💋 She Kissed the Most Dangerous Man in Manhattan for $10,000 — and Became the Secret He Couldn’t Let Go

Chapter 05 - Ten Thousand Reasons to Leave

Ravi’s people took Leon away through a back stairwell before the police arrived.

Diane did not ask where.

She told herself she should. She told herself a good person would demand that every man, guilty or not, be handed over to proper authority with paperwork and witnesses and the clean language of justice. But she had seen Catherine stand under chandeliers and invent a crime around her in less than a minute.

Clean language, Diane was beginning to understand, could be another kind of disguise.

They left the hotel through the laundry entrance. Rain struck the alley in hard silver sheets. Steam lifted from manhole covers. A black SUV waited with its lights off, so polished it reflected the wet brick walls like dark water.

“I’m not getting in,” Diane said.

Ravi stood beside the open door, the black drive in one hand and his ruined tuxedo sleeve dark with rain. “That is your choice.”

“Good.”

“But Catherine has your name, your workplace, your sister’s hospital, and enough money to make lies arrive before you do.”

Diane hated him for saying it plainly.

Mrs. Vale stood under a narrow awning, arms crossed, watching them both. “He’s not wrong.”

“He may not be wrong,” Diane said, “but he is also not safe.”

Ravi accepted this without offense. “No.”

That made her look at him.

Most dangerous men resented being named. Ravi did not. He seemed almost relieved by honesty.

“I can take you to your sister,” he said. “After that, you decide what you want to do.”

Diane’s heart lurched at Lily’s name.

“How do I know Catherine hasn’t already sent someone there?”

“You don’t.”

It was the worst answer, and because it was the worst, she believed him.

She climbed into the SUV.

The inside smelled faintly of leather and cedar. Mrs. Vale slid in beside her. Ravi took the front passenger seat, already making calls in a voice too low to catch. The driver pulled into Manhattan rain without waiting for traffic to become kind.

Diane pressed the envelope against her lap.

Ten thousand dollars.

It had nearly destroyed her, and she still needed it.

Mrs. Vale noticed.

“Don’t be ashamed,” she said.

Diane looked out at the wet city. “I kissed a man for cash.”

“You tried to save someone you love.”

“That’s a gentle way of saying an ugly thing.”

“Most ugly things have a gentle root.”

Diane swallowed against a sudden ache in her throat. She did not want this strange widow’s kindness. Kindness made the body remember it was tired.

“Tell me about my mother,” she said.

Mrs. Vale’s face turned toward the window. “Margaret Harper was the nurse assigned to Joseph Greedy after his heart surgery. This was twenty-two years ago. Catherine’s father, Alistair Voss, hosted Joseph at his country house for what he called a recovery retreat.”

Ravi went very still in the front seat, but he did not turn.

“Joseph died there,” Mrs. Vale continued. “They said complications. Quiet funeral. Quiet investigation. Quiet everything.”

“My mother never mentioned it.”

“She came to me three weeks later,” Mrs. Vale said. “She was frightened. She said Joseph had discovered the Voss Foundation was being used to move money offshore. She said he planned to expose it. She gave me a letter to hold, in case anything happened to her.”

Diane’s skin went cold.

“What happened to her?”

Mrs. Vale closed her eyes briefly. “She changed her mind before I could help. Took the letter back. Said she had two little girls and could not risk leaving them motherless.”

Diane could barely hear the traffic anymore.

Two little girls.

Her and Lily.

“My mother died in a car accident,” Diane said.

“Yes.”

The word was so soft it hurt.

Ravi turned now. “When?”

“Six months after Joseph.”

Ravi’s jaw set. “Why did no one tell me this?”

Mrs. Vale’s eyes flashed. “You were twenty and drowning in your own grief. Your uncle sealed everything. Your mother left the country. Catherine’s father smiled at your father’s memorial and donated a wing to a hospital. Tell me, Ravi, which door should I have kicked down first?”

Silence filled the SUV.

For the first time, Diane saw Ravi not as a predator in a tuxedo, but as a man who had once been young and not powerful enough to save anyone.

It made him more dangerous somehow. Pain that old either softened a person or taught him where to cut.

At St. Bartholomew’s, Ravi’s men were already in the lobby.

Diane nearly refused to step out when she saw them. Large men in dark coats, placed too evenly, scanning every entrance. Then her phone buzzed.

Lily.

Diane answered before the first ring finished. “Lily?”

“Di?” Her sister’s voice sounded small and strained. “There’s a woman here.”

Diane’s blood went cold. “What woman?”

“She says she’s from billing, but she knows about Mom.”

Diane looked at Ravi.

He was already out of the SUV.

They moved fast through the hospital lobby. Diane’s shoes squeaked against the polished floor. Nurses looked up. One of Ravi’s men spoke to the front desk; another took the elevator with them.

Diane hated every second of needing them.

Lily’s room was on the eighth floor at the end of a quiet hall. The door stood half open.

Diane pushed through.

Her sister sat upright in bed, pale and thin, dark hair loose over one shoulder. Beside the window stood Catherine Voss.

Still in the red gown.

Still wearing diamonds.