Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Dmitri Baganov. Heir to the Chicago Bratva. The man my brothers have been negotiating an alliance with for months. The man who kissed my hand at the gala a month ago.
The man I was about to let strip me naked in his private room.
"I thought you knew each other," Elio says carefully. "The way he looked at you, the way he?—"
"We don't." My voice comes out strangled. "We met once. Briefly. I didn't recognize him."
How?How the hell didn't I recognize him? Those pale eyes, that voice like gravel wrapped in silk, the way he moved like he owned every inch of space around him. "Vittoria." Elio's tone shifts, and I know he's reading my panic. "What happened up there?"
"Nothing." The lie tastes sour. "Nothing happened. We talked. That's it."
His silence tells me he doesn't believe a word, but Elio has always known when to push and when to let things go.
"You need to say nothing about tonight," I tell him. "Not to Pietro, not to anyone.Capisce?"
He nods once. "Understood."
I grab my heels from the floorboard and shove open the car door. The cobblestones are cold under my bare feet as I walk toward the side entrance, but I barely feel them.
My mind is spinning, replaying every moment from the club like a horror movie I can't pause.
I'd been so ready. So desperate to feel something other than grief that I'd walked into a wolf's den and bared my throat.
The security panel beeps as I press my thumb to the scanner, and the door clicks open. Inside, the compound is quiet.
I make it halfway to the stairs and climb toward my room, my legs heavy with exhaustion.
Tomorrow, I'll bury this night. I'll go back to my screens and my security feeds and my carefully constructed walls. I'll pretend Dmitri Baganov is nothing more than a name on an alliance contract.
But as I close my bedroom door behind me, I can still feel his hands on my waist.
Still taste champagne and danger on my lips.
Still hear his voice in my ear:Last chance.
I should have run faster.
CHAPTER FOUR
ONE MONTH LATER
Vittoria
Thirty-one days of voluntary exile in the compound, burying myself in code and security protocols like they could somehow protect me from the memory of gray eyes and a kiss.
Dmitri Baganov never said a word.
Not to Pietro. Not to anyone in my family. The alliance negotiations continued without a single mention of the Sartori princess who'd followed a stranger to his private room like some naive civilian who'd never heard of leverage or blackmail. Every time Pietro came back from a meeting with the Bratva, my stomach twisted into knots, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It never did.
Which somehow made it worse. Because now I owed him something. Or maybe he was just waiting for the perfect moment to use it against us. Against me.
Stop thinking about him.
I drag my attention back to the wall of monitors in front of me, the blue glow painting shadows across my bedroom.
