Chapter 5
FIVE
The heat finally breaks on the third day, sometime in the gray hours before dawn.
I wake up clearheaded for the first time in seventy-two hours. I’m exhausted down to my marrow, and sore in places I didn’t know could be sore.
I’m still in Enzo’s bed, with his arm draped across my waist. But the desperate, clawing need that’s been driving me out of my mind is gone.
My body is finally, mercifully quiet, and for the first time in three years, I can smell myself properly; my natural omega scent I’d suppressed for many years. But threaded through it now is cedar and smoke. Enzo.
I smell like I belong to him.
The thought should make me sick, but it doesn’t. Which is oddly… weird. Wrong.
I mean, it’s completely fucked up that I’m lying here breathing in cedar and smoke mixed with my own scent and thinking it smells… complete. Like puzzle pieces that weren’t supposed to fit but somehow do.
I should leave.
Which I try to, but Enzo’s arm is pinning me in place. Our legs are tangled together, his thigh wedged between mine, pressing against parts of me that are still swollen and sensitive. My back is flush against his chest, and I can feel every slow breath he takes.
His hold tightens when I try to shift, fingers digging into my hip.
“Don’t.”
“The heat’s over.”
“I know.” He pulls me closer, eliminating the millimeter of space I’d managed to create. His morning wood presses against my ass, and the pressure sends a traitorous spark of heat through my belly. “Stay anyway.”
“Why?”
“We need to talk.” His thumb traces slow circles, and my body naturally leans into the touch. “And because if you try to leave right now, I’ll have to stop you, and I’d rather not do that by force.”
There it is. The cold water I needed.
The reminder of what he is. Of what this actually is.
I’m not his lover. Not his partner. Not anything close to an equal. I’m a threat he’s neutralized through my unfortunate circumstance, that's all.
“What do you want?”
His hand slides from my hip to my stomach, his palm spreading wide over my abdomen. “Breakfast first. Then we talk about your brother and Viktor. And what happens next.”
His lips brush the back of my neck, and I bite down on my bottom lip to stop a whimper from escaping.
I don’t know what possesses me to agree. Maybe exhaustion or the fact that I can barely feel my legs, but I hear myself say, “Fine. Breakfast. Then we talk.”
“Good.”
He doesn’t let go of me. If anything, he pulls me more firmly against him, then noses the line of my neck, inhaling deeply. I feel him smile against my skin.
“And Luca?”
“What?”
“What happened between us—” He pauses, and I feel his jaw tighten against my shoulder. “I’m not going to apologize for it.”
I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean or what I’m supposed to feel. Relief? Anger? Or the horrifying urge to turn around in his arms and kiss him?
Fuck. I don’t know.
So I don’t say anything at all. I just lie there in his arms, trying to figure out how the hell I’m supposed to kill a man my body has already accepted and why I’m slowly starting to believe he may have had nothing to do with Marco’s death.
And just like that, a week passes. Seven days since my heat broke. Ten days since that dinner when I should have put a bullet in Enzo Valerio.
Instead, I’m in his bed. Like I have been every night since.
I tell myself I’ll leave in the morning, but every morning I wake tangled in him again.
He brings me coffee and lingers while I freshen up.
We eat breakfast together before he disappears into his study, only to reappear hours later.
Some days he goes to Eclipse, but more often he’s here. With me. Too much with me.
Each day I stay feels like a betrayal to Marco, and to myself. And yet—
No. I don’t want to think about it. Don’t want to examine too closely why I haven’t tried harder to leave, or why his scent makes something in me settle instead of revolt, or why I’ve stopped flinching when he reaches for me.
What the fuck is wrong with me? I swear the bastard has done something to fuck me up.
I sit up slowly, making a mental note of the aches in my body.
Most of the heat-soreness has faded, replaced by the general stiffness of someone who’s been living a strange kind of house arrest for a week.
Because that’s what this is, isn’t it? Captivity dressed up in expensive sheets and gentle touches.
A gilded cage with a monster who fucks like a god and looks at me like I’m something precious.
“You’re not leaving,” Enzo had said that first morning after my heat broke. “Your cycle is unstable. What if your heat triggers again? Your body could go into shock before you make it to a hospital.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“I’m sure you can.” His hand had curved around my waist, possessive even then. “But I’d rather not take that chance.”
I should have insisted harder.
But the truth is—and I hate admitting this even to myself—a part of me didn’t want to leave.
The bedroom door opens. Enzo walks in carrying two mugs, and the domestic familiarity of it hits me harder than it should. He’s already dressed for the day in navy slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Hair still damp from a shower I wasn’t invited to.
Not that I want to be invited. Obviously.
“Coffee.” He hands me one of the mugs. “Black, two sugars.”
The fact that he knows how I take my coffee feels more intimate than anything we did during my heat.
Our fingers brush as I take the mug.
“Thanks.” I take a quick sip to hide how quick the brief contact made my pulse jump.
He sits on the edge of the bed, and I get hit with that cedar-and-smoke scent that’s become as familiar as my own. “How’d you sleep?”
“Just fine.”
A lie. I woke up three times from dreams that felt like nightmares.
In the first one, Marco was alive and disappointed in me, then the next, I was trapped in a sterile white room, hospital gown hanging off my shoulders while Sokolov's laughter echoed off the walls. I’d jolted awake in a cold sweat, heart pounding.
And finally, the one that unsettles me the most, I’d dreamt of Enzo’s hands on me and his mouth whispering promises I shouldn’t believe.
He pinches my cheek. “Liar.” But he doesn’t push. He takes a sip of his coffee and studies me with those dark eyes. “I need you to look at something today.”
“More security footage?”
“Files. Viktor’s operation is bigger than I thought.” He sets his mug on the nightstand. “And you’re not going back to Eclipse.”
I blink. “What?”
“It’s not safe. I received a tip from Viktor’s inner circle. He suspects I’m investigating him and assumes that it had something to do with the hiring of the new security analyst.” I see a muscle tick in his jaw. “So, you’ll work from here. Remotely.”
“You can’t just—” I stop myself. Yes, he can. He absolutely can. He runs the organization, he can restrict my access, and after what happened between us, he apparently thinks he owns me too.
“I’m a prisoner, then.”
“You’re being protected.”
“Same thing.”
“No.” He reaches out, curling his fingers around my wrist. “A prisoner would be in a cell in my basement. You have full run of the house and the grounds. My men have been instructed to accommodate any request you make.”
“Except leaving.”
“Except that.” A smile curves his lips, transforming his face from coldly beautiful to devastatingly handsome. “For the time being.”
I open my mouth to argue, then shut it again.
We stare at each other, and I know I should pull away. But his thumb is rubbing slow circles on the inside of my wrist, right over my pulse point, and the gentle touch is short-circuiting my ability to think.
“Why does it matter if something happens to me?”
Something fierce and possessive crosses his face, and his thumb stills on my pulse. “Because it does.”
He stands, releasing my wrist, and I feel the loss immediately.
“Get dressed and meet me in my study in twenty minutes. I’ll show you what we’re dealing with.”
He’s gone before I can respond, taking his coffee and leaving me staring after him, confused and frustrated. Thank fuck for the sheets bunched in my lap. At least he didn’t see the hard-on his little wrist massage gave me.
His study is on the first floor, tucked away in a wing I haven’t explored yet.
Dark wood, leather furniture, windows overlooking the grounds.
Exactly what I’d expect from a man like him.
But it’s the organized chaos that surprises me.
Files everywhere, stacked in precarious towers.
A laptop open on the desk, three monitors showing what looks like financial records and security footage.
Papers covered in handwritten notes, coffee mugs that suggest he runs on those frequently when he’s here.
It’s a complete opposite of his pristine office at Eclipse.
Enzo is standing behind the desk when I walk in, and he doesn’t look up immediately. His fingers continue moving across the keyboard, and I take the moment to watch him.
He looks tired. More tired than I’ve seen him, with tension in his shoulders I’d missed earlier.
Good, the vindictive part of me thinks. He should suffer. But mostly I just feel… complicated.
He looks up then, and our eyes lock across the distance. I won’t call the smile he tosses my way sexy, but my body apparently missed that memo.
“Sit.” He gestures to a chair. “I’m pulling up the files now.”
I sit. The chair is more comfortable than I expected. One of the monitors flickers, and suddenly I’m looking at spreadsheets. Lots of them.
“This is two years of Viktor’s activity,” Enzo says, moving to stand beside me. “Shipments that went missing, inventory discrepancies, money that disappeared from accounts only he and I had access to.”
I lean forward, scanning the numbers. My analyst brain kicks in despite myself, parsing the data, looking for patterns. It’s extensive. Far more than I’d realized from my own digging.