Ellie's POV
Sizzle.
The sound of the pancetta hitting the hot pan was the only sound in the kitchen for a long moment. Ellie stood frozen, a wooden spoon in one hand, staring at Nicholas in the doorway. His words hung in the air between them, simple and disarming. You can cook.
"It's just sauce," she finally muttered, defensively, turning back to the stove.
"It's Bolognese," he corrected softly. He took a step into the room, his movement quiet. He leaned against the massive kitchen island, watching her. "You used a soffritto. Celery, carrot, onion. And you're letting the wine cook off completely. That's not 'just sauce.' That's knowledge."
He knew food. The realization was a shock that momentarily overshadowed her fear. This man, who lived in a world of silencers and threats, knew the holy trinity of an Italian base and the importance of cooking out alcohol.
"It was my dad's recipe," she said, her voice less shaky. She began to plate the pasta, twirling the fresh pappardelle into two wide, shallow bowls. She didn't know why she made two. Habit, maybe. A stubborn refusal to eat alone. She pushed one bowl across the island toward him.
He looked at it as if it were a foreign object. A simple bowl of pasta was offered not by a chef or a servant, but by his prisoner. He picked up a fork, twirled a bite with expert ease, and tasted it.
He didn't say anything. He closed his eyes for a full three seconds. When he opened them, the hard, guarded edge was gone. He just looked like a man, a tired, hungry man who had just eaten something good. "This is excellent," he said, and the honesty in his voice was more disarming than any weapon.
They ate in silence for a few minutes, standing on opposite sides of the island. The world outside the windows darkened, turning the city into a galaxy of electric stars.
"Why a waitress?" he asked, not looking at her, chasing a last bit of pasta around his bowl. "If you can do this?"
The old, familiar shame heated her cheeks. "Money. Culinary school costs more than I'll make in five years of waiting tables."
"You want to be a chef."
"It's a stupid dream," she said, the bitterness automatic.
"Why?"
"Because it's not real!" The frustration of years burst out, echoing in the sleek kitchen. "It's a fantasy for people with trust funds! I'm twenty-six, my savings account has three digits, and I'm clearing plates for people who won't even look at me!"
He listened, finishing his last bite. He put his fork down with a soft click. "My father was a chef," he said, so quietly she almost didn't hear. "In Naples. A tiny place by the water. Before he came here and got into… other business." He looked out at the city. "He said food was the only honest thing we ever dealt in. I think he was right."
It was a piece of himself, offered unexpectedly. A crack in his own armor. Ellie didn't know what to say. The intimacy of the moment, the shared meal, the shared confession—was more dangerous than any threat.
"The traitor at Giovanni's," she said, forcing the conversation back to the terrifying present. It was safer. "Could it be anyone?"
"It could be the maître d', the sommelier, the dishwasher," he said, the softness leaving his voice. "Trust is a currency in my world, Ellie. And someone just spent all of theirs."
"What will you do when you find them?"
His eyes met hers across the marble, and the answer was in their cold, dark depths. She didn't need him to say it. A shiver that had nothing to do with temperature traced her spine.
He seemed to shake off the grim mood. "You should cook dinner," he said, as if issuing a new order. "Tonight. Something that isn't pasta. Consider it… rent for the penthouse."
It was an order, but a strange one. An invitation back to the one place where she had any agency. The kitchen. She just nodded.
She spent the afternoon mentally planning, exploring his pantry like a treasure chest. She settled on something simple but required finesse: pan-seared scallops with a lemon brown butter sauce, a frisée salad with a warm bacon vinaigrette. Cooking for him felt less like serving a captor and more like… a challenge. A way to prove she wasn't just a liability. She was a person with a skill he couldn't buy or intimidate.
When it was time, she worked with focused quiet. He came into the kitchen as she was searing the scallops, their tops caramelizing into a perfect golden crust. He didn't speak, just leaned against the counter and watched. This time, his watching didn't feel like an assessment. It felt like curiosity. Respect, even.
They ate at the small dining table by the window, the city a glittering backdrop. The tense atmosphere from the morning had softened, stretched thin by the strange normalcy of a shared meal. He asked her more about her father's cooking. She found herself telling him about the tiny, loud kitchen of her childhood, the smoke alarm that was their dinner bell, the terrible meatloaf experiments. She even laughed at a memory, the sound strange and light in her own ears.
He, in turn, told her about the first restaurant his father bought in America, a failing Italian place in Queens. "He turned it around by making better bread than anyone else on the block," Nicholas said, a faint, real smile touching his lips. "No threats. No pressure. Just better ingredients. It was the only part of the business he ever loved."
For an hour, the mafia prince and the waitress were just two people talking about lost fathers and found passions over good food. The walls, the real ones of the penthouse and the invisible ones between them seemed to grow thin, blurred by steam and memory.
He was in the middle of a story about a disastrous dinner where a critical soufflé collapsed just as a famous food critic walked in. "It looked like a sad, yellow pancake," he said, and a real, deep laugh escaped him. It transformed his face, erasing years of hardness. Ellie laughed too, the sound mingling with his, the fear a distant echo.
Click.
The sound was soft but total.
Every light in the penthouse went out at once.
The laughter died, strangled in the sudden, absolute blackness. The cityscape outside the windows vanished, not a single light in the building or on the street below. A complete, localized power grid failure. The gentle hum of the refrigerator, the soft whir of the HVAC, all died. The silence was profound, heavy, and terrifying.
Ellie froze, her fork halfway to her mouth in the dark. She couldn't see her own hand.
"Don't move," Nicholas's voice came from the darkness right beside her. It was low, calm, and deadly serious. All traces of the laughing man were gone, erased faster than the light. "That wasn't a blackout."
Before she could process his words, a series of heavy, mechanical THUNKS boomed through the apartment, the distinct, terrifying sound of every electronic lock in the fortress bolting shut at once. They were sealed in, trapped in the dark. Then, from the direction of the hallway, they heard a muffled shout and a sickening thud of a body hitting a door. Marco's voice, strained and urgent, cried out from behind his sealed bedroom door: "Boss! The system's been overridden from the building's core! We have a breach on the floor below us! They're inside the building!"