her into a building and up a short flight of stairs. Harper counted seventeen steps. A heavy door opened. The smell changed immediately.
Cigar smoke.
Polished wood.
Expensive cologne.
Money.
Her captors pushed her into a room. The hood came off.
Harper blinked hard in the sudden light.
She stood in an office that looked like it belonged to a man who owned half the city and threatened the other half. Dark wood covered the walls. Leather chairs faced a massive desk. Floor-to-ceiling windows revealed Manhattan glittering beyond the glass, beautiful and indifferent.
Behind the desk sat a man in a black suit.
He looked younger than Harper expected. Mid-thirties, maybe. Dark hair. Sharp features. Broad shoulders. Eyes so controlled and cold that they seemed to measure every breath she took.
He was handsome in the same way a knife was elegant.
“Remove the restraints,” he said.
His voice was deep, calm, and faintly accented.
Italian, Harper thought.
One of the men cut the zip ties. She pulled her hands forward and rubbed her wrists where angry red marks had already begun to rise.
“Sit,” the man said.
“I’d rather stand.”
His gaze lifted to hers.
“That was not a request.”
Harper sat.
Not because she wanted to.
Because every survival instinct she had told her that this man was not someone to challenge for pride alone.
He watched her for a long moment. At first, his face showed only cold assessment. Then his eyes narrowed. His expression shifted. Confusion flickered, followed by irritation so sharp it made one of the men near the door shift uneasily.
The man behind the desk spoke in rapid Italian.
One of the kidnappers answered.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop.
All three men looked at Harper again, and this time she saw something new in their faces.
Alarm.
They had made a mistake.
The man behind the desk leaned forward.
“What is your name?”
Harper swallowed. “Why? So you know what to carve on the headstone?”
“I am not going to kill you.”
“That’s exactly what someone planning to kill me would say.”
For the first time, his mouth moved like he might smile. It disappeared before it fully formed.
“Your name.”
“Harper,” she said. “Harper Evans.”
Silence.
The man repeated it as if the words tasted wrong.
“Harper Evans.”
Then he cursed in Italian.
Harper did not know the language well, but she understood fury.
“You have a twin sister,” he said.
Her stomach dropped.
“Yes. Chloe. How do you know that?”
He slowly turned his head toward the men by the door.
“Because my men were instructed to bring me Chloe Evans,” he said. “Instead, they kidnapped the wrong twin.”
One of the men took half a step forward. “Boss, they’re identical. Same height. Same hair. Same face. We confirmed the target was leaving the location.”
“Identical,” the boss said coldly, “does not mean interchangeable.”
No one spoke after that.
Harper stared at him, fear mixing with anger until both became something hot and unstable in her chest.
“Who are you?” she asked.
The man looked back at her.
“Dominic Moretti.”
The name meant nothing to Harper, but the way his men stood around him told her enough. This was not some random criminal. This was power. Organized power.
