Chapter 26 Emilio
Emilio
As we cross the Williamsburg Bridge, with the bright lights of Manhattan ahead, I get a text. My phone vibrates on the dashboard, signaling something important from my family. Three words that make my heart stop.
Kill order active.
Matteo, my twin, warns me efficiently, as he always has, keeping the Rosetti family safe for years. No need for explanation—the family has judged Mara's actions at the Plaza. Domenico has given an order based on the outcome of the gala
Next to me, Mara goes still. Her breathing remains steady, but I can sense the change. Years of surviving have taught her to handle death sentences like weather forecasts, but she tenses up.
"How long?" she asks, her voice steady with only a hint of tremor.
"Hours, maybe less," I reply calmly, taking the next exit. "Dom doesn’t believe in dragging things out."
The family's betrayal is a knife in my guts. Dom might have to die for this. I turn off the headlights and drive into an industrial area with abandoned warehouses, the kind of place where secrets stay hidden and cars vanish into shadow.
"Here," I say, stopping between two rundown buildings where loading docks shield us from view. The engine stops, and we sit in the silence that makes our heartbeats thunderous.
For a moment, we sit in the darkness, thinking about what's changed. Just hours ago, Mara was seeking acceptance. Now she's marked for death by the very people she wanted approval from.
"I failed," she whispers, her words rough. "I had Chase right there. Perfect chance. But I chose to save you from Connor's attack instead."
"You made the right choice." I turn to look at her, city lights casting gold shadows on her face. "You chose love over duty, protection over politics, me over everything else they could have offered."
"And now they want me dead for it."
"They want you dead because they don't understand real loyalty." I find her hand in the darkness. "They think you could have killed Callahan, and that I would have taken care of myself."
"And would you have? Taken care of yourself, I mean? Even a Rosetti can't see behind him. You didn't know he was coming. You would have died, right?"
I shrug. "Guess we'll never know."
Her laugh holds no humor, just bitter acceptance. "Your family will never accept me now. The woman who chose feelings over mission success."
"When they realize you saved my life, they'll come around," he says.
"If I'm not already dead.
The words hang between us. Outside, the warehouse district is quiet. Inside the car, tension builds like a furnace.
"We can't stay here," Mara says, but she doesn't move. "They'll widen the search, use traffic cameras."
"No," I agree, my thumb tracing circles on her palm, changing her breathing. "But we have a few minutes before they close in. And there's something I need you to know."
"What is it?"
"That I don't regret any of it." My free hand cups her face, feeling warmth beneath fingers that still remember Connor's blood. "Running from my family, burning every bridge, none of it matters compared to keeping you alive."
Her breath catches as she absorbs what I'm offering. Not just protection, but a devotion that defies logic.
"They marked me for death," she whispers, "and your answer is to go against your own family."
"I choose what matters over what is expected," I say, leaning closer in the tight space, drawn by the bond we've had from the start. "I choose the woman who saved my life over the organization that wants her dead for it."
"Emilio." My name on her lips is full of understanding. "We might not survive this. Family soldiers, Callahan retaliation—"
"Then we face it together." I gently trace her lower lip with my thumb. "But I won't let you die alone, and I won't live without you again. Those are the only outcomes I can't accept."
My certainty changes something in her expression. When she looks at me now, I see the woman beneath the agent, the one who's been making impossible choices alone.
"I need you," she says, the words coming from a desperate place. "Before they find us, before this ends… I need to feel you claim me one more time."
Her words awaken something deep inside me, a recognition of her call for connection in the face of danger. The scent of her desire mixes with jasmine and the lingering metallic hint of violence, creating an intoxicating blend that causes my body to react.
"Here?" I ask, though I'm already moving, my hands finding the fastenings of her dress instinctively. "In a car, surrounded by shadows?"
"Especially here." Her smile is sharp, beautiful, and undeniably mine. "I want to remember what it felt like when you claimed me while we were being hunted."
The city seems to pulse around us, alive with threat and electricity.
Mara slides over with feline grace, her thighs draped in stockings that catch the streetlamp glow, giving her legs a shimmer like the wings of a moth.
The burgundy silk she's still wearing pools at her waist as she climbs on top of me, every movement unhurried, deliberate, as if to prove we are still in control of something.
The fabric whispers as it slides along the leather of the seat, the sound barely audible above the blood pounding in my ears.
Her hands are cold and sure as she undoes my belt with muscle memory, the click of metal and rasp of zipper loud in the parked car.
She doesn't have to look down, she knows exactly how to take what she needs.
I bury my hands in her hair, pulling her mouth to mine, and taste adrenaline and floral sweetness on her lips.
This is not tenderness; it is a declaration, a stake through the heart of fear.
Her kiss is bruising, her tongue greedy.
I grip her hips, thumbs pressed into the pale hollows near her pelvic crest, feeling her pulse hammering against the fine, faint mesh of her stockings.
She moans into my mouth, needing me to know how close she is to breaking. I break away just enough to speak.
"Look at me," I command, voice rough. I need to see her eyes. I need to see the truth behind the mask.
She meets my gaze, dark irises blown wide, pupils devouring color.
She looks at me like she wants to devour me, to pull me inside her and keep me there, safe from the world hunting us.
I rip into her stockings, tearing a hole right at the crotch, my knuckles brushing against her wet panties.
Her hand snakes down and wraps around my cock, lining me up with no prelude and guiding me into her, pushing her panties aside.
The head of my cock meets silk and heat, and I nearly lose it right there.
She sinks down onto me in slow, agonizing increments, her inner walls tight and greedy, taking all of me until our hips are flush and her forehead rests against mine.
The rawness of the connection is almost too much; I grip the back of her neck, holding her still, grounding myself in the sharp scent of her skin and the thrum of her heartbeat.
"Christ, Mara." The words break from my lips as a shudder, my hands shaking as I haul her down harder onto me.
She rocks her hips in a figure-eight, using every muscle, every ounce of control she's mastered from years of discipline and denial.
The pain of the world falls away. Each roll of her body drives out another piece of my fear.
"This is all that matters," she breathes, her voice a low tremor in my ear. "Right here. You inside me. I want to remember this, even if it's the last good thing we get."
Her words set off a chain reaction in my spine.
I bite her collarbone, hard enough to leave a mark, and she gasps, a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh.
My hands move over her, greedy to memorize the topography of her body, the places where bone and flesh shift under my grip, the scars she’s tried to hide.
Outside, the cold seeps through the windows, frosting the glass and turning the world into a snow globe of streetlight and shadow. The rhythm we find is a defiance of time, a fuck-you to the universe that would see us dead before morning.
She rides me, her hands braced on my shoulders, nails digging in for purchase. Every time she drops down onto me, I meet her halfway, hips snapping up with enough force to bruise. The tension in my leg aches, an old wound fighting for attention, but I refuse to let it slow me.
I shift her slightly, angling my pelvis to find the spot inside her that makes her back arch and her breath stutter. When I hit it, her hands scramble for the ceiling, knocking loose the air freshener. She clamps around me, eyes gone wild.
"Emilio," she moans, guttural and raw, and I feel her unraveling, her control slipping away one heartbeat at a time.
I want her to come undone. I want her to forget that we are hunted. I want her to believe, for just a second, that survival is possible. So I give her everything I have, every thrust and shudder, every bitten-off curse and whispered endearment. I fuck her like it’s the last thing I’ll ever do.
She throws her head back, throat bared, and there is nothing more beautiful than her in this moment, alive, desperate, still fighting. The sight of her sends me over the edge, and I clutch her hips, pulling her down on me as I spill inside her, mind going blank and white-hot.
Our hearts beat ragged and out of sync, but slowly, the shock settles into a shared rhythm. She collapses against me, cheek pressed to my shoulder, hair damp with sweat and clinging to the curve of her jaw. We are sticky and trembling and utterly spent.
I wrap my arms around her, holding her tight as if I can physically prevent the rest of the world from intruding. There is silence in the car now, broken only by the catch and release of our breathing and the distant howl of a siren somewhere far from here.
She is the first to move, shifting slightly so our bodies are still joined but her face is inches from mine.
She studies me, searching for something—doubt, maybe, or regret.
She finds neither. I brush a strand of hair from her forehead, tucking it behind her ear with more reverence than I’ve ever shown anything in my life.
"You okay?" I ask, voice softer than I expect.
She nods, and for a moment, she looks years younger, stripped of her armor, vulnerable in a way she’s never let me see. "I didn’t want it to be goodbye sex," she whispers. "I just wanted it to be real."
I tilt her chin up and kiss her again, slower this time, letting her taste the promise beneath the desperation. "It’s not goodbye," I say against her lips. "Not until I say it is."
Outside, the night grows colder, but inside the car we are a furnace of heat and need.
She clings to me, and I to her, both unwilling to move and separate even a fraction of an inch.
The city can wait. The killers can wait.
For now, there is only us, suspended in a moment that feels like it could last forever.
The adrenaline finally burns out, leaving in its wake a bone-deep exhaustion.
She sighs into my chest, tracing idle circles on my forearm, her body lax and sated.
I memorize the weight of her, the feel of her heartbeat ticking against mine, the way she molds herself to the shape of me like there has never been anyone else.
We stay together in the darkness for a while, breathing hard, our hearts beating in unison as the night wraps around us. When reality slowly comes back, neither of us wants to let go, not wanting to break the bond that's kept us going through so much.
"We have to go," I finally say, even though everything in me wants to stay, to keep her close until the world forgets us. "The family will be closing in."