Page 26

“This still plays out as I’ve planned,” he warned, thinking aloud. “I won’t be unlocking the door and giving you your freedom. Stefano might be down, but my other men are still in the game.” He’d already arranged for them to get to the apartment an hour before the deadline he’d given Elio. “The finale will still play out.”

She nodded her understanding and took a step back from him, cradling his gun to her chest. “You’ll need this for it.”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to try and take it from me?”

“I have to.”

“I know.” She smiled tremulously. “I’m duty-bound to fight you when you do.”

“I know.” Now he smiled, but there was no more amusement or glee in it than had been in Elvira’s. They both knew they’d crossed a line. Both knew crossing it had changed everything. “But unless you take the shot, you know it’s a fight you can’t win. You’re a fighter, Elvira, but so am I, and I’m much bigger and stronger than you.” But as he said this came the memory of them fighting. Even in the heat of it, his overriding emotion, even while grabbing her hair and wrenching her head to stop her biting him, had been to subdue the wildcat without hurting her.

Fuck.

He looked at her beautifully crafted, ingeniously designed gun, looked at the gun she was cradling, then locked again onto her silver eyes.

Without his gun, he was screwed. The moment he tried to take it from her, Elvira would go back into wildcat mode and fight him to the bitter end for it. She had no more option over that than he did. The stakes were too high. She was a Ranieri, and he was an Esposito. Mortal enemies. If they fought for the gun, only the Gods knew what would happen.

He closed his eyes and pulled in a long breath before extending his free hand to her, palm up. “There are six bullets in my gun. Take five of them out and give them to me. I’ll throw them out of a window.”

Her eyebrows drew together in confusion.

“We then exchange guns. We’ll have one bullet each. Neither of us will want to waste them. Your brother will be sending me proof of my mother’s release at seven o’clock this evening. Whatever happens, my mother will be free. When Elio gets here tomorrow for the handover of the documents, he will have his men with him, and I will have mine. We will be evenly matched. I will put my gun to your head and you will no doubt put yours to mine. We’ll let the Gods decide how it all plays out from there.”

Silver eyes wide, she held the gun tighter to her chest.

“Do you want to fight me?” he asked roughly. “Or do you want the guarantee of getting to the endgame alive?”

Elvira didn’t know what she wanted. Her thinking was usually so clear, but standing in this small hallway that seemed to have shrunk to even tinier proportions, hugging Mattia’s gun to her breast, her thoughts were as noisy as the slams of her heart.

It was because he was bare-chested and still standing close enough for her to smell the musk of his skin and the scent of their sex clinging to him. It didn’t help that she was wearing his shirt, which was feeling more and more as if she was wearing him. She wanted to rip it away from her skin, but every time she thought that, she remembered how she’d ripped the buttons off it in her desperation to feel his skin on hers.

That hard, toned chest right in front of her had been meshed to hers. Her breasts had been crushed by it. She hadn’t looked at it. All she’d done was feel, and now her heart was smashing so hard because, bare-chested, jeans slung low, she could finally see the beauty of his physique.

Muscular without being muscly, he was toned and honed to sinful perfection, right down to the dark hair that covered his pecs and six-pack stomach. She’d always found male body hair faintly repulsive, but on Mattia it just added to the unbridled masculinity she was helpless not to react to.

What she’d felt when they were in each other’s arms and what she was feeling now was terrifying. Elvira was no virgin but she’d always been choosy with the very few lovers she’d had. Hers was a man’s world, and the last thing she wanted was a man who thought he had the divine right to control her, which hadn’t left many men to choose from.

With her lovers, she’d wanted to be free to do what she wanted and let them be free to do what they wanted. Share a nice meal here and there, a (small) glass of wine, maybe hit a nightclub. Be exclusive without being suffocating. Nothing so heavy as to distract her from the mission of her life: bringing down the Espositos.

Her lifelong mission had succeeded, but this Esposito was fighting back, and instead of taking him down when she had the chance, she’d lost control of her emotions and lost herself in him in a way she’d never done with anyone, and it gave little comfort that he would be dealing with the same self-recriminations. How could it when her emotions felt so jumbled? There were three deep scratch marks on his left cheek that she’d inflicted on him, and instead of celebrating that one minor victory, she felt sick to look at them.

How was she supposed to fight him again feeling like this? She didn’t see how she could. But also, she didn’t see how she couldn’t.

Swallowing hard, she looked him in the eye. “If I agree to your suggestion and swap guns, I give no guarantee that I won’t take the shot. Anything could happen in the time we’ve got left.”

He nodded, but didn’t say anything, simply extended his open palm back to her.

Breathing deeply to get a grip on the tremors still working through her body, Elvira removed five bullets from Mattia’s handgun. She didn’t even think about it; used muscle memory developed over years of training that had started when she was twelve at her grandmother’s insistence. By the time she was fourteen, she could hit any target with a bullet.

The one thing she’d never hit was a living being. She’d refused to practice on defenceless small animals. Valeria was to have been her first.

The Esposito matriarch had always been Elvira’s to kill. She’d believed her hatred was strong enough to make it easy, and now she found herself questioning whether she could have done it. Although disappointed that her chance had been denied her at the last minute, hadn’t she jumped on Valeria being made their hostage instead of killing her without any protest?

Was it just Mattia she was incapable of shooting, or was it all living beings?

She didn’t know she was incapable of shooting Mattia, she argued with herself when she dropped the five bullets into his huge hand. She just knew that to this point she’d been incapable of it. As she’d just argued with him, anything could happen in the time they had left together.