I Accidentally Called the City’s Deadliest Mafia Boss "Handsome" to His Face—Now I’m His Obsession!
“He’s So Handsome, and I’m Just a Broke Virgin,” She Said—Unaware the Mafia Boss Was Watching
The tray weighed more than it should have, and I knew the reason was exhaustion rather than the sweets.
After 14 hours on my feet at the West Loop bakery, any woman would have carried a bent spine and crumpled pride. I had already stopped pretending I was fine before the manager pushed the order into my hands.
“The Langham. Presidential suite. Do not tremble in front of the wealthy, Nerissa.”
I gave him the practiced smile of someone who needed the job and left through the rear entrance.
The Chicago night cut across my face with wind smelling of burned snow and cold exhaust. I tightened the thin coat that had once belonged to my mother and crossed toward the bakery’s delivery vehicle, a sedan that creaked like an old joint.
The white box rested on the passenger seat beneath a gold ribbon.
$30 worth of sweets.
7 hours of my wages.
I had learned not to calculate such things while driving because the arithmetic always ended in a place that hurt.
I started the engine and tried not to think about the cramped room where Sasha was probably lying on the upper bunk pretending to sleep so I would not notice she had skipped dinner again.
I tried not to think about my mother’s notebooks on the shelf, held together with masking tape and filled with handwriting that had remained steady before the hospital.
I tried not to think about anything resembling loss.
It was a skill developed through repetition, like learning to brush your hair with 1 hand.
It was not talent.
It was survival.
The Langham appeared at the corner like a jewel concealed without much effort. Its façade carried the restrained lighting expensive places used to suggest they required no announcement.
I parked behind the hotel, collected the box, and entered through the vendors’ door with my head lowered and my identification badge pinned to my chest.
The security guard pointed toward the service elevator without looking away from his telephone.
I thanked him without expecting acknowledgment.
Inside the elevator, the silver mirror returned a tired version of me.
The bakery apron had a coffee stain near the pocket that I had failed to remove. My hair had been tied with an elastic Sasha normally used for her braids. My eyes carried the same expression they often did, like unanswered questions.
Questions had no place in a day like that.
The elevator door opened on the 4th floor.
A man entered.
I noticed his shoes first.
They were black and polished so perfectly that light bent across them. His trousers ended at the exact proper length. His dark jacket contained no crease, made from the kind of fabric that appeared incapable of being touched carelessly.
A narrow tie was secured by a gold pin whose cost I could not estimate, except to know it exceeded everything I had ever owned.
Then I saw his face.
It was the only thing in the elevator that did not fit within polite language.
His jaw seemed drawn with a ruler. His mouth belonged to someone who did not smile without purpose. His lowered eyes looked as though he were calculating something while the rest of the world assumed he was merely standing still.
His black hair had been combed back, except for 1 strand near his right temple that he had not corrected. A narrow white scar marked the corner of his eyebrow, old enough to have become part of his face rather than evidence of an accident.
He did not look at me.
He pressed the button for the 20th floor with the ease of someone who did so repeatedly, then stood with his hands joined before him.
A signet ring rested on his middle finger, engraved with a letter intertwined with a leaf I did not recognize.
His cologne reached me faintly. It was neither sweet nor fresh. It resembled cold smoke and dark wood, the kind of scent impossible to describe and equally impossible to forget.
The elevator rose.
I balanced the box against my hip, afraid that I smelled like a cheap kitchen beside him, afraid even of breathing too loudly.
I counted seconds to distract myself from the desire to look again.
I reached 8.
Between the 12th and 13th floors, the elevator stopped.
The power did not fail completely. The car simply ceased moving. The light flickered once, and the display froze between the 2 numbers while a low mechanical hum filled the space.
My heart rose into my throat.
I was not afraid of enclosed places. I was afraid of being trapped beside people capable of looking at me and seeing everything I was.
The stranger did not move.
He did not remove his telephone or sigh.
He remained calm, as though the delay were already part of his schedule and he had not yet reached the moment when it deserved attention.
“It jams sometimes,” I said, mostly to myself. My voice emerged thinner than intended. “The elevator. They told me downstairs.”
He tilted his head slightly.
That was his only reaction.
He offered none of the automatic courtesies people ordinarily used to fill silence. He appeared simply to register the information and place it somewhere appropriate.
I looked at his reflection in the silver wall.
It was worse than seeing him directly.
In the distorted metal, he seemed even more unreachable, like an expensive painting inside a museum I was not permitted to enter.
The box weighed against my arm. The elevator hummed. His cologne occupied more of the air than it should have.
Then I made the mistake that divided my life into everything before and everything after.
I whispered without realizing I had spoken.
“He is so handsome, and I am only a broke virgin. He is my dream.”
The sentence emerged complete before I could stop it.
It was spoken in the low voice people used with their own shadows when the night had lasted too long and their defenses had lowered without permission.
I closed my eyes for 2 seconds.
The elevator began moving again immediately afterward, rising to the 20th floor with a smoothness that felt like mockery.
The bell sounded.
The door opened.
He stepped out without hurry.
He never turned or looked at me. He crossed the dark red corridor with the calm of someone who had never been seen rushing and had no intention of beginning.
I remained inside with the box against my hip and the certainty that he had not heard.
He could not have heard.
My voice had been too low.
I had spoken to myself.
His expression had changed in no visible way.
He had not heard.
I repeated the conclusion 3 times while following the corridor toward the events wing, the client’s name written unevenly across the delivery form.
I repeated it while giving the box to a white-gloved maître d’, who received me with his face turned slightly away as though pretending not to notice the smell of butter on my clothes.
I repeated it while he signed without looking at me.
The stranger had not heard.
I would leave, return to the creaking sedan, drive home, lie down near Sasha, and pretend the evening had been no different from any other exhausting weeknight.
Then the maître d’ directed me incorrectly.
“To your right. The service exit on this floor is under construction. Cross through the rear of the ballroom and use the main elevator.”
“Cross the ballroom?”
“The Italian elite will not notice you.”
His smile attempted kindness and achieved nothing.
“Keep your head down.”
I pressed the empty tray against my chest like armor and passed through the double doors.
The ballroom swallowed me.
It occupied what seemed like half a city block. Frescoes of men in armor covered the high ceiling, all wearing the expression old painters had mistaken for nobility.
Chandeliers spilled light like crystal waterfalls.
The room smelled of white flowers, candle wax, and an expensive drink I could not name.
Women dressed as though each carried the wealth of a country inside her earrings.
The men wore black suits with gold pins similar to the stranger’s.
I lowered my head and moved along the right wall beside circulating waiters carrying champagne.
I nearly reached the opposite side.
Then the entire ballroom became silent.
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