Chapter 3 - BLOOD ON THE DANCE FLOOR
The proposition hung in the air like ozone before a lightning strike.
Nico took a step forward, his face twisted in disbelief. “Enzo, you can't be serious! Marcone’s men are meeting us at three in the morning to discuss the union port split! You’re going to dance with a South Side waitress in front of the entire crew? You’re making us look like clowns!”
Lorenzo didn’t turn his head. He didn't even blink.
“Arthur,” Lorenzo said quietly.
“Yes, boss?” the old consigliere answered.
“If my brother opens his mouth again before this song ends, shoot him in the knee.”
Arthur didn't reach for a gun, but his right hand settled flat on the tabletop in a posture that made Nico choke on his next breath and step backward into the velvet curtain, his face burning with impotent rage.
Lorenzo’s hand remained extended toward Sienna. “Well, Miss Vane? Are you a waitress hiding behind an apron, or are you still the girl who made the Chicago Symphony hold its breath?”
Sienna looked down at her hands. The skin was rough, red from bleach, the fingernails trimmed short for kitchen work. She thought of her brother Toby—weak, reckless, weeping into the phone two nights ago about how Marcone’s enforcers had broken his fingers with an iron pipe. She thought of her tiny basement studio on 35th Street, where the radiator hissed cold steam and the locks on the door were held together by wood screws.
She had spent six years running from the memory of who she used to be. She had buried her pointe shoes in a cardboard box under her bed because every time she looked at them, she remembered the night her parents burned, remembered the cold realization that beauty and talent meant nothing in a city that ran on iron and bullets.
Dance it perfect.
Sienna set the bottle of Château Margaux onto the table with deliberate precision. She reached down to the waistband of her oversized trousers, found the steel safety pin that had been biting into her hip all night, and pulled it free.
She let the heavy black server’s apron drop to the marble floor.
Beneath it was a simple black short-sleeved cotton shirt and fitted black slacks. She reached up, pulled the wooden chopsticks from her hair, and let the thick, golden-brown waves tumble down past her shoulders, catching the amber light of the chandeliers.
She stepped out of her scuffed shoes.
Her bare feet touched the freezing, polished black marble. Her toes gripped the slick surface with the natural, terrifying arch of a prima ballerina.
She placed her left hand into Lorenzo’s open palm.
His grip closed around her fingers like a steel trap lined with velvet. He was shockingly warm, his calloused palm rough against her skin, his thumb resting firmly over her pulse point. With his left hand, he reached around her waist, his splayed fingers pressing against the small of her back with an unyielding, possessive authority that left no room for doubt.
“Shostakovich’s Waltz No. 2,” Sienna murmured, her eyes locking onto his. “It’s fast. Three-four time, but the tempo accelerates on the third phrase. Can you keep up, Mr. Richie?”
“Try me,” he said.
The heavy orchestral brass swelled through the ceiling speakers.
Lorenzo stepped.
It was not the clumsy, drunken sway of a mobster at a wedding. His movement was explosive yet controlled, an athletic glide that leveraged his massive frame into pure kinetic momentum. He drove forward on the first beat, sweeping her across the marble floor in a wide, dizzying arc that sent her hair spinning around her shoulders.
Sienna didn’t resist. She matched his stride instantly, her bare feet finding purchase on the slick stone, her body arching back to balance his power.
One-two-three, one-two-three.
The patrons on the lower level stopped talking. The bartenders ceased wiping glasses. From the second-floor brass railings, capos, loan sharks, and corrupt aldermen leaned forward, their cigars burning unattended as the most feared man in northern Illinois waltzed across an underground club with a bare-footed waitress.
Lorenzo spun her out.
His fingers maintained contact with hers until the absolute last millimeter, allowing her body to unfurl across the floor in an extended pirouette, her black slacks blurring against the glossy stone. Before she could complete the third rotation, his arm swept out, catching her around the ribs and pulling her flush against his chest with a concussive, breathless impact.
Her cheek brushed against his lapel. She could hear the heavy, steady thud of his heart beneath the charcoal wool—calm, slow, utterly unfazed by the exertion.
“You’re stiff in the shoulders,” Lorenzo whispered against her ear as he pivoted them into a reverse turn. “You’re dancing like you expect a bullet.”
“In this room?” she breathed back, her eyes flashing up at his scarred jawline. “A bullet is the safest thing that could hit me.”
“Look at me, Sienna.”
She looked. His pale amber eyes were ablaze, stripped of their boredom, drinking in every line of her face with a hunger that wasn't born of lust, but of recognition. He saw the fighter behind her grace; she saw the beast behind his tailor’s wool.
The music reached its crescendo. The brass roared, the cymbals crashed, and Lorenzo lifted her clean off the marble.
He held her suspended in the air for two full seconds, her body extended in a flawless, horizontal arabesque above the floor, before lowering her down into a deep, sweeping lunge that ended with her spine curved over his forearm, her throat exposed to the chandelier light, her chest heaving against his.
The final minor chord echoed through the Onyx Room, vibrating into absolute, breathless silence.
Nobody clapped. Nobody moved. The silence was heavier than a bank vault door swinging shut.
Lorenzo looked down at her. A single bead of sweat traced the scar near his temple, but his breathing remained steady. Slowly, without taking his eyes off hers, he reached behind him with his free hand, picked up the heavy gold signet ring from table four, and brought it to her left hand.
He slid the coiled viper ring onto her ring finger.
It was heavy, cold, and far too large, slipping loosely down to her knuckle.
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“Marcone’s debt is canceled,” Lorenzo said, his voice ringing across the black marble so that every living soul in the room heard each syllable. “And as of tonight, anyone who looks at this woman looks at me.”
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