The heat coming off his body is overwhelming. My gaze travels up his chest, his throat, his sharp jaw—all the way to his face. He's too close. I can see the tiny, pale scar cutting through his left eyebrow. Motor oil and smoke and sun-warmed metal. His scent settles on my skin.
One rough knuckle hooks under my chin. He tips my face up to his. The pressure is feather-light. It leaves no room for hesitation.
My eyes meet his. The darkness in his gaze is consuming. It strips away all my sarcasm. It shatters my clinical detachment. I'm exposed. Every defense I brought into this room is gone under his stare.
"This isn't adrenaline." His voice drops to a raw, guttural whisper. He leans forward. His face stops a breath from mine. His hands stay fisted at his sides. He doesn't trap me. He doesn't crowd me closer. He just stays right there.
He just stays right there, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off his mouth. "This isn't a stress response. Don't insult me by pretending it is. You feel it the way I feel it. You're sitting there calculating escape routes because you're terrified of how much you want to surrender."
My breath catches in my throat. My chest heaves. I can't form a coherent sentence. My brilliant, highly educated brain short-circuits. He's right. About every single word of it. I am terrified. I have never surrendered control in my life. Surrender equals death in my world. But looking up at him now, at the way he's holding himself together for me, surrender looks like salvation.
"I can't." The words crack as they leave my mouth. I hate the weakness in my tone. I hate the desperation. "I can't do this. I can't trust you. If I'm wrong, I die. It's that simple. If I give you my trust and you betray me to your family, I die. The math doesn't allow for blind faith."
"Then don't trust me yet." He does not pull back. His face hovers mere inches from mine. His hot breath washes over my lips. The proximity is torture. My core clenches violently. Wetness floods my panties. I want to close the distance.
I want to taste the violence on his mouth. I bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from moving. "Keep mapping the exits, calculating the odds, throwing your sharp, sarcastic insults at me. Keep your armor on. I don't care. I've got enough certainty for both of us."
He draws back. The loss of his heat is a physical shock. He steps away, breaking out of his own gravity. He turns his back to me and walks to the iron door.
"Get some sleep." He doesn't look back. He grabs the handle of the steel door. "I'll get your bag. When I come back, I'm locking this door from the inside. I'll be sitting in that chair until the sun comes up. Nobody gets through that door unless they go through me first, and nobody gets near the grate unless they get through my men."
He pulls the door open. The rusted hinges scream in protest. The corridor of the speakeasy yawns beyond the threshold. He steps through. The door slams shut behind him. The metallic clang echoes like a gunshot in the small room.
I'm alone. The space heater ticks quietly. The orange glow casts long shadows across the floor. My hands are shaking. I press them flat against my thighs to steady them. I close my eyes and drag in a ragged breath. The scent of motor oil and smoke still lingers in the air. It clings to my clothes. It coats my lungs.
I am compromised. The Bellanti playbook has failed me. I mapped the room, counted the steps, noted the structural weaknesses. But I missed the most dangerous variable in the room.
I missed what happens when the monster guarding the door decides he'd rather die than let you out of his sight. I lie back on the thin, scratchy wool blanket. I stare up at the weeping brick ceiling. The water drips steadily in the distance. The iron door remains shut. He is coming back. He is going to lock us in together.
I should be terrified. I should be plotting my immediate escape.
Instead, a slow, terrifying warmth spreads through my chest. For the first time in my life, I'm not the one guarding my own back. I pull the thin blanket up to my chin. I listen to the deliberate, echoing footsteps returning down the hall.
The Costa enforcer is coming back to his post. And heaven help the fools who try to cross his line.
4
Fabio
The reinforcedsteel door drags shut behind us. The deadbolt slams home with a metallic crack. The crack ricochets off the curved brick ceiling overhead. We are locked in. The world above is Chicago. A war zone. Down here, beneath the river, there is only the condensation dripping from the pipes and the suffocating tension sucking the oxygen from the room.
I drop her leather bag on the floor. It lands with an unceremonious thud. My shoulders crowd the low ceiling. The walls press close. The battered orange space heater hums in the corner, throwing weak light across the rusted iron beams and stone. It doesn't cut the chill.
It does not matter. The blood in my veins is boiling.
She slides off the cot and sits on the edge of a wooden shipping crate, putting hard wood between her body and mine. She is an agonizing contrast to the jagged rock and rusted metal around her. She is wearing enemy colors, carrying enemy secrets, running from the very people who slaughtered my family two decades ago. Logic says she's a threat. Logic says she's bait.
My instincts don't care about logic. Something is tearing at the inside of my ribcage and it has her name on it.
She is mine.
Her scent drifts off her skin, cutting through the mildew and river water. It hits my lungs. It punches straight down to my groin. My cock goes rigid behind the fabric of my tactical pants. A hard pulse hammers at the base. My jaw locks tight. The sharp lines of my mother's face, etched into my own, pull taut. Temper and lust slam together inside me.
Catalina Bellanti doesn't cower. She sits up straighter. Her thighs press together. Her breath stays steady, calculated. She's mapping the room. Mapping me. Surviving inside the Bellanti compound taught her how to read a predator. She knows how dangerous I am.
She just doesn't care.
"Did you check the zipper on the front pocket?" Her voice is smooth, laced with a sharp, defensive edge. "Or did you just sniff it like a guard dog to make sure I wasn't smuggling C-4 into your little dungeon?"
