Their name scares some people. Everyone knows who the Amatos are.
Everybody in this world with any sense knows better than to relax around men like Angelo and Santo.
So that’s what this is, I tell myself.
Fear.
“Can’t you just let me out here?” she asks, voice flatter now. Restrained. “I’ll walk home.”
I laugh once. There’s no humor in it. “Home is the townhouse.”
Her jaw ticks. “I meanmyhome.”
“That is your home.”
Her head whips toward me. “Fuck you.”
“Maybe later if you cut your shit.”
“Let me out.”
“No.”
“Maksim—”
“No.” I cut across her words hard enough to shut the rest down. “You’re going to the Amatos. Ivan will pick you up. He’ll take you back to the townhouse. And you’ll stay there until I get back.”
She stares at me.
Then folds her arms tighter and turns toward the window again with a furious little huff like that’s supposed to end the conversation.
It doesn’t.
It just makes the pressure behind my eyes worse.
Everything is scraping at me at once now—Nikolai, the compound, the shipment, the fucking Armenians, her silence, those clothes, the mark on her skin that she wears like an insult instead of the promise that it is.
I drag a hand down my face.
She’s driving me insane.
I marked her.
I carved myself open for her. And somehow I’m still the only one in this car acting like any of that means something.
I pull up in front of the Amato estate and park.
The house rises out of the dark like it always does—too big, too polished, too full of men with guns. Security lights catch on stone and black iron. The front windows glow warm, soft. A lie from the outside.
Inside, it’s still the Amatos.
Ayla doesn’t move when I kill the engine. Maybe she finally understands this isn’t a negotiation.
She reaches for the handle, testing it.
Locked.
I look over at her. She doesn’t look back. Just sits there arms folded tight across her chest like if she makes herself hard enough the world will stop trying to close around her.
