Page 9 of The Kingpin’s Bride

He leaned in until his mouth was next to my ear. “Now you know what happens when you say no to me.”

He pulled back, eyes bright with cruel satisfaction. “You had your chance to be smart the first time. You chose to refuse. So the kid comes with me. You want to see her again? Keep dancing. Every night. No more refusals. No more attitude. Maybe in a few weeks, if you behave and the money’s good, I’ll let you look at a picture.”

He grabbed my sister’s hand. Camilla made a small sleeping sound. The noise nearly dropped me to the floor. “Dario…”

“Earn her,” he said simply, and walked out.

I stood in the hallway of After Dark with the bass thumping through the walls and the ghost of my sister’s weight in my arms, and understood that whatever thin piece of life I had left was gone. From that night on, I danced. I danced while strangers watched. I danced with Dario’s threat wrapped around my throat.

And every time I closed my eyes, I saw Camilla’s sleeping face and repeated the same silent promise I had made the night our mother died. I would get her back. No matter what it cost.

Chapter Two

Matteo

Santino was waiting when I walked into the private upstairs office at After Dark. The bass from the main floor thumped through the floorboards like a second heartbeat. He sat behind the heavy black desk with a glass of whiskey in one hand and that familiar look on his face that meant I was about to get a lecture.

I dropped into the chair across from him and spun my watch around my wrist once. The metal was warm from my skin. Santino had given it to me the year after Angelo went. He never made a speech about it. Just handed it over one night and said, “He’d want you to have it.” I hadn’t taken it off since.

“You’re late,” Santino said.

“Traffic.”

He gave me a flat look. We both knew there was no traffic at this hour.

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “I’ve been running collections for eight months. Clean. No mistakes. It’s time.”

Santino set the glass down with deliberate care. “No.”

“I’m twenty-five. I’ve earned a bigger piece.”

“You’ve earned the right to keep breathing,” he said. “That’s enough for now.”

Heat crawled up the back of my neck. “I’m not a kid anymore. You can’t keep me on the edges forever because you feel responsible for Aurora’s little brother.”

His eyes cooled. “I keep you on the edges because the second you step fully into this life, it doesn’t let go. You think you want blood. You don’t know what it costs yet.”

“I know exactly what it costs.” I held his stare. “I watched my father turn our house into a cage. I watched Chiara get sold off. I watched Aurora almost get destroyed. I’m not asking for permission to be soft. I’m asking for a real seat at the table.”

Santino was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was lower.

“You have my name. You have my protection. You have a future that doesn’t end with a bullet or a life sentence. That should be enough.”

It wasn’t.

I stood up so fast the chair scraped. “Then I’ll find my own way in.”

“Matteo.”

I didn’t stop. I pushed out of the office and took the private stairs down two at a time, jaw tight, blood hot. The main floor of the club hit me like a wall of heat and low music and expensive sin. Amber lights. Black leather. The soft sound of chains and quiet conversation.

I needed a drink. Or a fight. Or something to take the edge off the restless, violent thing that lived under my skin.

Then I saw her.

She was on the small secondary stage near the back, the one they used for the newer girls. Dark hair. Pale skin. The outfit she wore was barely there, black lace that clung to every curve and left almost nothing to the imagination. She moved slowly, like every step cost her something. Her eyes stayed down. Her lips were parted. There was a flush high on her cheeks that looked more like shame than arousal.

She was in pain.