Chapter 1 - The Lost Watch
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The rain in Chicago had been falling for three days straight, washing the city’s grit into the storm drains but doing nothing to clean away Clare Bennett’s exhaustion.
She was a physical therapist who worked long hours for terrible pay, but two nights ago, she had done something entirely foolish. While locking up the clinic, she had found a watch in the alley. It wasn’t just any watch. It was a platinum Patek Philippe, heavy and ticking with a quiet, expensive arrogance. Most people in her neighborhood would have pawned it to pay rent. Clare, however, had seen a dark SUV idling at the end of the block. A man in a tailored suit had been frantically searching the wet pavement.
Clare had walked up to him, handed over the watch, and walked away before he could ask for her name. She didn’t want a reward. She didn’t want trouble. She just wanted to get home to her eight-year-old son, Oliver, who was sleeping next to a medical filtration machine that kept his fragile lungs working.
She thought that was the end of it. She thought she was just an anonymous stranger passing in the night.
But men in tailored suits driving bulletproof SUVs did not believe in anonymity. They had resources, cameras, and an entire underworld network at their disposal. They had traced her back to the clinic within forty-eight hours.
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Now, as Clare wiped down the vinyl treatment tables, her mind was solely on the eviction notice pinned to her refrigerator and the stack of medical bills threatening to drown her. She didn't know that returning that lost watch had proven something to a very dangerous man. It had proven she couldn't be bought, and it had proven she was honest.
And in Sebastian Lombardi’s world, honesty was the rarest commodity of all.
