He carries me up a sweeping staircase to the second floor. The sounds of the war room fade behind us, replaced by the hush of the private wing.
We reach a solid oak door at the end of the hall. Fabio shoulders it open without breaking stride.
He carries me inside and nudges the door shut behind us with his heel.
The lock clicks into place.
The sound is final. It's the world outside getting cut off. The war, the Bellantis, the tracking devices, the freezing river. All of it goes quiet behind that oak door.
I look around the room. It's massive, dominated by a king-sized bed dressed in dark linens. The walls are soundproofed, the way every senior Costa room is. A stone fireplace dominates one wall, a fire already crackling merrily in the hearth.
It's a fortress within a fortress.
Fabio slowly lowers me to my feet. He keeps his hands securely on my waist, ensuring I have my balance before he lets go.
He looks down at me. The adrenaline and the tactical rage have vanished from his eyes. Something darker takes their place. Something I don't have a file for.
The primal, scorched obsession of a man who just claimed his woman against the world.
He reaches out, his rough fingers tracing the line of my jaw. His knuckles barely register against my skin, those same hands raw from what he did at the river.
"You stayed," he whispers, his voice rough with emotion.
"I stayed," I answer softly.
The corner of his mouth twitches. The tactical jacket slips off my shoulders, pooling on the floor at our feet. The fire's heat finally reaches my skin.
He closes the last of the distance between us. The heat coming off him sinks into my chilled skin. His eyes move over my face slow, like he's memorizing the fact that I'm standing inside his room.
My breath catches. The math has nothing left to say.
There's only him. And I'm where I belong.
10
Fabio
The heavy brassdeadbolt snicks into place. The sound cracks through the silent room like a gunshot. The world outside this door ceases to exist. The mafia war. The Bellanti strike teams. The bodies left behind in the burned speakeasy. Gone. Dead. Irrelevant. There's only this room. Only her.
I carry Catalina deeper into my suite. The rugs absorb the sound of my boots. The soundproofed walls swallow the chaos of the compound. My muscles burn from the adrenaline and the violence, but I don't put her down. Not now. Not ever. She is a permanent fixture in my arms. My woman. My enemy princess. That's all there is to it.
Her arms wrap tight around my neck. The freezing river water soaks through my ruined shirt, pressing her icy skin against my chest. She trembles against me. The cold is deep in her bones. The fear still hovers at the edges of her scent. Her scent is buried under stagnant water, mud, and gunpowder. I hate the river water. I hate the mud. I'll strip the entire fucking world off her until there's nothing left but her.
I cross the expanse of the bedroom. The king-sized mattress sits in low lamplight. I do not stop there. The slate tiles of the master bathroom meet my boots. I kick the glass door of thewalk-in shower open. The brass fixtures gleam in the dim light. I reach out, cranking the hot water valve to the maximum. Steam hisses from the rainfall head, billowing into the cold air.
I set her down on the teak bench inside the enclosure. She stays where I put her. Her wide, dark eyes track my every movement. No panic. No calculation. The Bellanti armor is stripped away, leaving only the raw, trusting core of the woman who chose me over her own survival. The trust is a heavy, dangerous weight in my chest. It demands everything I have.
"Stand up," I command. The words come out rough, low, scraped raw.
She stands. The dripping tactical jacket I wrapped around her on the riverbank slides off her shoulders. It hits the wet tiles with a sodden slap. She is wearing a ruined shirt and ruined denim jeans, plastered to the thick, glorious curves of her body. My jaw locks. The territorial rage spikes so hard it threatens to break my teeth. Her own family did this to her. Her own blood chased her into a freezing drainage pipe.
I step under the scalding water fully clothed. The heat hits my shoulders, washing away the freezing grit of the river. I don't care about my clothes. I don't care about anything except getting her warm and clean, getting my hands on every inch of her to know she's whole.
My hands grip the hem of her ruined shirt. I pull it up and over her head, tossing it out onto the bathroom floor. The cold air hits her bare skin for a fraction of a second before the hot water cascades over her shoulders. She sighs, tipping her head back. The water slicks her dark hair to her skull, trailing down her neck, tracing the swell of her breasts.
Fuck.
The visual lands like a punch straight to my gut. The water sheets over her thighs, the dip of her waist, the curve of her belly. I drop to my knees. The water pounds against my back.My hands grip the waistband of her soaked denim. I peel it down over her hips, dragging the wet fabric down her thighs. I crouch lower, tugging her boots and socks off, then stripping the soaked denim the rest of the way.
