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"Questa nostra cosa," Romeo rumbles, lifting his glass of wine with his free hand.

The capos raise their glasses in unison, murmuring the sacred words, sealing our reign over the island.

And as the meeting proceeds, Romeo's hand never leaves my thigh, marking me as his queen in front of the entire underworld.

EIGHT

ROMEO

The bass in Club Tartaro hits like a rhythmic, bone-rattling pulse vibrating through the reinforced concrete floor of the Catania basement.

The air is saturated with dry ice, sweat, high-grade cocaine, and expensive perfume. Laser strobes cut through the smoky darkness in violent flashes of emerald green and blood red, turning the crowd of writhing bodies into fractured silhouettes.

This club belongs to the Santoro brothers, two mid-level Calabrian distributors who think owning three waterfront warehouses and a dozen street corners gives them the right to look at me sideways. They pay their tribute on the first of every month, but their loyalty is thin, held together only by the fear of what my soldiers do to people who step out of line.

Tonight, I don't give a fuck about their loyalty.

I sit in the elevated VIP lounge overlooking the crowded dance floor, leaning back into the black velvet upholstery of the curved booth. My arm stretches along the back of the banquette, my suit jacket discarded, my black dress shirt unbuttoned to mid-chest. In my right hand, a glass of twenty-year Macallan, sits untouched on the low brass table beside a crystal ashtray and a loaded Kimber forty-five.

Enzo stands five feet behind my left shoulder, his hands folded over his belt, scanning the room with flat, dead eyes. Tony is stationed at the bottom of the private stairs, ensuring no one climbs into our section without an invitation signed in blood.

Sofia lies on the raised platform beneath my boots. She wears her sleek black tactical vest, her ears twitching with every spike of sound, completely indifferent to the hundred drunk degenerates dancing below, her yellow eyes trained on the only person who matters in this entire goddamn building.

Iris.

My wife stands in the dead center of the pulsing dance floor, fifty feet away from my booth.

She wore the black dress I laid out on our bed this evening: sheer lace over a silk slip that stops at mid-thigh, backless down to her tailbone, leaving every inch of her pale, freckled skin exposed to the flashing strobe lights. Her wild red curls are loose around her bare shoulders, tossing with every snap of her hips. Her sunglasses are off; her face is completely bare, the delicate silver scars around her eyes catching the violet strobes like diamond dust.

She isn't hiding from anyone tonight.

She is dancing.

It started as defiance. After the meeting in Castelmola, after she sat on my lap and squeezed fifteen percent out of Don Russo's greasy hide, she looked at me with those cloudy green eyes and told me she wanted loud music, strong alcohol, and a room full of noise to wash the smell of damp cellars out of her head.

Now, she is moving with a sensual rhythm that has half the men on the floor staring at her like starving wolves.

Her hands rise into the air, her fingers curling to the beat of an electronic remix that pulses through the subwoofers. Her hips sway in hypnotic, fluid rolls, her bare back arching, her breasts straining against the black lace. She moves by touch and sound, feeling the vibrations through the soles of her stilettos, completely lost in the freedom of her own skin.

Every muscle in my body is coiled so tight my teeth ache from grinding together.

My cock is heavy, rock hard, straining against the front of my tailored trousers until it hurts. Watching her move like that, watching other men's eyes track the bare line of her spine, makes a violent, red-hot possessiveness roar through my blood like kerosene on an open flame.

I want to drag her off that floor by her hair. I want to throw her across the leather table in this booth, shove that lace dress up to her neck, and fuck her until she can't scream anything but my name over the music.

Beside me, a man approaches the booth.

Matteo Santoro, the younger of the Calabrian brothers, approaches the booth dressed in a flashy velvet blazer, with his chest bare beneath gold chains and his eyes glassy from sniffing his own supply in the back rooms.

"Don Messina," Matteo shouts over the music, bowing with exaggerated deference as he steps onto the platform. He glances past Enzo, his gaze locking onto the dance floor, zeroing straight in on Iris. A slimy, arrogant grin stretches across his greasy mouth. "I see you brought a guest tonight. The little Irish girl who came in with your convoy. Who is she? A cousin? A little gift from the docks?"

Enzo's hand shifts toward his holster behind me.

I raise one finger, freezing Enzo in place.

I take a slow sip of my scotch, the amber liquid burning down my throat, not taking my eyes off Iris for a single fraction of a second.

"You like her, Matteo?" I ask, my voice a soft, lethal whisper that somehow slices through the deafening bass.