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"It has a military-grade satellite beacon forged inside the platinum casing, Iris," he confesses quietly, his voice thick with barely contained possessiveness. "The moment you crossed beyond the courtyard perimeter sensors without me, my phone alerted me in the study. It pinged your exact coordinates on the third terrace."

I stare at his shadowed face, stunned and grateful at the same time.

"You put a tracking device inside my wedding ring?" I ask slowly, trying to come to the terms with my husband being a full-blown stalker.

I mean, I already knew, but even this is the next level for him. Actually, I have to take stock and ask myself if I’m really surprised at the lengths he’ll go to keep me safe. I’m not.

"Yes," he growls lowly, the dangerous, obsessive Don returning to the surface, though his grip on me never loosens by a fraction of an inch. "I told you, Iris. I will never lose you. I will never let you vanish into the dark again. If you walk into the ocean, I will follow that signal to the bottom of the sea. If someone takes you, I will hunt them across every continent on this earth until they are shredded to pieces."

He scoops me up into his arms, rising effortlessly to his feet, holding me flush against his heart as Sofia falls into step beside his boots.

"Hate me for it if you want, Donna," he rumbled against my lips as he carries me back toward the safety of the warm palazzo. "Call me a psychotic stalker. But you will never be lost again."

I bury my face in his chest, inhaling the scent of the only monster who would tear the heavens apart to bring me home.

"Just take me inside, Romeo," I rasp out, curling my fingers into his shirt. "Just don't let go."

"Never, Kitten," he promises furiously, kicking the terrace doors open. "Never."

He carries me all the way to the bed and doesn’t let go until Sofia jumps up and drops her head on my ankle, as if to apologize for the darkness that swallows me whole every night.

Romeo cleans the gravel from my palms with a warm cloth as if he’s afraid I’ll suddenly vanish on him. He does not lecture. He does not tell me I was foolish. He only breathes like a man who has already buried me in his head and is trying to put me back by his side.

"I counted the steps," I say. My voice is raw. "I thought I knew the house."

"You will," he says. "Tomorrow we walk it at dusk. Every terrace. Every drop. Until your feet know it better than mine. I’ll make you feel safe here, Iris. I’ll teach you how to shoot and bring a man to his knees if he dares touch you."

I should tell him I do not want his help. The words sit on my tongue and die there. Tonight I only want the weight of his hand and the sound of the dog breathing, proof I did not crawl off the edge of his pretty cliff.

He stays awake through the night. I know because every time the wind hits the terrace doors, his body goes tight around mine, listening. He thinks I cannot feel the way he counts my breaths. He is wrong. I count his too.

"If I had gone over," I whisper into the dark, my thoughts won’t shut up.

"You didn't." His mouth is against my hair, voice strong and protective. "And if the cliff itself tried, I would have gone down after you."

It should sound like a threat. It sounds like a vow. I hate that I sleep anyway, but at least I’m safely in his strong arms that won’t let go.

SIX

IRIS

Ido not take orders from men.

I say that, like it is still true, like I did not let a Sicilian mafia don put a ring on my hand and a gun lesson on my calendar. The girl who painted alleys at midnight is still in me, stubborn and loud, but she is sharing a body with a woman who knows what his voice does to her knees. I can hate that and want it in the same breath. I have been doing both since I woke up on this island and found out my life had a second set of papers.

My father tried giving me orders my whole life, and I responded by sneaking out of our brownstone at midnight to paint the alleyways in lower Manhattan. The doctors told me I would never live a functional life in the dark, and I learned how to move through a room using acoustic echoes and the pads of my fingertips.

So when Romeo Messina looks at me from across his mahogany desk and tells me the word "no," my blood pressure spikes straight through the ceiling.

I don’t give a flying fuck how he holds me tightly in his arms each night to keep the nightmares and darkness away. I. Am. My. Own. Woman. If I could roar like a lion, I would.

"I said no, Iris," Romeo repeats. His voice is deep, even, and irritatingly calm.

I stand in the center of his private office in the Sicilian villa, my bare feet planted wide on the Persian rug, my arms crossed tightly beneath my breasts. The midday sun pours through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him, warming my skin, but inside my chest, a cold, rebellious fire is crackling.

"You promised we were going to the shooting range on the north cliffs today," I remind him, recalling that promise made last week in the night under our covers. I tilt my chin up so my dark sunglasses point directly at his face. "You said Tony calibrated the grips on my Glock yesterday. Sofia is already wearing her field vest, and I have been waiting for two hours."

The soft scuff of pen on parchment continues. Romeo doesn't even look up from his ledgers.