants and the cheap duffel bag slung over my shoulder.
"You used construction-grade cyanoacrylate and butterfly closures over an actively hemorrhaging puncture wound." "It stopped the external bleed," I said defensively. "He was drowning in his own blood." "It's a butcher's fix," Evans muttered, turning back to his patient. "But it kept him alive. Barely." "Arthur, get her out of here.
I need to open this up and find the bleeder." Arthur's hand clamped down on my shoulder. It felt like a trap springing shut. He steered me out of the room, closing the heavy wooden door behind us. The lock clicked. "Come with me," Arthur said. He led me up a flight of floating stairs to the second floor. He opened a door at the end of the hall and gestured for me to go inside.
It was a bedroom, larger than my entire apartment. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the ocean, the water a churning slate-gray expanse in the early morning light. A massive king-sized bed dominated the center of the room. It was sterile, beautiful, and completely empty. "Wait here," Arthur said. "For what?" "Until Mr. Bianchi says otherwise.
" He shut the door. I heard the lock engage from the outside. I dropped my duffel bag on the floor. My legs finally gave out, and I sank onto the edge of the mattress. My hands were shaking again. The adrenaline had completely burned off, leaving me hollow and nauseous. I looked down at my fingernails. There was still dried blood crusted under them.
Roman's blood. I was locked in a concrete mansion with a cartel of killers. I had saved the life of the most dangerous man in the city. And my reward was imprisonment. I laughed. A sharp, bitter sound that echoed off the high ceiling. I missed my shitty apartment. I missed the smell of the alley. I don't know how long I sat there.
The sun climbed higher, casting hard, bright geometric shapes across the floor. I didn't sleep. I just stared at the ocean, waiting for the door to open. It finally did around noon. It wasn't Arthur. It was Roman. He looked like a ghost, pale and drawn, but he was standing on his own two feet. He wore a pair of dark sweatpants and no shirt.
His left side was heavily bandaged, a thick pad of stark white gauze wrapping completely around his torso. He leaned against the door frame. His dark eyes locked onto me. "Evan says you saved my spleen." he said. His voice was a low rasp. "I aim to please." I didn't stand up. I crossed my arms over my chest, holding myself together.
"Are you going to let me go now?" Roman stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. He didn't lock it, but the finality of the click felt just as binding. He walked slowly, favoring his left side, until he was standing a few feet from the bed. "No." he said simply. "You owe me a life." "You said it yourself." "I did.
" He looked down at me. His expression unreadable. "Which is why I'm keeping you here." "The men who hit me are methodical. They will trace my steps. They will find the bar. They will find your apartment. If you go back there, you will be dead in 3 days. I can go somewhere else. I can leave the city. You don't have the money to disappear.
I do. Roman sank onto the edge of the mattress, leaving a careful distance between us. The scent of antiseptic and expensive soap wafted off him. You are under my protection now. I don't want your protection. I want my life back. That life is gone, Nora. His tone wasn't cruel. It was purely factual. That made it worse.
The second you opened your door to a bleeding Bianchi, your old life ended. You are in my house. You are under my guard. I stared at him. The reality of my situation crashing down on me like a physical weight. I wasn't a guest. I wasn't a patient. I was property. A piece of collateral he was keeping safe. "You're a monster." I whispered.
Roman's lips twitched in a shadow of a smile. He leaned forward slightly, the movement clearly causing him pain, but he ignored it. His dark eyes held mine, pinning me in place. "I am." He agreed softly. "But right now, Nora, I'm the only monster keeping you alive. Get some sleep. You look terrible." He stood up and walked out of the room.
This time, I heard the lock turn from the outside. I was trapped. And the worst part was I knew he was right. For 3 days, I existed in a state of suspended animation. My world shrank to the four walls of the guest suite. The routine was brutally monotonous. At 8:00 in the morning, the lock would click and a stern older woman named Helen would wheel in a cart of food.
Eggs, toast, black coffee. She never spoke. If I asked her a question, she just looked at my chin, nodded once, and left, locking the door behind her. Lunch was at 1:00. Dinner was at 7:00. I paced. I stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows and watched the Pacific Ocean hurl itself against the rocks below. I counted the waves.
I counted the tiles in the massive spa-like bathroom. I washed my bloody sweatpants in the sink with a bar of cedarwood soap, watching the pink water spiral down the drain, a fading reminder of the night my life ended. I didn't cry. Crying was a luxury for people who had a safety net to fall back into. I was just angry. A cold, heavy anger that sat in the pit of my stomach, right next to the terror.
On the fourth morning, Helen brought the breakfast cart. She turned to leave, but this time the heavy click of the deadbolt didn't follow. I stood frozen by the window, a piece of dry toast halfway to my mouth. I waited 1 minute, then two. Silence. I set the toast down, crossed the room barefoot, and grabbed the brass handle.
It turned smoothly. The door swung open onto the empty sunlit hallway. I didn't hesitate. I slipped out. The house was massive, a labyrinth of concrete, glass, and steel. It was silent, save for the low, constant hum of the central air conditioning. I crept down the floating staircase, keeping my back to the wall, half expecting Arthur to step out of the shadows and put a bullet in my knee.
I found the kitchen first. It was industrial, stainless steel gleaming under recessed lights. Empty. I kept moving. I passed a formal dining room that looked like it had never been used, and a living room dominated by a massive brutalist fireplace. Then I heard a voice. It was low, rough, and laced with quiet menace.
It came from a cracked door at the end of a long corridor. I don't care what the police report says, Declan. The police belong to us. I want to know who paid the detective to look the other way. Find the money, you find the man. I crept closer, pressing my back against the wall just outside the door. Roman, you need to rest, a second voice replied. Declan, presumably.
You lost three pints of blood. The Millers are laying low. We have time. The Millers didn't do this. Roman's voice was a harsh scrape against silence. Jack Miller doesn't have the spine to send a knife into my ribs. He uses guns, and he uses them from a moving car. This was intimate. This was someone who knew my schedule.
Someone who knew I send my detail away when I go to that bar. My breath hitched. He was talking about my bar. I want the streets turned upside down, Roman continued. Nobody breathes in the South District without my permission. Understood? Understood. Footsteps approached the door. I panicked, looking for somewhere to hide, but the corridor was completely bare.
The door swung open, and a tall, broad-shouldered man with a broken nose stepped out. He wore a tailored suit that strained over his biceps. He stopped dead when he saw me. His hand instantly went inside his jacket, resting on the grip of a shoulder holster. "Who the hell are you?" he demanded. "Let her be, Declan.
" Roman's voice floated out from the office. It was tired, but the authority in it was absolute. Declan slowly pulled his hand away from his coat, shooting me a look of pure disgust before walking past me and disappearing down the hall. I stood in the doorway and looked inside. Roman was sitting behind a massive slab of dark walnut that served as a desk.
The blinds were drawn, throwing the room into heavy shadow. He was still pale, dark circles bruising the skin under his eyes. But he wore a crisp white button-down shirt, left open at the collar. The subtle bulk of bandages was visible beneath the cotton. He didn't look up from the tablet resting on his desk.
"If you were trying to escape, you went the wrong way. The front door is to the north." "I wasn't trying to escape," I said, stepping into the room. "I don't know the security codes and Arthur is probably sitting in a sniper nest on the roof." Roman finally looked up. A faint, genuine smirk touched the corner of his mouth.
"Arthur prefers the ground floor. Better sightlines of the driveway." "Why did you leave the door unlocked?" He leaned back in his leather chair. The leather creaked loud in the quiet room. He winced slightly, a tiny tightening of his jaw, before smoothing his expression back into a mask of indifference. Because you are not a prisoner, Nora.
I told you, you are under my protection. A cage is a cage, even if you leave the door open. You're free to walk out the front door right now, he said, gesturing loosely toward the hall. But I wouldn't recommend it. As I was just explaining to Declan, the people looking for me are thorough. I crossed my arms, digging my nails into my biceps.
You said someone who knew your schedule stabbed you, someone close. You were eavesdropping. Bad habit. I have a right to know, I snapped, my voice rising. You dragged me into this. You put a target on my back. If someone is hunting you, they're hunting me too now. So don't give me the silent mafia boss treatment. Tell me what's happening.
Roman stared at me. The air in the room seemed to drop 10°. Most people would have withered under that look. I had spent 3 years dealing with violent drunks and angry debt collectors. I just stared back. You want the truth? He asked softly. Yes. Someone inside my own organization tried to gut me, he said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion.
They paid a freelancer to do it in an alley where they knew I would be alone. They failed. But they know I survived, and they know I didn't go to a hospital. They are currently tearing the city apart looking for the trail of blood. He picked up a heavy crystal tumbler from his desk. It was filled with amber liquid.
He took a slow sip. They won't stop until they finish the job, he continued. And because you are the only civilian who saw the freelancer's face before he ran, they won't stop until you are dead, too. Does that clarify things for you, Nora? I swallowed hard. The anger drained away, replaced by a cold, suffocating dread.
I wasn't just collateral. I was a loose end for his enemies. So, what happens now? I whispered. Now, Roman said, setting the glass down. We wait for them to make a mistake. And you stay exactly where I can see you. The standoff in the office shifted something between us. The pretense of me being a temporary guest vanished.
I was a piece on his chessboard, vital for the moment, but entirely at his mercy. Later that evening, Arthur found me in the kitchen trying to figure out how the espresso machine worked. "He wants you in the west wing," Arthur said. No greeting, no preamble. "Who, Roman?" "Mr. Bianchi." Arthur corrected coldly.
"Dr. Evans had to leave town to patch up a dispute on the south side. The bandages need changing." I abandoned the coffee machine. "I'm not his personal nurse. Hire someone." "He asked for you," Arthur stated, stepping aside and gesturing down the hall. It wasn't a request. I found Roman in a sprawling bedroom that faced the ocean.
The sun had set, and the room was lit only by a few low lamps, casting long, bruised shadows across the floor. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, stripped to the waist, a medical kit open on the nightstand beside him. He looked worse than he had in the office. A fever flush dusted his cheekbones, and a fine sheen of sweat coated his chest.
The adrenaline of the day's meetings had worn off, leaving only the brutal reality of a traumatized body fighting infection. He didn't say anything as I walked in, he just pointed to the kit. I sighed, a harsh sound in the quiet room, and walked over. I washed my hands in the en suite bathroom, the water scalding hot, before snapping on a pair of black nitrile gloves from the kit.
"You're running a fever," I said, standing in front of him. "I'm aware." I reached out and began peeling the medical tape away from his skin. The adhesive pulled at the dark hair on his stomach, but he didn't flinch. I worked carefully, peeling the thick pad of gauze away from the wound. The incision was ugly.
Dr. Evans had cleaned up my rough work, replacing the glue with neat, even sutures, but the surrounding tissue was an angry, mottled purple and black. It was weeping slightly, clear fluid mixing with a tiny bit of fresh blood. "It's inflamed," I muttered, leaning in closer. The heat radiating off his skin was intense.
"Evans should have put you on a stronger, broad-spectrum antibiotic." "He did." "My body just hates it." I grabbed a sterile wipe and began cleaning the perimeter of the wound. I had to brace my left hand on his hip to keep my balance as I leaned over him. His skin was burning, the muscle rigid beneath my palm.
He smelled like iodine, clean sweat, and that underlying intoxicating scent of cedar. I looked up. His face was inches from mine. His eyes were open, tracking my every movement. They were heavy, hooded with exhaustion, but the intensity in them was suffocating. "You have very steady hands," he murmured. His voice was a low rumble in his chest.
I felt the vibration through my hand on his hip. "I used to practice starting IVs on oranges," I said, trying to keep my voice clinical. I grabbed a fresh tube of antibiotic ointment. "Oranges don't squirm." "I'm not squirming." "No, you're just terrifyingly still." I applied the ointment, spreading it gently over the sutures.
He hissed, a sharp intake of breath, and his hand shot out, wrapping around my wrist. I froze. His grip wasn't crushing like it had been in my apartment, but it was absolute. He held my hand against his stomach, right above the wound, his thumb pressing lightly into my pulse point. His skin was rough, calloused from years of things I didn't want to think about.
"You're afraid of me," he stated. It wasn't a question. "You run a criminal empire, Roman. You have a man named Arthur who looks like he eats glass for breakfast. Of course I'm afraid of you." "But you didn't leave when the door was unlocked." "Because I'm more afraid of the people trying to kill you." He slowly let go of my wrist.
His eyes dropped to my lips for a fraction of a second before meeting my gaze again. "Pragmatism. It will keep you alive, Nora." Before I could respond, the bedroom door opened. Arthur stepped into the room holding a manila folder. He stopped when he saw how close I was standing to Roman, but his expression didn't change.
"What is it?" Roman asked, his voice instantly dropping the quiet intimacy we had just shared, snapping back to the cold authority of a boss. "The scout in the financial district reported in," Arthur said. He walked forward and held out the folder. "They found the trail." Roman took the folder and flipped it open.
I finished taping down the fresh gauze, my hands suddenly shaking. I stepped back, wrapping my arms around myself. Roman stared at the contents of the folder for a long time. His jaw locked, the muscles in his neck strained. Without a word, he turned the folder around and handed it to me. I took it hesitantly.
Inside were three glossy photographs. The first was of the alley behind my apartment building, my dumpster. The second was of the stairwell, a dark smear of dried blood on the third step. The third photograph stopped my heart. It was my apartment. The door had been kicked entirely off its hinges, the wood splintered.
Inside, the cheap laminate flooring was covered in debris. The sofa was slashed to ribbons, the yellow Afghan torn in half. Every cabinet was ripped open, the walls were covered in soot. They had torched the kitchen. My landlord, I whispered, the paper trembling in my hands. "He's in the ICU," Arthur said flatly.
"Two broken legs, a fractured orbital bone, and third-degree burns on his hands. They asked him where the girl in 4B went. He didn't know." I dropped the folder. The photos scattered across the hardwood floor. My life was gone. My meager, difficult, exhausting life was completely erased. If I had stayed, if I had refused to get in that SUV, I would be dead.
Or worse. I backed up until my shoulders hit the wall. The air in the room felt incredibly thin. I couldn't breathe. Roman stood up. He ignored Arthur. He ignored the pain in his side. He walked across the room until he was standing directly in front of me. He reached out, his large hands gripping my shoulders, grounding me in the physical world before I could spiral into a panic attack.
"Look at me." He ordered. I shook my head, my vision blurring with unshed tears. "They burned it. They burned everything I had." "Look at me, Nora." The command was sharper this time, cutting through the static in my brain. I looked up. His eyes were completely black, devoid of anything resembling mercy. But that lack of mercy wasn't directed at me.
"I told you I always keep what is mine." Roman said quietly, his grip on my shoulders tightening. "They touched what belongs to me. And by the end of the week, I am going to bury every single one of them." I didn't sleep that night. I sat on the edge of the massive sterile bed and watched the moon drag its reflection across the Pacific. My apartment was gone.
My clothes, my nursing textbooks, the cheap thrift store mug I drank my terrible coffee from. All of it. Ash. My landlord, a grumpy 60-year-old man who fixed my radiator with duct tape and complained about my hours, was lying in a hospital bed with broken legs because of me. Because I opened a door.
The terror had burned off, leaving behind a cold, hard vacuum. You can only panic for so long before your brain simply shuts down the emotion to prioritize survival. By the time the sun began to bleach the horizon, I had reached a terrible clarity. I was completely unmoored. The only anchor I had left was the man who had brought the fire to my doorstep.
I washed my face, put my blood-stained sweatpants back on, and left the room. The house was already awake. I found Roman in the basement. It wasn't a wine cellar or a storage space. It was an armory. The walls were lined with locked steel cabinets, the air thick with the smell of gun oil and metallic grease.
Roman was standing at a heavy workbench, sliding a magazine into a matte black handgun. He wore a fresh bandage wrapped tightly around his waist, and a gray T-shirt that clung to his shoulders. The fever seemed to have broken, though his skin was still far too pale. Arthur and Declan were standing on the opposite side of the room, packing canvas duffel bags with ammunition boxes.
They all stopped when I walked in. "Helen left breakfast in your room," Roman said. His voice was flat, focused entirely on the weapon in his hands. "I don't want breakfast." I walked up to the workbench. The metal was cold against my fingertips. I looked at the rows of firearms laid out on the scuffed surface.
Pistols, mostly. A few things that looked entirely too big for a person to carry comfortably. "I want one of these." Declan let out a short, derisive snort. "Go back upstairs, sweetheart. The adults are working." I didn't look at Declan. I kept my eyes locked on Roman. "You said I'm a target. You said they won't stop until I'm dead because I saw the freelancer's face.
If I'm going to be hunted, I am not doing it empty-handed." Roman stared at me. He placed the handgun down on the bench with a heavy clack. "It's not a movie, Nora. You don't just pick up a gun and suddenly become untouchable. If you pull a weapon on a professional, they will take it from you and use it to paint the wall with your brains.
" "Then teach me." "No." "My landlord's legs are broken," I said, my voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "My life is gone. If someone kicks down the door of whatever room you lock me in next, I'm not going to sit on a bed and wait to die. Teach me how to pull the trigger." The room was dead silent. Arthur paused mid-motion, a box of hollow points hovering over a duffel bag. Roman studied my face.
He was looking for the bluff, looking for the hysterical girl who would drop the gun the second it made a loud noise. Whatever he saw in my eyes, it was enough. "Arthur Decklin, get the cars ready. We move to the warehouse in an hour." The two men didn't argue. They zipped the bags and walked out, their heavy boots echoing on the concrete stairs.
Roman reached down to the bench and picked up a smaller compact pistol. "Glock 19," he said, ejecting the magazine and pulling the slide back to show me the empty chamber. No external safety. You pull the trigger, it fires. It's light, reliable, and it holds 15 rounds." He stepped around the workbench, closing the distance between us.
He handed me the gun. It was heavier than it looked, a dense, cold block of steel and polymer. "Grip it." He ordered. I wrapped my right hand around the grip. Roman sighed, a low sound of frustration, and stepped in closer. He was standing directly behind me. The heat of his body radiating against my back. His chest brushed my shoulder as he reached forward.
His large, calloused hands covering mine. "Thumbs forward." He murmured, adjusting my left hand to wrap around my right. His breath stirred the hair at the nape of my neck. "Squeeze with your left hand. Use your right just to control the trigger. If you grip too hard with your dominant hand, you'll pull your shots wide." I swallowed hard.
The smell of cedar and gun oil was intoxicating. "Okay. Keep your finger off the trigger until you are entirely prepared to destroy whatever is standing in front of you." His voice dropped, becoming a dark, velvet rumble in the quiet armory. "Hesitation kills. If you draw this, you pull the trigger until the slide locks back.
You don't aim for the legs. You don't try to wound. You aim for center mass, and you put them down permanently. Do you understand me?" "Yes." He stepped back. The sudden loss of his body heat leaving me shivering. He picked up a loaded magazine from the table and held it out. "Load it." I took the magazine, my hands shaking slightly, and shoved it into the base of the grip.
It clicked into place with a satisfying, heavy sound. "Rack the slide." I pulled the top of the gun back and let it snap forward, chambering a round. The weapon was live. I was holding a tool designed exclusively for ending human life. Put it in your waistband at the small of your back, Roman instructed, turning back to his own weapons.
And pray to whatever God you believe in that you don't have to use it today. The plan was terrifying in its simplicity. Declan had spent the last 24 hours violently interrogating anyone connected to the South Side drug trade. He had found the leak. A mid-level lieutenant named Sullivan. Sullivan had ambition, a gambling problem, and a fundamental misunderstanding of Roman Bianchi's mortality.
Sullivan had hired the freelancer. But Sullivan is a coward, Roman explained as we sat in the back of the armored SUV speeding back toward the city. The coastal sun was blinding, but the tinted windows turned the world gray. He won't make a move against me directly until he knows I'm dead. He needs the freelancer to finish the job.
So we find the freelancer, I said, my hand resting instinctively on my lower back, feeling the hard plastic grip of the Glock pressing against my spine. He's a ghost, but ghosts get hungry. He didn't get paid for a botched job, which means he needs to finish it. And he knows there's a loose end. Roman turned his head to look at me.
The dark circles under his eyes were prominent in the daylight. You? My stomach dropped. He's looking for me. He's looking for the girl from the apartment. He doesn't know your name, but he knows your face. We made sure word got out to the right street corners this morning. The word is that a terrified bartender is hiding out at a defunct shipping office on Pier 44, trying to scrape together cash to leave town.
"You're using me as bait." I breathed. I wasn't angry. It made perfect tactical sense. That was what scared me. I was starting to think like them. "I am using the idea of you as bait." Roman corrected sharply. "You will be in a reinforced steel office with me. Arthur and Declan will be in the rafters of the warehouse.
The second the freelancer steps through the loading bay doors, he belongs to us." The shipping office was a rusted relic of a bygone industrial era. It sat at the end of a dilapidated pier, the smell of salt and rotting kelp thick in the air. The interior was a massive cavernous warehouse filled with empty wooden crates.
In the center, elevated by a metal staircase, was a glass-enclosed supervisor's office. That was where Roman and I sat. The glass was bulletproof, thick and slightly green. The door was heavy steel. Inside, there was a single desk, two folding chairs, and a suffocating layer of dust. We waited for 3 hours.
The silence was unbearable. Every creak of the metal roof, every slap of a wave against the pier, sent a jolt of adrenaline through my veins. Roman sat perfectly still in the folding chair, his eyes fixed on the warehouse doors below. He had his jacket off, his shoulder holster tight over his black shirt. He looked entirely in his element.
The wounded animal from my living room was gone. The apex predator had returned. "Are you sure he'll come?" I whispered, unable to take the quiet anymore. "He's a professional. He knows the trail goes cold if he waits. He'll come. Roman shifted his gaze from the floor below to my face. The dim light of the office caught the sharp angles of his jaw.
You're holding your breath, he noted. I'm trying not to use all the oxygen in the room. He reached across the small gap between our chairs. His hand caught my chin, his thumb brushing over my lower lip. The touch was completely incongruous with the setting. Soft, deliberate, and incredibly grounding. I won't let anything happen to you, he said.
It wasn't a mob boss making a promise. It was a man stating a fundamental law of physics. I told you, you are under my protection. You shouldn't care what happens to me, I murmured, leaning slightly into his touch despite myself. I'm a liability. I'm sitting here holding a gun I barely know how to fire, drawing an assassin to your location while you're still bleeding through your stitches.
You are a massive liability, Roman agreed, a dark, self-deprecating amusement flickering in his eyes. He didn't pull his hand away. My father would have put a bullet in your head himself just to tie up the loose end. It's the smart play. Then why didn't you? Roman's thumb stopped moving. He stared at my mouth, the air between us suddenly heavy, pulling taut like a wire about to snap.
Because the second you put your hands on me in that apartment, I stopped playing smart. He leaned in. The smell of cedar and danger washed over me. I closed my eyes, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I felt his breath on my cheek, the warmth of his mouth hovering millimeters from mine. Crack.
The sound was sharp, metallic, and echoing off the corrugated steel walls of the warehouse below. Roman's head snapped up. The intimacy vanished instantly, replaced by lethal focus. He pulled his hand from my face and stood, drawing his weapon in one fluid, terrifying motion. "Stay away from the glass," he ordered, his voice barely a breath.
I stood up, backing away until my shoulders hit the back wall of the office. I reached around to the small of my back and pulled the Glock from my waistband. My hands were slick with sweat, but I gripped it exactly how he showed me. Down on the warehouse floor, a shadow detached itself from the crates near the loading bay.
It moved with unnatural silence, slipping between the pallets, heading straight for the metal stairs leading up to our office. The freelancer was here, and the trap was about to close. The shadow hit the first metal step. It pinged, a hollow sound that vibrated right through the soles of my shoes. Roman raised his weapon, his arms completely steady, tracking the movement through the thick, green-tinted glass.
Then, the rafters erupted. Muzzle flashes lit the upper darkness like violent, erratic strobe lights. The deafening roar of automatic rifle fire tore through the warehouse, a chaotic symphony of violence. Shell casings rained down from the catwalks, pinging against the concrete floor like metallic hail. Declan and Arthur were pouring lead down into the loading bay, but the freelancer didn't freeze.
He moved with terrifying practiced speed. He dove under the steel staircase using the thick reinforced metal treads as a shield against the vertical assault. Wood splintered as stray bullets chewed through the empty shipping crates. Concrete dust filled the air, choking and gray. "He's pinned." I yelled over the noise, my hands gripping the Glock so hard my knuckles were white.
"He's not pinned. He's assessing." Roman said coldly. Suddenly, the overhead lights in the warehouse blew out. Total darkness. The freelancer had shot the main breaker panel on the wall. The gunfire from the rafters stopped. Arthur and Declan had lost their visual. Silence crashed back down, heavier and far more oppressive than before.
My breathing sounded like a wind tunnel in my own ears. I gripped the gun tighter, the rough polymer biting into my palms. "Arthur, Declan, hold your fire." Roman said into a small radio clipped to his belt. "He's moving blind." "He has night vision." I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow.
"If he's a professional Before Roman could answer, the steel door of our office shuddered violently. A heavy caliber slug tore through the doorframe right where the deadbolt mechanism sat. The bulletproof glass spider-webbed at the corner but held. Another shot. The lock shattered into jagged metal shrapnel. The door was kicked open.
A figure in tactical black rushed into the confined space of the office. It happened in a fraction of a second. Roman fired twice, the sound absolute agony in the tiny room. The freelancer twisted, taking a graze to the shoulder and lunged forward. He tackled Roman. The sheer force drove Roman backward into the heavy walnut desk.
The wood cracked under their combined weight. Roman let out a guttural sound of pain as his freshly stitched wound took the brunt of the impact. His gun clattered to the floor, skittering away into the dark corner. The freelancer didn't waste time trying to retrieve a weapon. He drew a combat knife, the exact same kind of serrated blade that had carved Roman open four nights ago.
They grappled in the dark, a brutal, ugly struggle of pure survival. Roman was bigger, but his body was failing. I could hear his breathing, ragged and wet. The freelancer drove a heavy knee into Roman's bleeding side. Roman buckled, his grip slipping on the assassin's wrist. The blade inched closer to Roman's throat.
I was frozen against the back wall. Hesitation kills. Roman's voice echoed in my head, louder than the ringing in my ears. You aim for center mass and you put them down permanently. I stepped forward. My hands stopped shaking. The terror crystallized into something icy, sharp, and brutally clear. I raised the Glock.
I didn't close my eyes. I didn't look away. I saw the dark mass of the freelancer pinning Roman to the splintered desk. I pressed the muzzle of the gun directly against the side of the freelancer's tactical vest, right where the armhole left a gap in the Kevlar armor. "Hey," I said. The man jerked his head toward me. I pulled the trigger.
The gun kicked violently in my hands, a miniature explosion that sent a shockwave up my arms. The noise was blinding. I didn't stop. I pulled it again and again. Three shots. The freelancer's body went completely rigid. He didn't scream. He just stopped. He slumped backward, collapsing onto the dusty floor like a puppet with cut strings. I stood there.
The Glock still aimed at the empty space where his chest had been, the slide locked back. Wisps of gray smoke curled from the hot barrel. My ears were screaming with a high-pitched whine. The smell of cordite and fresh copper filled the tiny office. The blood pooled beneath him, thick and dark. I couldn't look away.
The permanence of it was staggering. You don't just undo a bullet. You live with the hole it leaves behind, both in the flesh and in your own identity. Roman leaned heavily against the broken desk, clutching his side. He was breathing hard. His eyes locked onto the dead man on the floor. Slowly, he looked up at me.
I slowly lowered the gun. I didn't drop it. "I hit him," I whispered. My voice sounded very far away. "You did," Roman rasped. He pushed himself off the desk, wincing, and stepped over the body. He reached out and gently took the hot gun from my hands, setting it on the only intact corner of the desk.
Then, he pulled me into his chest. He was warm, and he smelled like adrenaline and gunpowder, but I buried my face in his shirt and held onto him. I wrapped my arms around his waist, careful of his wound, anchoring myself to the only solid thing left in my universe. I had crossed the line. I had taken a life. The cynical, exhausted bartender who worried about rent and cheap coffee was dead.
She died the moment I squeezed that trigger. Roman stroked my hair, his large hand heavy and warm against my scalp. He didn't offer platitudes. He didn't tell me it was going to be okay. He knew better. "Sullivan is next," Roman murmured into my hair, his voice vibrating through his chest. "We burn his operation to the ground tonight, and tomorrow we buy you a new wardrobe.
" I pulled back slightly, looking up into his dark, fathomless eyes. The fear was gone. What replaced it was something much more dangerous. Belonging. "I prefer black," I said. Roman smiled. It was a terrifying, beautiful thing. He leaned down, finally erasing the last few millimeters between us, and kissed me. It wasn't gentle. It was a claim.
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It tasted like survival and blood and absolute ruin. I kissed him back, letting the monster drag me all the way down into the dark. And for the first time in my life, I didn't want to find the light. Thank you so much for experiencing the intense finale of I Need You. Nora's journey from a cynical bartender to a woman who just claimed her place in Roman's brutal world is finally complete.
Did you expect her to actually pull the trigger? How do you think she'll handle ruling the criminal underworld by his side? Drop your thoughts and theories in the comments below. If you loved this dark, gritty mafia romance drama, please hit that like button, share this video with your friends, and subscribe to the channel for more gripping stories. See you in the next one.
