"Sleep." Not a suggestion. An order. "We'll talk at breakfast."
He turns to leave and I find my voice.
"Luca."
He stops, looks back.
"You're not going to lock the door?"
His smile is satisfied as he shrugs. "You're not going anywhere. We both know it now."
He leaves. I hear his footsteps receding down the hallway.
I lie in the dark. I touch my lips—swollen, bruised. I can still taste him on my tongue, salt and musk. His scent clings to me—smoke and cologne and something darker underneath. My throat is raw. My jaw aches. There are places on my hips and wrists that will be bruised tomorrow.
Proof of what I let him do. What I begged him for.
Tomorrow I'll feel him with every step, every breath.
And I'll let him do it again.
11
LUCA
Idon't sleep.
I stand outside her door in the hallway, listening. Waiting for I don't know what. Maybe for her to cry. Maybe for her to scream. Maybe for her to try the door and realize I meant what I said about not needing to lock it.
She does none of those things.
Later, I hear the shower turn on. It runs for a long time. When it finally stops, I picture her standing in the steam, touching the marks I left on her skin. Cataloging the damage.
The thought makes my cock hard again.
I force myself to walk away before I go back in there and add to those marks. Not because she needs rest. Because I need her broken in slowly, not shattered all at once. Rush this and she'll shatter. I need her compliant, not broken.
I listen to her move around, then settle. She goes back to bed. Smart girl. She'll need her strength.
I go to the kitchen and make coffee. I pour myself a cup and stand at the windows overlooking the city. The sun starts to come up, painting the skyline in shades of pink and gold. Manhattan waking up to another day where most people will never know that I killed a Bratva lieutenant and his bodyguardsin an alley behind a warehouse in Brighton Beach and killed the guy who was tailing me later.
And later that night I fucked the woman I've been obsessing over for months until she screamed my name.
That she's sleeping twenty feet away in my penthouse and has no idea I'll do worse than kill to keep her here.
My phone buzzes. A text from Sal.
Petyr Morozov is making noise. Wants a meet.
I type back one-handed.
No meetings. We're past that.
He's threatening to go to the Commission.
The Commission. Five families sitting around a table pretending they still run this city the way they did in the eighties. They'll listen to Morozov's complaints, nod sympathetically, and then tell him to handle his own problems. The Bratva isn't part of the old agreements. They're interlopers, tolerated because they bring in money but are never fully accepted.
Going to the Commission is a desperate move.
