Emma flinched as if he had raised his hand.
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“There is always a choice.”
“No,” she said, and the word came out before fear could stop it.
Roman went still.
Emma knew then that she had made a mistake. Men like Roman Callahan were not corrected by waitresses who had $18 in checking and a baby sleeping on borrowed mercy.
But exhaustion had burned the polite fear out of her.
She stood in the doorway, trembling, and said, “There is always a choice when you have money. When you have people. When you can afford the bad option. I had rent due Monday, formula almost gone, and a manager who told me one more absence meant I was done. So no, Mr. Callahan. Today I did not have a choice. I had a problem and six terrible ways to survive it.”
Roman watched her for a long moment.
Then he looked down at Lily again.
“What’s her name?”
Emma swallowed. “Lily.”
His hand moved once over the baby’s back, slow and instinctive.
“She’s calm.”
“She doesn’t know she’s supposed to be scared of you.”
The moment the words left Emma’s mouth, she wished she could pull them back.
But Roman did not look offended.
A faint shadow moved across his face, something almost like pain.
“No,” he said softly. “I suppose she doesn’t.”
Above them, a door slammed. Emma heard voices in the kitchen corridor. Heavy footsteps crossed the floor overhead, moving fast.
Roman’s expression changed at once. The peace disappeared as if a curtain had dropped. His eyes became cold, alert, unreadable.
“Sit down,” he said.
“I need to take her and leave.”
“No. Sit down before you fall down.”
Emma obeyed because her legs were shaking too badly to argue. She lowered herself onto the edge of a chair near the bookshelves, hands twisted in her apron.
Roman stood with Lily still against his chest. He carried her to the leather couch along the wall and laid her down as if she were made of glass. Then he removed his suit jacket and placed it over her like a blanket.
The sight undid something in Emma.
A man who had frightened half of Chicago had just covered her baby with a jacket worth more than her monthly rent.
Roman turned toward the door.
“Stay here.”
He stepped into the hallway, leaving the office door nearly closed.
Emma heard another man’s voice outside, clipped and impatient.
“Roman, we’ve got a problem. Elena found a diaper bag in the storage room. She’s asking questions.”
Tommy Voss.
Emma recognized the voice immediately. Tommy was Roman’s right-hand man, a wiry, restless figure with sharp eyes and expensive shoes. He came and went like he owned every room he entered. The servers avoided him because he had a habit of smiling at people without warmth.
Roman’s reply was low. “It’s handled.”
“How exactly is it handled?”
“By me.”
A pause.
Tommy’s voice dropped. “You have someone down there?”
“That’s not your concern.”
“It becomes my concern when staff start hiding things in the building.”
Roman’s voice did not rise, but something in it turned the air heavy. “Go upstairs. Tell Elena the floor is short and she needs to pull Danny from the bar. Nobody comes down this hallway.”
“Roman—”
“Now.”
There was a silence long enough for Emma to imagine Tommy deciding whether to obey.
Then footsteps retreated up the stairs.
Roman returned to the office. His face revealed nothing, but Emma could sense the calculation happening behind his eyes.
“Elena wants to fire me,” she said.
“She will not.”
“You can’t ignore what I did.”
“I’m not ignoring it.”
“Then why are you helping me?”
