I ended the call. Started the motorcycle. And turned back toward the estate.
Chapter Nine: SANTINO
Shecameback.Ofcourse she fucking came back. I knew it before I heard the motorcycle. Before the engine roared somewhere beyond the eastern road. Before the guards at the gate radioed in with barely concealed amusement in their voices. Before Marco looked at me like I was the worst kind of lunatic and muttered, “She’s turning around.”
I knew. Not because Aurora Ventura was predictable. She wasn’t. That was the problem. Predictable women bored me. Predictable enemies died. Predictable nights ended with whiskey, blood, or some model whose name I forgot before morning.
Aurora wasn’t predictable. She was worse. She was curious. And curiosity was a hook. Once it sank into a person deep enough, they always followed the line back.
I sat on the cliffside terrace with one ankle crossed over my knee, coffee cooling untouched beside me while the morning sun spilled gold across the ocean. The storm had washed the whole world clean overnight. The cliffs were black and wet beneath pale light. The gardens below the terrace glittered with rain. Farbeneath us, waves slammed against rocks with enough force to turn water white.
Beautiful morning. Terrible fucking mood. Mostly because I had spent the last hour imagining every possible way that motorcycle could kill her. Which was inconvenient. I didn’t worry. I made other people worry. I caused worry professionally.
But then I’d watched Aurora ride out through my open gates, small body perched on a machine too powerful for her, dark hair whipping behind her like a flag, and something ugly had twisted hard beneath my ribs.
Not fear. No. Absolutely not. Fear was for men who still believed God intervened.
This was something worse. Awareness. Of how fragile she was. Of how easily the world could take her. Of how quickly a person could be alive one second and gone the next. I knew that better than most.
My thumb brushed over Angelo’s watch. The metal sat loose around my wrist.
“Still think this was smart?” Marco asked from the other side of the terrace.
I didn’t look at him. “No.”
He paused. That got his attention. “You admit that?”
“I admit many things.”
“No, you don’t.”
I smiled faintly at the ocean. “Fair.”
Marco sighed. He had been standing there for the past hour with his arms folded, looking like a disappointed priest at a funeral. Except Marco would absolutely shoot the priest if I asked him to. Probably before I finished the sentence. Useful quality in a man.
“You let her leave,” he said again, because apparently we were still discussing the obvious.
“I did.”
“She could’ve kept going. She could’ve called Leonardo.”
“She did call Chiara,” I muttered.
Marco went still. I finally looked at him. His expression hardened. “You tapped her phone?”
“No.”
A beat. His stare flattened. “Define no.”
“I had the road monitored, her GPS ping followed, three cars behind her, two ahead of her, and a man close enough to put a bullet through anyone who approached her.”
Marco closed his eyes. That seemed dramatic.
“Technically,” I added, “her phone was not tapped.”
He opened his eyes slowly. “You are impossible.”
“I’m thorough.”
