Chapter 1 - I cut his dead mother’s silk while a gun pointed at me.
“Touch me with that gauze again, Doctor, and I’ll throw you off the balcony.”
Victor Sabatini wasn’t bluffing.
I knew that because the doctor believed him.
So did the six armed men surrounding us.
And unfortunately, so did I.
Victor stood barefoot in front of a marble fireplace inside a Villanova estate that looked less like a house and more like a place where senators disappeared.
Blood ran from a knife wound beneath his ribs.
It crossed his stomach, dripped onto the Persian rug, and pooled between his feet.
Nobody moved.
Not the doctor.
Not the maid holding a stack of shirts.
Not Rocco, the six-foot-five security chief who had kidnapped me from Lombardi’s Tailoring twenty minutes earlier.
And definitely not me.
I was twenty-four, broke, behind on rent, and wearing a denim jacket with a busted zipper.
My contribution to organized crime before that night had been hemming trousers for a city councilman who tipped three dollars.
Then three men had kicked open Lombardi’s front door.
Rocco had pointed at me.
“You sew?”
I’d looked at the industrial machine behind me.
“Usually that’s what happens in a tailor shop.”
He hadn’t appreciated the sarcasm.
Five minutes later I was shoved into a black Lincoln Navigator.
Now I understood why.
Victor grabbed another white dress shirt.
He pulled it over his head.
The stiff collar brushed the raised burn tissue along his left shoulder.
His entire body locked.
Then he made a sound I still remember.
Not anger.
Fear.
Raw, involuntary fear.
He tore the shirt straight down the middle.
Pearl buttons bounced across the hardwood.
One rolled under my sneaker.
Victor threw the shirt into the fireplace.
Flames swallowed it.
“I said nothing starched.”
“It isn’t starched,” the maid whispered.
Victor’s eyes snapped toward her.
She went white.
The doctor lifted both hands.
“Victor, the wound is deep. I have to stabilize the ribs.”
“The mesh feels like broken glass.”
“You’re losing blood.”
“I’m aware.”
That was when I noticed his back.
The scars weren’t from surgery.
They were burns.
Thick, twisted keloid tissue covered the left side of his torso, climbed over his shoulder blade, and vanished beneath his hairline.
Fresh trauma had made the old tissue angry.
Every piece of fabric dragged across it.
Every touch reminded his nervous system of whatever fire had done that to him.
I’d seen sensory panic before.
I grew up in foster homes.
Some kids screamed when adults raised their voices.
Some stopped eating.
One little boy named Eli slept under his bed because mattresses made him feel trapped.
Trauma doesn’t ask permission before embarrassing you.
It just pulls the alarm.
I looked around.
That’s when I saw the blue silk.
It rested across a velvet chair near the window.
Pale blue.
Tiny faded flowers.
Old enough that the edges had softened.
It didn’t belong in that room full of black leather, walnut shelves, bourbon, guns, and men who looked like they’d buried people before breakfast.
I dropped my sewing bag.
The metal shears inside hit the floor.
Rocco’s hand immediately went beneath his jacket.
“Don’t.”
I ignored him.
Probably the dumbest thing I’d ever done.
Possibly the reason I’m alive.
I picked up the blue silk.
Rocco drew his pistol.
“That belongs to his mother.”
I opened my shears.
The room changed.
“Girl.”
Rocco’s voice dropped.
“Put it down.”
I cut the silk in half.
The sound was barely louder than paper tearing.
Yet six armed men reacted like I’d fired a shotgun.
Victor slowly turned.
His pain disappeared from his face.
Something colder replaced it.
“What,” he said quietly, “did you just do?”
I’d preferred the screaming.
The whisper was worse.
My knees felt loose.
I kept cutting.
“Your scars don’t hate clothing.”
Nobody said anything.
I reached for a gray cashmere shirt.
“Your nervous system hates friction.”
Victor took one slow step toward me.
“You cut my mother’s fabric.”
“Yes.”
Rocco lifted his weapon higher.
I sat at the coffee table.
“Shoot me after I finish.”
That got Victor’s attention.
I layered the silk inside the cashmere along the left shoulder and ribs.
My fingers moved automatically.
Needle through.
Turn.
Catch.
Pull.
Blind stitch.
Again.
Victor stared at my hands.
Rocco stared at my head like he was deciding where to put the bullet.
The doctor stared at Victor’s blood pressure monitor.
Three minutes later I bit through the thread.
I stood.
“Put this on.”
Rocco actually laughed.
A short, shocked sound.
Nobody ordered Victor Sabatini around.
Victor looked at me.
I looked back.
“Unless you’d rather bleed on the rug.”
His jaw moved once.
Then he raised his arms.
I stepped closer.
Up close, he was enormous.
Six-three, maybe.
Broad shoulders.
Black hair damp with sweat.
A thin gold chain at his throat.
His skin smelled like gunpowder, expensive bourbon, and blood.
I lowered the shirt over him.
The silk settled across the burned tissue.
Victor froze.
I waited for him to tear it off.
Instead, his eyes closed.
His shoulders dropped.
One breath.
Then another.
Then a long exhale.
No screaming.
No shaking.
The doctor stared at me.
I stared at Victor.
Victor opened his eyes.
“It doesn’t hurt.”
“Good.”
The doctor moved instantly.
He cleaned the knife wound and secured a sterile pad beneath the modified shirt.
Victor barely noticed.
His eyes remained on me.
“You destroyed the last thing I had from my mother.”
My hands finally started shaking.
I shoved them into my jacket pockets.
“No.”
His expression hardened.
I nodded toward the shirt.
“I made it useful.”
Nobody breathed.
I should have stopped.
I didn’t.
“Fabric isn’t supposed to sit in a chair collecting dust, Mr. Sabatini. It’s supposed to cover somebody. Protect somebody.”
His face became unreadable.
“If your mother loved you, I’m guessing she’d rather see you alive than worshipping a scrap of silk.”
Rocco closed his eyes briefly.
Probably planning my funeral.
Victor stepped closer.
“What’s your name?”
“Tessa Quinn.”
He studied me like my answer was a document he intended to verify.
Then he turned toward Rocco.
“Buy Lombardi’s shop.”
I blinked.
“What?”
Rocco nodded once.
Victor looked back at me.
“Whatever the old man wants. Double it.”
I stepped away.
“I’m not for sale.”
Victor’s mouth almost curved.
Almost.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You just purchased my workplace.”
“I purchased your employer.”
“Different sentence. Same problem.”
Rocco looked physically uncomfortable now.
Victor didn’t.
“You’re making me a new wardrobe.”
“No.”
That finally produced an actual reaction.
His eyebrow lifted.
I pointed at the guarded doors.
“You kidnapped me.”
“I borrowed you.”
“You put me in an SUV at gunpoint.”
“You arrived quickly.”
I laughed once.
Wrong decision.
But I was exhausted, terrified, and watching my landlord’s unanswered voicemail light up my phone through my jacket pocket.
Victor looked toward Rocco.
“Pay her rent for a year.”
My stomach dropped.
“How do you know about my rent?”
“Rocco searched your bag.”
Of course he did.
Victor stepped around the bloodstained rug.
“You will be compensated.”
“And if I leave?”
Nobody answered.
That was my answer.
Four hours later, I was shown to a bedroom larger than my entire apartment.
The closet held designer clothes.
The bathroom had heated floors.
A tray beside the bed contained steak, roasted potatoes, and a slice of cheesecake.
Two armed guards stood outside the door.
A gilded cage was still a cage.
The next morning, Victor had a tailoring studio assembled across the hall.
Industrial Juki machine.
Italian wool.
French silk.
Cashmere.
Every tool I’d ever wanted.
My bank app showed a wire transfer large enough to cover twelve months of rent.
I stared at the number for thirty seconds.
Then I noticed something else.
A text from Lombardi.
SHOP SOLD.
MR SABATINI PAID CASH.
DON’T COME BACK.
I sat on the edge of the bed.
That hurt more than I expected.
One night.
That was all it took for Victor Sabatini to erase the little life I had built.
Then somebody knocked.
Three slow taps.
Victor entered carrying the gray shirt.
My stitching.
His mother’s silk.
He placed it carefully on my cutting table.
“I need seven more.”
I looked at him.
“You don’t have seven dead mothers.”
His mouth twitched.
And for the first time since armed men dragged me out of South Philadelphia, Victor Sabatini laughed.
I should have been relieved.
I wasn’t.
Because beneath my blouse, hidden against my collarbone, was a silver pendant I had worn since I was six years old.
May you like
A falcon with spread wings.
And if Victor ever saw it, the new clothes would become the least important thing in that house......
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