Chapter 3 - THE PERSON WATCHING JENNA'S WINDOW
I took Jenna home personally.
She objected for exactly twelve seconds.
“I can drive myself.”
“No.”
“You don’t get to order me around because we kissed.”
“I ordered you around before we kissed.”
“You tried.”
“That’s true.”
She stopped arguing when I showed her the photograph.
Her expression changed immediately.
“That’s my building.”
“I know.”
“That was taken yesterday.”
“I know.”
“Who sent it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She folded her arms.
“Then I’m not going home.”
I looked at her.
“Good.”
She blinked.
“You expected me to argue?”
“I prepared mentally.”
Instead, I took her to a secure apartment on the top floor of one of my legitimate properties downtown.
No staff.
No public records connecting it to me.
Two guarded entrances.
Jenna walked inside and turned slowly.
“You have a secret apartment?”
“I have several.”
“That is an alarmingly mafia-boss answer.”
I handed her a glass of water.
“Stay here tonight.”
“And you?”
“Working.”
She immediately shook her head.
“No.”
“Jenna.”
“If someone is threatening me because of your brother, I deserve to know why.”
I studied her.
She wasn’t afraid enough.
That worried me more than fear would have.
“Daniel was twenty-two when he died,” I said. “He wanted nothing to do with my father’s organization.”
“What did he want?”
“To become a doctor.”
Her face softened.
“He was driving home one night when his car went over a mountain road.”
“Accident?”
“That’s what everyone was told.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“No.”
I walked toward the window.
“His brake lines were cut.”
Jenna went quiet.
“Did you find who did it?”
“I thought I did.”
“What does that mean?”
“My father blamed the Moretti family. We retaliated. Three men died.”
“And now?”
“Now Ryan somehow knows Daniel’s death wasn’t an accident.”
Jenna sat beside me.
“Maybe he knows who actually did it.”
“That’s exactly what concerns me.”
At 11:17, my security chief called.
“Boss, we checked Miss Hart’s building.”
“And?”
“There’s surveillance equipment in an apartment across the street.”
“Who rented it?”
“A shell company.”
“Trace it.”
“We did.”
Silence.
I hated silence from my security team.
“Say it.”
“The company is registered to Mercer Strategic Holdings.”
Jenna heard.
Her face drained of color.
“Ryan owns the apartment?”
“Indirectly.”
I stood.
Then my security chief added one more detail.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“The lease didn’t start last month.”
I waited.
“It started twenty-three months ago.”
Jenna stared at me.
May you like
Ryan had not begun watching her when she told her family about an imaginary boyfriend.
He had been watching her almost the entire time she had worked for me.
