Chapter 33
The silence of the Throne Room, usually my sanctuary, had been shattered. Not by a bomb, not by a gunshot, but by the rhythmic, terrifying click-clack of stiletto heels on polished concrete.
I sat frozen in the black leather chair. My hand, which had drifted toward the gun holstered beneath my jacket, stalled in mid-air.
It wasn't a threat. It was worse.
It was a memory.
The woman standing in the center of the room, illuminated by the harsh overhead track lighting, was a phantom I had exorcised. A ghost I had buried under layers of whiskey, violence, and ink removal lasers.
It had been fourteen years since we last met. Fourteen years since she looked at me with those doe eyes and promised me the world. Fourteen years of a war that I thought I had finally won by surviving her absence.
And now, she was here.
She stood tall—five-foot-eight of pure, weaponized femininity.
The red dress she wore was a second skin, a vibrant slash of crimson against the gray brutality of my headquarters.
It clung to the curve of her hips—hips that swayed with a predatory rhythm I knew better than the beating of my own heart.
It dipped low, revealing the slope of her breasts, skin that glowed like polished bronze.
She smiled.
It wasn't Aleesha's smile. It wasn't a crooked, gummy, "I drew a smiley face on your chest" grin.
It was a smile that knew secrets. It was a smile that promised ruin.
"Hello, Gabriel," she purred.
My throat constricted. My vocal cords paralyzed. I couldn't formulate a word. I couldn't command her to leave. I couldn't order my guards to shoot her.
I could only watch.
She began to walk toward me.
Click. Clack. Click. Clack.
Each step was a hammer blow to my composure.
She moved with the grace of a viper sliding through grass. Slow. Deliberate. She knew I was watching. She knew I had to watch.
As she crossed the invisible boundary of my personal space, the air shifted.
The smell hit me.
It wasn't strawberries. It wasn't milk. It wasn't the scent of rain or cheap Hello Kitty band-aids.
It was intoxicating.
It was heavy musk, black orchids, and something sharp and metallic, like blood on gold. It was the scent of expensive sins. It was the scent I had breathed in for years, the scent that used to cling to my sheets, my clothes, my skin.
It was an addiction I thought I had kicked.
But as the molecules hit my olfactory sensors, my brain flooded with dopamine and cortisol.
I am nineteen. She is laughing, throwing her head back, her throat exposed. I kiss the pulse point. She tastes like wine.
I am twenty. We are in Paris. She is crying, begging me to forgive her. I am on my knees, weak, pathetic, forgiving her because I cannot breathe without her.
I am twenty-two. I am tattooing her name on my back. A permanent mark. A vow of servitude to a goddess who demands blood sacrifices.
I am twenty-four. I catch her. Again. The betrayal. The rage. The end.
The memories crashed over me like a tidal wave, drowning out the logic, drowning out the "Logistician" persona I had carefully crafted for my current life.
Natalia reached the dais. She climbed the small steps that separated the floor from my throne.
She stood directly in front of me. Between my spread knees.
She looked down. Her brown eyes, usually so innocent, were dark with hunger.
"You look good, Gabriel," she whispered. Her voice was smoke. "Older. Harder."
Her gaze dropped to my chest. To the black t-shirt that covered the fresh, irritated tattoo of a crooked smiley face.
She didn't know. She couldn't know that I had replaced her elegant script with the doodle of a child.
She reached out. Her hands—slender, manicured with blood-red polish—landed on the armrests of my chair.
She boxed me in.
I gripped the leather until my knuckles turned white.
She leaned in.
Her body heat radiated toward me, hotter than the storm that had raged three nights ago. She lowered her torso, bringing her face level with mine.
She tilted her head. Her lips—those luscious, pillowy lips that I had worshipped, that I had watched other men devour—hovered inches from my ear.
"Did you miss me?" she breathed.
The warm puff of air against my sensitive skin sent a jolt of electricity straight to my groin.
It was a biological reaction. It was muscle memory. My body remembered her. My body wanted to grab her hips, pull her onto my lap, and forget the last decade of pain.
I was weak.
I, Gabriel Muratori, the man who controls governments, was paralyzed by the proximity of a woman who had shattered me.
I closed my eyes, inhaling the toxic scent of her perfume. It was drowning me. It was erasing the smell of apple pie and strawberry that Aleesha had left on me.
Aleesha.
The name felt small in this room. Weak. Soft.
Natalia was fire. Aleesha was... a nightlight.
"Gabriel," Natalia whispered, her lips brushing the shell of my ear. "I'm back. I'm yours. Say the word."
My heart hammered.
Yes. The word was on the tip of my tongue. The old addiction was clawing its way out of the grave.
RIIIIIIIIIIIIING!
RIIIIIIIIIIIIING!
The sound cut through the heavy, sensual atmosphere like a chainsaw.
It wasn't a standard ringtone.
It was a ridiculous, upbeat, synthesized pop song that Aleesha had set on my phone without my permission three days ago.
"OH YEAH! IT'S A GOOD DAY! TO BE HAPPY!" the phone screamed from my pocket.
Natalia froze. She pulled back slightly, a frown marring her perfect forehead.
"What is that?" she asked, her voice losing its sultry edge for a fraction of a second.
The spell shattered.
The fog in my brain cleared instantly, replaced by the jarring reality of the noise.
Aleesha.
My hand moved. Not to Natalia's waist. Not to my gun.
To my pocket.
I grabbed the phone. I pulled it out.
The screen lit up the space between us.
A picture of Aleesha—a selfie she had taken where she was making a double peace sign and winking—filled the screen.
I stared at it.
Pink. Chaos. Noise.
It was the antidote.
Natalia looked down at the screen. Her eyes narrowed. "Who is... the Asset?"
I didn't answer her.
I didn't even look at her.
My thumb slid across the screen. Answer.
"Gabriel?" Aleesha's voice burst through the speaker, loud, breathless, and panicky. "GABBY! WHERE ARE YOU?!"
The sound of her voice—high-pitched, frantic, completely devoid of seduction—was like a bucket of ice water.
"I am working," I rasped. My voice sounded wrecked.
"Well, stop working!" she wailed. "I am at the arcade! With Eli! And we played the claw machine and I won a giant bear but it's raining again and Eli's car won't start and there are scary teenagers looking at my bear and I need you to pick me up! PLEASE!"
"Aleesha..."
"And bring the SUV! The bear is huge! It's bigger than me! HURRY! I'm cold and I want fries!"
Click.
She hung up.
Silence returned to the room. But it was different now. The tension wasn't sexual anymore. It was... logistical.
I looked at Natalia.
She was still leaning over me, her hands on the armrests, her red dress perfectly draped. She looked like a goddess of war.
But all I could hear was Aleesha's voice demanding fries.
I stood up.
Abruptly. Violently.
Natalia stumbled back, her heels clicking as she fought for balance.
"Gabriel?" she asked, her eyes wide with confusion. "Where are you going?"
I adjusted my jacket. I checked my watch.
"I have to go," I said coldly.
"Go?" She laughed, a harsh, incredulous sound. "I just got here. I flew across the ocean for you. You're leaving... for a phone call?"
I looked at her. Really looked at her.
She was beautiful. She was intoxicating. She was everything I used to want.
And if I stayed in this room for one more minute, I would fall in love with her again. I would let her destroy me again. I would let her poison seep back into my veins until I was nothing but her puppet.
I couldn't let that happen.
I needed an anchor. I needed a distraction.
"I have business," I stated, walking past her.
I didn't look back. I didn't let myself breathe in her scent again.
"Run along, Gabriel," she said calmly, the amusement audible in her tone. "It doesn't matter where you go."
I stopped at the heavy double doors.
My hand hovered over the handle.
No, I thought. I don't.
"Goodbye, Natalia," I said without turning around.
I pushed the doors open and strode out into the corridor.
I walked fast. My strides were long, eating up the distance to the elevator. My heart was pounding, not with lust, but with the desperate need to escape.
I needed to get to the arcade.
I needed to see the idiot girl with the giant bear.
I needed to see her clumsy feet and her messy hair.
I needed to be annoyed by her.
Because if I was annoyed by Aleesha, I couldn't be seduced by Natalia.
It was a tactical retreat. It was self-preservation.
I got into the SUV.
"The Arcade downtown," I ordered. "Drive fast."
As the car sped out of the underground tunnel and into the city rain, I unclenched my fists. My palms were sweating.
I was the most powerful man in the underworld, and I was fleeing my own headquarters to pick up a girl who wanted french fries.