Chapter 4 - A Contract in Blood
The rest of the night passed in a blur of golden light, expensive champagne, and suffocating tension.
Roman didn't stay by Emma's side, but he didn't need to. His presence followed her like an invisible shadow. Every time she looked up—whether she was talking to Paige, holding a plate of tiny appetizers, or listening to Luca's father speak—she found Roman standing across the room, watching her.
He didn't smile. He didn't raise his glass. He simply tracked her movements with dark, possessive focus.
By midnight, Paige and Luca were standing near the grand double doors, thanking guests as the party wound down.
Emma stood near the entrance, holding her coat, desperate to get back to her quiet, tiny apartment in New Haven.
"I'll call a cab," Emma told Paige softly.
"Are you crazy? It’s pouring outside, and it's a forty-minute drive," Paige insisted, tugging on Luca's arm. "Luca, can your driver take her?"
"Actually," a deep voice cut in from behind them, "my driver will take her."
Roman stepped into the foyer. He wore a dark wool overcoat over his tuxedo, his hands tucked into his pockets.
Paige froze, looking at Roman with wide, cautious eyes. Luca stepped forward slightly, protective instincts warring with his obvious deference to his elder cousin.
"Roman, you don't have to bother—" Luca began.
"It's no bother," Roman said calmly. "I'm heading into the city anyway. Her apartment is on my route."
He looked down at Emma. "Unless you prefer a yellow cab with broken heating, Emma?"
Emma looked at Paige's worried face, then at Luca's tense posture. She knew if she refused, it would create an awkward scene.
"Thank you, Mr. Varelli," Emma said quietly. "That's very generous."
"Roman," he corrected softly, holding open the heavy glass door for her. "Call me Roman."
The ride inside Roman’s armored Maybach was dangerously quiet.
Rain lashed against the blacked-out windows as the driver navigated the slick highway toward New Haven. The interior smelled of fine leather and Roman's intoxicating cologne.
Emma sat pressed against her door, staring out at the blurred highway lights. Roman sat on the far side of the spacious leather bench, his long legs crossed, a tablet in his hand.
"You can relax, Emma," Roman said quietly, breaking the twenty-minute silence without looking up from his screen. "I don't bite unless provoked."
Emma turned her head to look at him. "In my experience, people who say that usually bite very hard."
Roman lowered the tablet, a slow smirk spreading across his handsome face. "Smart girl."
He set the device aside and turned his full, crushing attention to her. "Tell me about your books."
Emma blinked. "What?"
"Luca told me you work at a rare manuscripts archive at Yale," Roman said, leaning back against the leather headrest. "He said you spent six months restoring a seventeenth-century ledger."
"It was a sixteenth-century legal document," Emma corrected automatically, before blushing slightly. "And... yes. That's what I do. It's quiet."
"You like quiet?"
"I like order," Emma said. "I like things that make sense. Documents have rules. History doesn't change its mind halfway through the night."
"Unlike people," Roman surmised, his eyes darkening slightly.
"Unlike people," Emma agreed softly. "Especially people who have twenty-seven security guards at their house."
Roman chuckled. "Is that what frightened you tonight? The guards?"
"No," Emma said, turning her face back toward him, meeting his dark gaze head-on. "What frightened me was how everyone in that room looked at you like you were a god... and how you looked at everyone else like they were dust."
The silence inside the car turned razor-sharp.
Roman stared at her, his smirk vanishing, replaced by a deep, burning stillness. He reached out across the seat. For a heart-stopping second, Emma thought he was going to touch her face.
Instead, his long fingers gently closed around the thin silver chain at her neck, lifting the small silver locket resting against her collarbone.
"My family is a machine, Emma," Roman whispered, his thumb lightly brushing the warm skin of her collarbone, sending a jolt of pure electricity through her blood. "It protects what belongs to it. And it destroys what threatens it. Remember that."
"I'm not part of your family," Emma breathed, her heart hammering against her ribs.
May you like
Roman slowly released the locket, his dark eyes locking onto hers with a possessive, terrifying finality.
"Not yet," he murmured as the car pulled up to the curb outside her apartment building.
