Chapter 6 - Awakening
Inside the VIP room, the air was still warm and smelled faintly of old wood and spilled wine.
Maisie hadn't moved. The exhaustion of her twenty-four-hour shift, combined with the profound safety she had unconsciously felt next to the most dangerous man in the city, had pulled her into a deep, dreamless sleep. Her forehead was still resting softly against Reed’s forearm, her small, scarred hands curled loosely near his lap.
Reed stood in the center of the ruined room, looking down at her.
For fifteen years, his life had been an endless cycle of blood, paranoia, betrayal, and violence. Every person who got close to him did so with an agenda—either trying to earn his favor, steal his territory, or survive his wrath. He trusted no one, slept with one eye open, and lived behind a fortress of absolute isolation.
Yet here, sitting on the dirty tile of a destroyed VIP room, was a line cook from his own restaurant—a girl with foster-care scars on her arms and a kitchen towel in her pocket—who had walked into the fire simply because she heard someone drowning.
And instead of running away when she saw the monster everyone feared, she had stayed. She had held his hand. She had grounded him when his own mind was tearing him apart.
Reed slowly lowered himself back down onto the floor, moving with infinite care so as not to disturb her. He didn't want to wake her up. After all the years of restless nights and waking nightmares, having someone sleep peacefully against his arm felt like a strange, foreign magic he was terrified of breaking.
He sat there in the dim light of the early morning, watching the steady rise and fall of her shoulders.
It was nearly 5:00 AM when the first pale streaks of dawn began to bleed through the stained-glass windows of Pharaoh.
Maisie stirred.
Her eyelashes fluttered, brushing against her cheek as she slowly drifted back to consciousness. For a second, she lay completely still, her mind foggy, trying to remember where she was. The smell of expensive cologne mixed with cedarwood and smoke filled her senses.
Then she realized what she was using as a pillow.
Her eyes snapped open. She jerked upright so fast her head nearly bumped his chin, her face instantly flushing a bright, embarrassed crimson.
"I... I'm so sorry," she blurted out, scrambling backward on the tile until her back hit the opposite wall, her hands flying to her mouth. "Oh god, I fell asleep. I wasn't supposed to—boss, I—"
She stopped talking when she saw his face.
Reed Ashford wasn't glaring at her. He wasn't barking orders or wearing that cold, terrifying mask the entire syndicate feared.
He was looking at her with a strange, soft expression that didn't belong on a mafia boss at all. A faint, almost imperceptible ghost of a smile touched the corners of his mouth.
"You're not in trouble, Maisie," Reed said, his voice deep, smooth, and completely devoid of its usual sharpness.
Maisie froze, her hands dropping slowly from her mouth. "You... you know my name?"
"I know the name of every person who works in this building," Reed replied quietly, shifting his weight and stretching his legs out on the floor. He lifted his right hand—the knuckles now clean, neatly bandaged with the kitchen towel she had applied hours ago—and looked at them. "Though most of them don't spend their nights patching up my hands on a bathroom floor."
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Maisie looked down at her own scarred fingers, suddenly feeling intensely aware of how out of place she was. "I shouldn't have come up here. The security guard said not to. But... I heard you."
"I know," Reed said softly. He leaned his head back against the wall, looking across the room at her with an intensity that made her breath hitch. "And it's the best thing that's happened in this building in fifteen years."
