Negative energy courses through me. I pace my office like a caged animal, ready to tear the head of anyone who approaches.
I’ve spent my life knowing my purpose, my destiny. Vitale family business. La Corona. Family. I’m tied to this life.
But for the first time, I feel shackled. What would it mean to choose her? To choose something else?
My security feed blinks on my laptop. A car pulling up outside my building. Not hers. God, why doesn’t she see the danger she’s in?
Olivia, stubborn, righteous Olivia, is walking straight into Blackwood’s web without backup.
I check my watch, the third time in five minutes, as Mario's text comes through.Still at home. No visitors. Blinds closed.
Relief and frustration war inside me. At least she's alive, but the woman's too stubborn for her own good. She should be here, where I can protect her, not holed up in that apartment with paper-thin walls and locks a child could pick.
The memory of finding her crumpled form that night sends a chill through me. If I'd been five minutes later...
I reach for my keys, then stop myself. What would I even say? "Sorry I insulted your entire identity, now please come back to my safehouse"?
No. I need to give her space. But space doesn't mean abandonment.
I send another text to Mario:Double the watch tonight. And if anyone approaches her, I want to know immediately.
Somehow I sleep, and the next morning I drive downtown to the office and throw myself into work.
The dock operations need my attention, but the numbers blur together.
Olivia doesn’t ever stop haunting me. I can’t stop seeing her face when Roman mentioned her father.
Fucking hell. Didn’t I tell them not to tell her? What was he thinking? I doubt it was a slip. Roman doesn’t make slips. No, he had a reason for saying what he did. And in that moment, he shattered her world.
Part of me understands her retreat. Finding out her father wasn’t the man she thought he was is a special kind of betrayal. Her father was her hero, the reason she wears that badge. Now she's questioning everything.
The other part of me wants to shake her until she sees what's right in front of her. The world isn't split into saints and sinners. We're all just people making choices with the hands we're dealt.
"You need to sign these," my assistant says, sliding contracts across my desk.
I scrawl my signature without reading. She raises an eyebrow but knows better than to question me today.
My phone vibrates. Not her, I tell myself to avoid getting my hopes up. After all, she thinks I'm beneath her, except when she’s warming my sheets.
No. That's not fair. She never said that.
What she said was there's nothing between us but sex. And that's the real knife twist, because for the first time in my life, I want more from a woman.
The door to my office swings open without warning. Roman strides in like he owns the place, his presence filling the room with that quiet intensity that makes him Marco's perfect enforcer.
"You look like shit," he says, closing the door behind him.
I don't bother with pleasantries. "What do you want, Roman?"
He makes himself comfortable, pouring two fingers of my scotch and then taking a seat in front of my desk. "I want to know if you're planning to get us all killed over an FBI agent."
Fucker. "I'm handling it."
"Are you?" Roman's voice drops lower. "Because from what I saw yesterday, you look like a man who can't decide if he wants to fuck her or save her. And that kind of confusion gets people dead."
I rise from my chair, anger flaring. "Watch yourself."
"No, you watch yourself, Dom." He doesn't back down an inch. "This isn't some movie where the cop falls for the criminal and they ride off into the sunset. She's FBI. You're La Corona. Those facts don't change because you've developed feelings for her."
