He doesn't wait for an answer. He grips my hips, tilting my pelvis up, and drives his massive cock into me, burying it to the hilt in one single, devastating thrust.
6
Matteo
Sweat coolsagainst my chest in the dim light of the master bedroom. The heavy, intoxicating scent of her clean skin saturates the mattress beneath us.
She belongs to me. The undeniable truth of it settles deep in my marrow. Clara Reeves is mine. The transaction of her father's debt is irrelevant now. The paper contract means nothing. I claimed her. She surrendered.
The violent, feral possessiveness roaring through my veins leaves no room for negotiation or retreat. My heavy arm rests across her waist, pinning her soft, curved body against my side. Her chest rises and falls in the steady rhythm of deep sleep. Softness against brutality. Light against pitch black.
She wrecked me in the span of a few hours.
The relentless twenty-year paranoia in my mind is quiet.
The incessant, grinding noise of strategy, paranoia, and grief is muted by the simple weight of her against my side. My dark eyes trace the slope of her shoulder, the tangled mess of her hair spilling across the silk pillowcase. The thick gold chain aroundmy neck rests against her bare skin, marking her with the weight of the Costa family. The heavy tattoos covering my left shoulder and arm flexes as I tighten my grip on her hip. A low growl vibrates in the back of my throat. I want to wake her up. I want to drag her back beneath me and reinforce the brand I just stamped on her soul.
My encrypted burner phone vibrates on the nightstand. The sharp, mechanical buzz shatters the silence of the penthouse. The noise is a violent intrusion. My jaw locks. Heat crawls up my thick neck.
The reality of the outside world crashes back into the sanctuary I built for her. I slide my arm out from under her waist with slow, agonizing care. She murmurs softly, shifting in her sleep, reaching for the warmth I just took away.
I tuck the heavy duvet over her bare shoulders. I lean down and press a hard, lingering kiss to her temple. My beard scratches against her delicate skin. She sighs, settling back into the pillows. I stand up from the bed.
Muscle memory takes over. I pull on dark denim jeans and a black fitted shirt. The fabric stretches over my heavy build. I strap the leather shoulder holster over my chest. The weight of the Glock nineteen is a familiar, necessary comfort. I reach for my tactical boots, snapping the laces tight.
The world outside this heavily secured penthouse wants to take her from me. The Bellanti syndicate is actively hunting. The hit squad that destroyed her apartment earlier was just the opening move.
They want the shipping logs her cowardly father stole. They want the leverage. They want Clara dead to tie up loose ends. Iwill burn the entire city of Chicago to ash before I let a single Bellanti soldier look at her again.
I step out of the master bedroom. The heavy oak door clicks shut behind me. I engage the deadbolt from the outside. She is locked in. She is safe. The reinforced walls of the Il Corvo penthouse are rated for heavy ballistics. Nobody gets through those walls without a tactical demolition team. I cross the sprawling living room. The marble floors are cold beneath my boots. The city of Chicago glows through the floor-to-ceiling reinforced glass. Sirens wail in the distance. The West Loop is quiet tonight, but the silence is deceptive. It is the suffocating calm before a bloodbath.
I enter my private office. The space is a fortress within a fortress. No windows. Reinforced steel door. Walls lined with monitors displaying every camera angle around the Il Corvo restaurant downstairs and the perimeter of the penthouse. The espresso machine on the corner desk hisses as I power it on. The sharp scent of dark roasted beans mixes with the lingering smell of the flour I was kneading earlier. I pour a double shot of espresso into a heavy ceramic mug. I drink it black. The bitter liquid burns my throat, sharpening my focus to a razor edge.
I sit down at the massive mahogany desk. The encrypted laptop boots up with a soft hum. I pull the flash drive from my pocket. This is the exact drive Arthur Reeves used to steal his life back. This is the exact reason Clara is currently locked in my bedroom. I plug the drive into the port. A string of decryption algorithms runs across the black screen. My fingers fly across the keyboard, bypassing the rudimentary security Reeves installed. He is a pathetic gambler, not a hacker. The files open. Hundreds of spreadsheets, shipping manifests, and customs declarations flood the screen.
The Bellanti family controls the South Side docks. They have owned the union bosses and the harbor masters for two decades. Smuggling is their lifeblood. Drugs, weapons, untraceable cash. The Costa family rules the West Loop and the northern territories, dealing in information, high-end vice, and political leverage. We tolerate the Bellanti dock operations because open war in the streets brings the feds. But these logs represent a shift. Arthur Reeves found something in his accounting job that terrified him enough to steal it. I lean closer to the monitors. My eyes scan the columns of data.
Dates. Times. Container numbers. Cargo weight.
The numbers are wrong. The discrepancies jump out at me immediately. Shipments of industrial machinery parts from Eastern Europe. The declared weight is three tons per container. The draft marks on the ship manifests indicate the containers are sitting too heavy in the water. They are bringing in something significantly denser than machine parts.
I cross-reference the shell companies listed on the manifests. Fronts. All of them. Dummy corporations registered in Cyprus and Malta. The delivery dates are clustered. Six massive shipments scheduled to arrive over the next ten days. The pieces of the puzzle snap together with terrifying clarity. This is not a smuggling route for standard contraband. The Bellantis are importing military-grade munitions. Armor-piercing rounds. Heavy ballistics. Explosives. They are arming for a siege. They are preparing to break the twenty-year stalemate and wipe the Costa family off the map.
I sit back in the leather chair. The leather creaks under my massive weight. The scope of the threat expands exponentially. Arthur Reeves stumbled onto the logistical blueprints of an impending massacre. He stole the ledger to blackmail theBellantis. He signed his own death warrant. And he handed the target directly to his daughter.
A ping sounds from my secure messaging app. An encrypted text from Turi. The trusted elder of the Costa family. The man who raised me and my brothers after the blood soaked the streets twenty years ago.
Movement on the South Side docks. Heavy chatter. Advise lockdown.
Turi is always watching the perimeter. His counsel is a steady anchor in the chaos of our world. I type a rapid reply.
I have the Reeves logs. They are importing heavy artillery. War is coming.
I hit send. I close the laptop. The glow of the screen vanishes, leaving the office illuminated only by the harsh glare of the security monitors. The silence of the room presses against my eardrums.
The memory hits me with a violent, bone-deep thrum.
The chaotic noise in my head roars back to life.
