"Your life is in this house," Dominic says smoothly, as if stating a fundamental law of physics. He takes the step I just gave up, invading my space again, his chest brushing the silk at my breasts. "I secured you. The building is just bricks and glass. The Bellantis threw a temper tantrum. It doesn't touch you."
"It was my shop!" I scream, hitting his chest with the flat of my palms. It's like striking a wall of solid granite. He doesn't even flinch. "It was my grandmother's counter! It was the only thing I had that belonged to me! It was my entire life, Dominic!"
"It was a liability," he counters, his voice remaining terrifyingly level, completely detached from the emotional carnage inside my chest. He catches my wrists in one of his massive hands, halting my weak assault with effortless strength. "It was a target. Now it's gone. Good. There is nothing left out there for them to use against you."
He releases my wrists—not because I've won, but because he's choosing to. His fingers loosen deliberately, measured, returning me to exactly the three feet of distance he's decided toallow. He watches me the way a man watches a door he holds the only key to.
"You'll build your greenhouses on my land," he says, his voice dropping to something low and architectural, the tone of a man who doesn't make offers—he absorbs needs into structure. "You'll answer to no one but me. I haven't replaced your shop, Sienna—I've absorbed your world into mine. There is no going back to the Riverwalk. There is only forward, inside my architecture."
I stare up at him, tears of pure, blinding frustration spilling hot over my cheeks. He means every word. He genuinely cannot comprehend why I am grieving. He has spent twenty years building a criminal empire fueled by vengeance, orchestrating wars, and burying his emotions under a mountain of violent pragmatism. To him, survival is the only currency. He has completely divorced himself from the concept that a person's soul is tied to the things they love, the things they build.
"You didn't save my life," I whisper, my throat raw. "You just dragged me into your war, watched my world burn to the ground, and then bought a prettier cage to lock me in."
Something vicious and dangerous cracks behind his eyes. The silver-templed patriarch vanishes, replaced by the lethal predator who has ruthlessly dominated the Chicago underworld. His eyes track the wetness of my lips before dropping to the frantic pulse in my throat, tracking the frantic, erratic pulse beating against my skin.
"I am the only thing keeping you breathing," he says, his voice a low, lethal rasp that scrapes along my nerve endings. "The men who burned that building would have burned you inside it justto send me a message. Do not mistake my protection for a cage, Sienna. Out there, you are a target. In here, you are mine."
"I am not a possession you can just throw money at when you break something!" I shout, and turn, practically running back toward the staircase.
I need distance. I need to get away from the suffocating gravity of him. I sprint up the stairs, my bare feet slapping against the wood, my chest heaving with dry sobs. I reach the massive oak door of his suite, hurl myself inside, and slam it shut. I throw my weight against it, my hands frantically searching for a lock, a deadbolt, anything.
The door violently shoves open before I can even find the latch.
He lets me have exactly the amount of resistance I always was going to have—none. I know it even as I press myself into the wood. He didn't chase me because I got away. He let my hands go and watched where the prey would run.
Dominic steps into the bedroom, his chest rising and falling heavily. He kicks the door shut behind him with the heel of his tailored shoe. The heavy click of the latch dropping into place sounds like a prison cell sealing shut.
"Do not ever walk away from me when I am speaking to you," he snarls, stripping off his charcoal suit jacket and tossing it carelessly onto the floor.
"Get out!" I scream, backing away until my calves hit the heavy wooden frame of the bed. "I don't want you in here! I don't want your money, I don't want your protection, I want my life back!"
"You don't have a life back there!" he roars, the sudden explosion of his volume making me flinch. He crosses the room in threemassive strides, crowding me against the bedpost. His hands slam flat onto the wood on either side of my head, caging me in. He is so close I can feel the furious heat rolling off his body, smell the dark, spicy scent of his cologne masking the inherent violence in his blood. "Your life is gone! The Bellantis made sure of that. The only thing standing between you and a shallow grave is me. You think I care about a flower shop? I would burn this entire fucking city down to the bedrock to keep your heart beating, and you are crying over wood and glass!"
"I am crying because you didn't even care enough to tell me!" I shout back, craning my neck to glare up into his dark, furious eyes. "You were going to let me sit in this room, wearing your clothes, sleeping in your bed, thinking my world was safe, while you paid men to sweep up the ashes of everything I ever loved! You don't see me, Dominic. You just see something you own."
His jaw flexes so hard I hear the bone pop. His gaze drops to my mouth, then drags down the slender column of my throat, tracking the frantic, erratic pulse beating against my skin.
"I see exactly what you are," he murmurs, his voice suddenly dropping into a dark, gravelly register that makes the blood roar in my ears. He steps perfectly flush against me. The hard, heavy planes of his chest press against my breasts through the thin silk of the robe. I can feel the thick, rigid length of his erection pressing heavily against my stomach through his tailored trousers.
"Dominic, no—" I gasp, but the protest is weak, my voice betraying the sudden, catastrophic shift in my biology. The anger is still there, burning hot and bright in my chest, but the moment his body aligns with mine, a deep, hollow ache blooms between my thighs in absolute contradiction to my fury.
"No?" he mocks darkly, dropping his face into the curve of my neck. His hot breath ghosting over my skin makes my knees buckle. "Your mouth says no. Your heart is beating out of your chest for me."
He brings his large hands down, gripping my hips with bruising, possessive force. He lifts me effortlessly, sitting me backward onto the edge of the high mattress so my legs dangle over the side. He immediately steps between my thighs, forcing them wide apart, his broad shoulders blocking out the rest of the room.
"You think I treat you like a possession?" he asks, his hands finding the knot of my silk sash and yanking it loose. The robe falls open, exposing my flushed, aching body to his dark, consuming gaze. "A possession sits on a shelf. A possession doesn't make me narrow to a single point. A possession doesn't make every variable I've tracked for twenty years fall away just to feel her breathe against my mouth."
He reaches for his belt. The sharp scrape of the leather sliding through the buckle is deafening in the quiet room. He unzips his trousers and pushes the fabric down his narrow hips, freeing his heavy, thick cock. It springs out, pulsing with a lethal, purple heat, a bead of precum gathering at the blunt head.
My lungs seize. I am so angry with him I want to claw his eyes out, but looking at the massive, hard length of him makes my pussy clench in a violent, demanding throb.
He doesn't bother with foreplay. He already knows what my body is doing. He slides his large, rough hand up the inside of my thigh, his thumb pressing deliberately against my pussy. I gasp, my back arching violently as his thumb slides right through the slick, dripping wetness pooling there.
The air between us thickens with the unmistakable scent of my arousal, sharp and heavy. His nostrils flare. His jaw tightens with sudden, lethal focus.
"Look how angry you are," he taunts, his voice thick with a dark, primal arrogance. He strokes his thumb directly over my swollen clit, pressing down hard enough to make a jagged moan tear out of my throat. "Look how wet you are for a man you claim to hate."
"I don't... I don't hate you," I sob, my hands dropping to grip his broad shoulders as my hips involuntarily chase the pressure of his hand.
