Chapter 4
Santi
Metal clicks cold and sharp in the freezing air. The slide of the Glock locks into place. My finger rests indexed along the frame, ready but disciplined. The mountain ridge feels still beneath the brutal, shrieking wind tearing through the ancient pines.
Massive depressions mar the pristine snow directly in our path.
The tracks are fresh. Three inches across, deep claws biting into the icy crust. Gray wolves.
A hunting pack. The edges of the prints are still crumbling, which means the beasts are close.
They are tracking the scent of blood from the pilot's head wound. They are hunting us.
Reese stands still behind me. Her heat radiates against my spine through the layers of my overcoat.
She remains perfectly silent. Her competence is a weight, pressing into the darkest, most violently guarded corners of my mind.
For twenty years, I existed in a state of silent observation.
Dominic carried the rage of our parents' murders.
Matteo carried the grief in his kitchen.
Dante carried the trauma in his violent fists. I carried nothing. I simply watched.
Now, staring at the fresh wolf tracks in the snow, the stillness fractures.
Possession locks my spine rigid.
This stubborn, magnificent woman refuses to break. I will put a round through every skull in this forest before a single claw reaches her.
"Step exactly in my footprints," I command. My voice is a low, jagged rasp. It does not sound like the controlled Santi Costa who boarded her helicopter yesterday. It sounds like a man stripped of his humanity.
"I copy," Reese says. No trembling. Just pure survival instinct.
The sky above us turns the color of bruised iron.
The secondary storm front Dominic's meteorologists warned about is hitting earlier than predicted.
The wind doubles in a single gust. A wall of blinding white snow slams into the mountain, erasing the horizon, the trees, everything beyond the immediate perimeter.
The temperature drops fifteen degrees in a matter of minutes.
The air becomes a physical weapon, slicing through exposed skin like shards.
We cannot reach the abandoned ranger station today. The ten-mile trek is a death sentence in this whiteout. We need immediate cover.
I pivot. My body automatically angles to shield her from the brunt of the gale. The blizzard lashes at my face, but I barely register the sting. Every sense I have is locked on Reese. The boundary between us is dissolving into nothing.
"North face of the ridge," I bark over the howling gale. I grab the strap of the survival bag, hauling it over my shoulder. "There is a rock formation. Natural windbreak. We move now."
She nods once. A streak of dried blood mars her left temple. My mouth tightens. The urge to pull her against me is brutal, but we do not have the luxury of stillness.
I forge ahead. The snow is waist-deep now.
Every step is a brutal, calculated expenditure of kinetic energy.
My thighs burn. My lungs ache with the sub-zero air.
None of it matters. My only objective is her survival.
I break the trail, stomping down the deep drifts, clearing a path for her boots.
She follows right behind me, using my wake to conserve her own heat.
The hike is a grueling descent into pure physical endurance.
The forest transforms into a hostile, alien landscape.
Twisted branches whip at my face. The snow blinds my vision.
I navigate on base instinct and the steady sound of her breathing at my back.
She keeps pace without complaint. Every time I glance over my shoulder, she is locked onto me, burning with that same fierce, unsentimental determination.
She survives without me. She chooses to survive with me.
My jaw tightens. By the time I understand the pressure building in me, it has already changed everything.
A sheer granite cliff face looms out of the swirling whiteout. An overhang of rock juts out over a dense grove of dead spruce trees. It is a natural fortress against the wind.
"Here," I announce, dropping the survival bag onto the snowpack under the overhang. The wind is cut to a low moan against the rock wall.
Reese drops to her knees immediately, her breath puffing in ragged white clouds. She does not rest. She grabs a thick, snapped pine bough and starts sweeping the snow away from the base of the rock. Her practicality makes my chest tighten. She is already assessing how to keep us alive.
"We need a windbreak wall," she says, her voice strained but steady. "The overhang stops the snow, but that crosswind will freeze us to death in our sleep. We need to build a barrier."
"I will handle the lifting. You gather the deadfall for insulation."
We work in synchronized, desperate efficiency. I leave the shelter of the rock face, wading back into the howling storm. I find heavy, rotting logs buried under the snow. I haul them back and stack them at the edge of the overhang to form a barricade. My muscles scream in protest.
The bespoke tailoring of my ruined suit pants tears against the rough bark.
The gold watch on my wrist catches the dim, gray light.
It is a relic of a dead man. The Santi Costa who watched from the margins and cataloged the family’s enemies died in that helicopter crash.
The man stacking timber in the frozen wilderness is driven by a single objective.
Reese drags peeling slabs of bark from the dead spruce trees.
We wedge the bark slabs between the logs, creating an impenetrable wall against the storm.
The makeshift shelter takes shape. A tight, triangular pocket wedged between the granite cliff and the constructed bark wall.
It is large enough for two bodies to lie side by side. Just.
Night drops like a guillotine blade. Absolute blackness. The storm rages outside, the wind screaming against our bark barricade.
Inside our tiny shelter, every breath is shared. There is no distance left between us.
I secure the final piece of bark near the entrance. The perimeter is tight. Reese moves behind me in the darkness, arranging the pine boughs into a makeshift mattress over the frozen dirt.
"The wind is shifting," she says, her voice close. Too close. "I need to patch this corner near the back—"
She steps backward.
My night vision registers the shadows half a second before her boot hits empty air.
The back of the shelter is not a solid rock corner. It is a sheer, hidden drop-off into a ravine, masked by a thin crust of blown snow.
My body moves before my conscious mind can formulate a command.
My stillness shatters.
I grip the fabric of her jacket. I yank her forward with bone-jarring force.
She gasps, her boots slipping on the icy edge.
I do not just pull her to safety. I rip her away from the void. My momentum carries us both violently forward. I slam her backward into the solid bark wall of the shelter we just built.
The impact knocks the breath from her lungs in a sharp hiss.
I crash into her. My frame blankets hers. My hands fist the collar of her jacket, anchoring her to the wall. My chest crushes her breasts. My thighs pin her hips immovably against the wall.
I do not step back.
Adrenaline boils through my veins.
She is breathing hard. Her chest heaves violently against mine.
The drop is right there. Two feet away. One wrong step and the mountain would have swallowed her. The thought of losing her—this woman I barely know—is not survivable.
"Santi," she breathes. Her voice is a tiny, ragged sound in the suffocating darkness.
I do not answer. I cannot speak. The quiet discipline I have carried for twenty years is gone.
I press closer. My hips grind flush against hers. The layers of our survival gear cannot mask the desperate, electric heat sparking between our bodies. She is soft and curved in all the places I am hard and unyielding. The contrast is a revelation.
I lower my face until my lips hover a millimeter from her ear. My breath is rough against her cold skin.
"Do not move," I command. The words leave me gravel-rough.
She does not move. She does not push me away. She does not demand personal space.
Instead, she turns her chin, exposing the long, delicate line of her neck to the darkness. It is an act of total, agonizing surrender. She trusts the man pinning her against the wall more than she trusts the mountain.
The restraint I have been holding frays hard.
I bury my face in the crook of her neck. My nose drags along the cold, sensitive skin just beneath her jaw. I inhale her. The scent registers in every nerve I own.
My hands release her collar. I grip her waist. My long fingers dig fiercely into the fabric of her jacket, memorizing the flare of her hips. She is agonizingly curved. A masterpiece of soft flesh and undeniable strength.
"You're safe," I say against her pulse point.
Reese shudders. A soft, breathless sound escapes her lips. It is not fear. It is arousal.
The sound destroys me.
I shift my stance, spreading my legs wider to bracket hers. I slide my right thigh deliberately between her legs.
She gasps, her hips jerking forward automatically.
The thick seam of my suit-clad thigh presses directly against her center. Through the canvas of her flight suit and the thermal layer beneath, I feel her body answer mine.
I grind my thigh upward. A slow, agonizing application of pressure and friction.
Reese arches her spine, pressing her hips violently against my leg. A whimpering moan tears from her. Her hands, previously trapped between our chests, fly up to grip my shoulders. Her fingers dig into my muscles with desperate strength.
We are isolated from the universe. The storm raging outside the bark walls is nothing compared to the violent need inside this shelter.
I need her bare skin.