Chapter 15 - Stitches and Silk
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In the sudden, ringing silence of the tiled kitchen corridor, Clara stood frozen beside the overturned pastry rack, the heavy chef’s knife still clutched in her right hand as smoke curled from the barrel of Julian’s gun thirty feet away.
In three long strides, Julian was in front of her.
He holstered his weapon, took the chef’s knife gently out of her trembling fingers, set it on the stainless-steel counter, and pulled her straight against his uninjured right side—wrapping his strong right arm tightly around her waist and burying his face in her hair as his chest heaved.
"You never listen when I tell you to stay back, do you?" Julian breathed roughly against her temple, his heart hammering hard against her cheek while crimson blood from his left shoulder stained the midnight-blue silk of her gown.
"You jumped off a four-foot stage in front of a bullet for me thirty seconds ago," Clara whispered fiercely, her arms winding carefully around his neck so she wouldn't jar his wounded left shoulder. "I wasn't going to stand under a table and watch that bastard shoot you in the back in my own kitchen."
Dante burst through the rear loading-bay doors five seconds later with four of his cleanup crew, stopping short as he surveyed the two dead bodyguards by the prep island, Lorenzo Morelli lying at the freight elevator, and Clara standing barefoot in Julian’s embrace with a chef’s knife on the counter beside them.
"Federal marshals on the main floor have the Sterlings in custody and bought the story that Morelli’s men tried to shoot their way out through the kitchen when Victor pulled a gun, Boss," Dante reported, nodding with deep, genuine respect toward Clara. "We’ll handle the kitchen scene with the precinct captain. Take Miss Harper up the private shaft to the penthouse—Dr. Rossini is already waiting on sixty."
Ten minutes later, inside the quiet, warm master bathroom of the sixtieth-floor penthouse, Dr. Rossini finished stitching the clean flesh-wound furrow across Julian’s left deltoid where Victor’s .380 bullet had passed through the muscle without touching bone.
Once the old family doctor packed his bag and left the penthouse—with Lily still sleeping soundly downstairs on fifty-nine, blissfully unaware of the five-minute war on the second floor—Clara stood beside the marble vanity in her blood-streaked midnight-blue silk gown, holding a warm, damp washcloth in her hands.
Julian sat shirtless on the edge of the padded velvet dressing bench, a white sterile bandage taped across his broad, muscled left shoulder, watching her quietly with those piercing arctic-blue eyes.
"Your dress is ruined," Julian said softly, nodding toward the dark red stain of his blood across the silk over her ribs.
"I think it was worth it," Clara whispered.
She stepped between his knees and gently used the warm washcloth to wipe a streak of dried blood from the side of his neck and collarbone, her fingers trembling slightly now that the chaos was over and they were completely alone in the quiet glass fortress above the city.
As her fingers brushed the warm, hard muscle of his chest just above his heart, Julian’s right hand came up and caught her wrist—not to push her away, but to press her palm flat against his skin so she could feel the heavy, steady beat beneath her hand.
"Five days ago," Julian murmured, his voice dropping into a low, rough register that made the air between them hum with heat, "you slipped a piece of cloth into my hand and told me to pretend to cut a steak so your father wouldn't lose his hospital bed."
"And you left me three hundred dollars and a black titanium card," Clara whispered, looking down into his eyes as his hand slid from her wrist to span the bare skin of her back through the open cut of her gown.
"I left you that card because the second I walked out of that restaurant into the rain on Thursday night, I knew I was never letting you go back to a life where men like Richie Grasso could make you afraid," Julian said, his jaw tightening with fierce, unguarded emotion as he pulled her closer between his thighs. "You don't belong to the staff on the sixtieth floor, Clara. You belong right here with me."
He reached behind her neck with his good right hand, unfastened the single diamond clasp at the nape of her midnight-blue gown, and let the bloodstained silk slide down from her shoulders to pool at her waist.
May you like
Clara’s breath hitched in her throat—yet she didn't cover herself or step back.
Instead, she tangled both hands in his thick dark hair, tilted her head down, and kissed him—slow, deep, and aching with everything they had survived since Thursday night—as Julian lifted her effortlessly onto his lap and carried her into the darkened master bedroom overlooking the glittering diamond lights of Manhattan.
