When I Came to His Door in a Red Silk Dress, I Heard My Friend’s Laughter and Niko’s Smile Immediately Disappeared

That night, behind the door of Niko’s bedroom, I heard him place a ten-thousand-dollar bet on me, and a few minutes later I entered the room of the most dangerous man in his family.

The champagne bottle was still cold in my hand. I stood in the hallway, and the thin fabric of the red silk dress trembled around my knees when I heard Chloe’s laughter.

Chloe was my best friend.

The woman who had helped me choose the dress two days earlier. The woman who knew my secrets and whom I trusted with all my heart.

The bedroom door was not fully closed.

“Tell me, did she really believe it?” Chloe asked.

Niko chuckled.

“Mira will believe anything if you look at her warmly enough.”

My fingers squeezed the neck of the bottle so tightly that the glass cut into my palm.

Eight months earlier, my father had been shot in front of a Brooklyn restaurant. The bullet had not been intended for him, but he had been standing beside the man they were really looking for. Father survived, although the operations, doctors, and lengthy rehabilitation plunged our family into debt.

That was when Niko appeared.

He told me that his family would pay for everything. I cried against his chest and thanked him until my voice failed. Gratitude slowly turned into warmth. Warmth into trust. And trust into love.

And now I heard his voice through the wall.

“Did she really think that you paid for her father’s treatment?” Chloe asked.

“I let her think that,” Niko answered. “People always want to be grateful to someone.”

My stomach clenched.

“Who actually paid?”

Niko laughed loudly.

“My father. Leo felt guilty because the bullet had been intended for his man.”

Leo Casaro.

Niko’s father. The man whose name even police officers preferred to pronounce quietly. I had seen him several times at official dinners. Always calm, reserved, and so observant that he seemed to listen to a person’s breathing more than to their words.

He had never said that he had saved my father’s life.

Niko had turned all of it into his own nobility.

And then I heard the heaviest words.

“It all started with a bet,” Niko said. “Ten thousand dollars that I would get the grateful little virgin into bed before the week before Christmas.”

Something inside me froze at that moment.

I did not scream.

I did not knock on the door.

I put the champagne on the small table in the hallway, took off my heels, and hung them from my hand. Barefoot, I walked through the house where a few minutes earlier I had seen my future.

Niko had always forbidden me from entering the west wing. He said that his father held “business meetings” there.

So I went there directly.

The heavy wooden doors let out warm light. I opened them without knocking.

Leo sat behind a huge walnut table. His jacket hung on the back of the chair, silver hair gleamed at his temples, and his glasses had slipped down to the tip of his nose. Beside him stood a half-full glass of whiskey.

His gaze passed first over my bare feet, then over the red dress, and finally stopped on the heels hanging from my hand.

“Mira,” he said in a low voice. “You are in the wrong part of the house.”

“Really?”

His eyes narrowed slightly.

“Does Niko know that you came in here?”

“Niko is busy.”

“With what?”

“With my best friend.”

A silence fell over the room, as if even the walls had stopped breathing.

Leo slowly removed his glasses. For the first time I saw on his face a regret that others perceived as cruelty.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Those two words turned out to be almost more painful than Niko’s laughter.

“I didn’t come for an apology,” I said.

Leo took the pen between his fingers.

“Then why did you come?”

I approached the table. From my bag I took my father’s hospital bracelet—a white paper strip with a small copper tag attached to it. I had carried it with me all these months.

“To say thank you.”

His fingers tightened around the pen.

“For what?”

I looked into his eyes.

“For saving my father’s life. And for never saying that I owed you because of it.”

Leo said nothing for several seconds. Then he looked at the drawer, as if something lay there that had been waiting for years to be hidden. His hand slowly moved toward the lock…

Leo opened the drawer only when we heard Niko’s voice from the hallway.

“Dad? Is Mira here?”

Leo immediately closed the drawer.

“Do not come in here,” he said.

Niko stopped outside the door.

“What is happening?”

“Go,” Leo answered.

There was such severity in his voice that silence fell on the other side of the door.

I looked at Leo.

“If you were hiding all this from me, why did you pay?”

“Because your father was injured because of my mistake.”

“And why did Niko say it was his gift?”

Leo’s face hardened.

“Because he always needed a story in which he himself was the hero.”

He took a small black device from the drawer. One red light blinked on it.

“Does this record sound?”

“Since the day I realized that my son could sell not only money, but the truth as well.”

Chloe’s frightened voice sounded from outside.

“Niko, I think we should leave.”

Leo put the device on the table.

“Listen first, Mira. But know that after this there will be no turning back.”

He pressed the button with his finger.

First I heard Niko’s voice, and then a sentence that froze my blood…

The recording sounded quietly in the room, but every word struck my chest like a hammer.

“Mira cannot refuse me,” Niko was saying. “I am paying for her father’s treatment in my name, and she will remain grateful forever.”

Chloe’s voice followed.

“Do not forget the terms of the bet.”

“I already have ten thousand dollars ready. She will be in bed before Christmas.”

I heard my own breathing. Not in the recording, but in the room. I was trying not to fall.

“There is more,” Leo told me.

The recording continued.

“Your father was not shot at that restaurant for no reason,” Niko was saying. “If Mira wants her family to be safe, she will have to stay with me.”

Chloe asked quietly:

“Did you arrange this yourself?”

There was silence for several seconds.

“I only used the situation. Father avoided the bullet, and I will present his loss as love.”

Leo stopped the recording.

His face resembled stone, but there was such pain in his eyes that for the first time I thought: perhaps even this man had a limit that his son could cross.

“When did you make this recording?” I asked.

“Two weeks ago. That was when I found out that Niko was taking money from your father’s accounts.”

“From my father’s accounts?”

Leo spread documents across the table. Niko’s signature stood on every sheet. The treatment money really was coming from Leo’s company, but the last three transfers had been taken from an account opened in my father’s name.

“He stole the money and then played the noble man in front of you,” Leo said.

A powerful удар sounded from outside the door.

“Dad, open the door!” Niko shouted. “Mira, don’t believe him. He is going to use you!”

Leo did not move.

“Niko, you will leave this room calmly if you admit the truth.”

“You cannot threaten me in my own house!”

“This house was never yours.”

The door handle moved. I stepped back, and squeezed my father’s hospital bracelet in my hand so that the copper tag cut into my skin.

Suddenly my phone rang.

It was an unknown number.

“Mira Casaro?” a man’s voice asked. “If you want your father to remain alive tonight, do not trust Leo.”

The words were still in my ear when Leo looked toward me.

“Who was it?”

I answered:

“A person who knows that my father is not in the hospital.”

For the first time Leo’s face went completely pale.

He picked up a second phone and quickly dialed a number.

“Call the hospital,” he told me. “Right now.”

A few seconds later Leo put down the receiver and said quietly:

“Your father was taken from the clinic an hour ago. The authorization was issued with Niko’s signature.”

Niko was no longer shouting outside the door.

He was laughing.

“Do you understand now, Dad?” his voice sounded. “I haven’t finished the game yet…”

At that moment a new message arrived on Leo’s phone. He looked at the screen, and an expression appeared on his face as if the whole city had collapsed before his eyes…