I shift my weight on the mattress, resting my back against the tufted leather headboard. I am forty-five years old. For two decades, I operated from behind glass and code—behindarchitecture and encrypted feeds and men who pulled triggers on my behalf. I called it strategy. It was dormancy. I have lived on cold calculation. I have never allowed a soft thing into my life because soft things bleed. Soft things die.
But looking down at the pale, smooth expanse of Sienna's bare shoulder, a terrifying, suffocating realization grips my throat.
If someone took her from this room right now, I would simply cease to exist. My heart would forget how to beat.
My fingers, rough and scarred from a lifetime of breaking bones and loading magazines, trace the line of her spine. She is so incredibly small compared to me. She is so incredibly fragile compared to me. I took her with the brutal, unapologetic force of a man starving to death—driven by an animalistic desperation to plant myself so deep inside her that she would never be able to scrape me out. And she took it. She arched into my violence, matching my obsession with a raw, gasping surrender that completely unmade me.
She shifts in her sleep, a soft murmur vibrating in her throat. The thick blankets slip down, exposing the curve of her waist and the flare of her hip. A faint, purpling bruise marks the pale skin there—the exact shape of my thumb. The sight of it detonates something ancient and absolute in my chest.
Mine.
I need to check the perimeter feeds. I know Santi is awake downstairs, his calm, calculated eyes locked on the surveillance feeds as he tracks the Bellanti movement following the mess at L'Ombra. Fabio is likely in the armory, pacing like a caged wolf and checking his weapons as he blunt-force curses my name for bringing a civilian into the compound. And my cousin Matteo,the family underboss, arrived hours ago for the lockdown; his mind is a war room that never powers down. I should be down there. I am the Don. I am the architect of this war.
I try to pull my hand away from her skin. A physical ache, sharp and jagged, slices through my sternum. The air in my lungs seizes. Two inches of space between my palm and her hip feel like a vast, freezing ocean. I grit my teeth and force myself to stand, my bare feet hitting the cold hardwood floor.
I walk to the mahogany dresser across the room, picking up the encrypted tablet left there. I swipe the screen, my eyes scanning the infrared feeds of the brownstone's exterior. Quiet. Secure. But my periphery is entirely locked onto the bed.
"Dominic."
Her voice is thick with sleep, gravelly and small. The sound of my name on her tongue hits me with the force of a hollow-point round.
I drop the tablet on the dresser. It clatters against the wood. I don't care. I cross the room in three long strides, the tension only bleeding out of my jaw when my knees hit the mattress and I pull her up against my bare chest.
She gasps softly as her breasts press against the heavy muscle of my pectorals, her hands coming up to rest flat against my stomach. Her palms are warm. I wrap my arms around her, burying my face in the chaotic mass of her copper curls. I inhale, drawing her scent deep into my lungs. My chest expands fully for the first time since I stood up.
"I'm here," I murmur, my voice a dark, rough rasp in the quiet room. "I'm right here."
Sienna tilts her head back. In the dim light, her amber-hazel eyes are wide, glassy with sleep but acutely aware. She doesn't flinch away from my size, nor does she shrink from the suffocating force of my possessiveness. She looks at my face, tracking the silver at my temples, the harsh, unforgiving lines of my jaw, the jagged scar that cuts through my left eyebrow.
"You're awake," she whispers, her thumb twitching against my stomach. "Did you sleep at all?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because if I close my eyes, I can't see you."
The absolute sincerity in my voice makes the air punch out of her lungs. She drops her gaze to my chest, her fingers curling slightly, nails grazing my skin. "You said... before... you said you watched me."
"I did." I bring a hand up, my calloused fingers cupping her jaw, forcing her to look back up at me. I won't hide the monster from her. She needs to know exactly what she belongs to now. "Every Saturday. You deliver to L'Ombra at five-forty-five. You unlock the back door first, not the front. I watched you on the restaurant's security feed and I told myself it was routine vetting—a Don reviews every contractor in proximity to his operations. But when I finally sat in an armored SUV across the street on my first morning in this city, I stopped pretending. I memorized the exact shade of your hair when the sun hit it from the curb."
"Why?" Her voice trembles, just a fraction. Not with fear. With something deeper. A terrifying vulnerability.
"Because the first time I saw you walking down the street, my chest physically hurt," I confess, the words tearing out of my throat like shards of glass. "For twenty years, I operated from behind glass and distance. I called it discipline. It was hibernation. I didn't know I was freezing to death until you walked past me and I felt the heat. I told myself I was just keeping tabs on the neighborhood. I lied to myself. I was starving for you."
Her breath ghosts over my collarbone. "You took my life away. You paid my rent. You burned my clothes."
"I erased the liability so the Bellantis couldn't find you," I correct her, my grip tightening slightly on her jaw, my thumb stroking the soft skin just beneath her ear. "And yes, I dismantled your old life. Because you are my life now. I am never letting you walk out of this compound. You will live here. You will sleep in my bed. You will eat at my table. I will burn Chicago to the ground and build a new city on the ashes just to keep you safe inside it."
A tear spills over her lower lash line, catching the faint light before it tracks down her cheek. I catch it with my thumb, wiping away the wetness. I expect her to fight. I expect the fiery defiance she threw at me in the kitchen hours ago.
Instead, her hands slide up from my stomach, dragging over the heavy muscle of my chest, over my shoulders, until her fingers tangle in the hair at the nape of my neck. She pulls herself up, her bare body sliding flush against mine. The friction of her soft skin against my rough hands creates a spark that detonates straight in my cock.
"You are a terrifying man, Dominic Costa," she whispers against my mouth.
"I am a lethal man," I correct her, my lips brushing hers. "But I will never be lethal to you."
She kisses me. It isn't the desperate, violent collision of our first kiss. It is slow, deep, and impossibly tender. Her lips part under mine, inviting me in, and I groan, a ragged, guttural sound that vibrates through my chest and into hers. My tongue sweeps into her mouth, tasting the remnants of sleep and the sweet, addictive flavor that is uniquely hers. I map the roof of her mouth, the slide of her tongue, taking my time, drinking her in like a dying man at an oasis.
