Chapter 21
The water fell like punishment.
I'd adjusted the valve with the precision of someone adjusting a trigger: exactly forty-five degrees, the threshold where skin can still take it without blistering, but where every drop comes down meaning to hurt.
On impact, the jet seemed to split into hundreds of hot needles, seeking out the most exhausted fibers in my shoulders, driving into the flesh at my nape, hammering the muscles as if trying to beat some confession out of me.
I pressed my open palms against the black slate tiles.
The stone was rough enough to bite into my fingertips, cold enough to remind me I was a body at war.
My fingers slipped on the unscented soap, nails scraping lightly against the surface while the water bore down on my back.
Steam rose in dense waves, unhurried, transforming the shower into a chamber of white fog.
The tempered glass became shadow, a milky wall that wouldn't let the world in.
The only world in there was the sound of water and my pulse beating too loud.
I squeezed my eyes shut, as if the darkness could be a vault.
And she came.
The memory didn't come like a film—it came like flesh.
The perfect curve of her spine arching against the dark gray sheets, the fabric crumpled beneath her nails, her pale skin gleaming with sweat in the dim lamplight.
I felt again the temperature of that room—hot air trapped in the curtains, the smell of heated fabric and stale alcohol—and the texture of the valley between her breasts against my mouth.
The hot, salty taste when I licked the sweat from there, as if it were water and I were dying of thirst. The sound…
God, the sound of my name being torn from her throat as if I were killing her with pleasure.
Her tongue stumbling over Italian I didn't even remember I knew how to say out loud.
The way she locked me in with her legs, heels digging into my back, demanding more, not asking.
And the smell. Burnt vanilla, raw sex, and that something of hers that has no name because it doesn't exist in any language.
I opened my eyes suddenly.
The diffuse light of the shower slammed me back to the present.
I scrubbed my face with both hands, palms sliding over my unshaven stubble, over water that couldn't wash anything beyond the surface.
The foam ran down my wrists, slid down my forearms, mixed with the steam.
I wanted it to run inside too, to tear out what I'd let stay.
“Miscalculation,” I murmured to the drain.
My voice came out low and scratchy, swallowed by the noise of the jet. I watched the white foam spin, form a perfect whirlpool, disappear as if nothing had ever existed there. That's what I needed that night to be: a whirlpool that vanishes without a trace.
Except my brain—that traitorous son of a bitch—was already trying to rewrite the story.
Cataloging, organizing, slapping labels on it.
“Release of accumulated post-trauma tension.” Two healthy organisms in prolonged confinement.
Adrenaline from the attack still running through our veins.
Residual alcohol. Birthday. Temporary vulnerability.
Friction. Multiple orgasms. End of transaction.
I needed it to be just that.
Because if it was more, if it was real intimacy, then I was lost. A man with something to lose is a man with a target painted on his back. In my world, blind spots kill. And she was the biggest blind spot I'd ever had—the sweetest, the most obvious, the most dangerous.
I twisted my wrist brutally and shut off the valve. Silence fell—heavy, dense, sudden. Only the insistent dripping of the last drops on the slate floor remained, a wet ticking like a clock without mercy.
I grabbed the black towel from the brushed steel hook.
The terry cloth was warm from the heater.
I wrapped it around myself and dried off with violent movements, almost punishing my skin.
Shoulder. Chest. Abdomen. Back. Each pass was an attempt to erase marks that weren't there anymore but that I still felt: scratches on my back, bites on my shoulder, the ghost of her heels digging into my flesh.
Even the knots in my neck seemed to remember the weight of her hands.
I left the bathroom naked. The cold air hit my damp skin and made the hairs stand on end.
The abrupt temperature change pulled a short, involuntary, ridiculous shiver out of me.
Stepping onto the wooden floor, I felt the sole of my foot find a spot still slightly warmed by the morning light beginning to seep through the cracks in the curtains.
The house was waking up, and I wanted it to never wake.
The closet lit up on its own when I entered. White light, cold, merciless. The brightness fell on the mirror, on the steel, on the impeccable racks, and made me just another piece inside it. I began putting on the armor like someone rebuilding a fortress brick by brick.
Black Egyptian cotton boxer briefs. The fabric tightened around my waist with clean, almost anesthetic firmness.
Starched white shirt. Stiff collar that grazed my throat like a warning. French cuffs. Matte silver cufflinks with C.V. engraved in tiny lowercase letters. The click of the metal closing made my brain crave the order.
Dark gray tailored trousers, impeccable cut. The fabric settled on my legs in exactly the right places, allowing no slack. Vest in the same shade, buttoned to the second-to-last button, tightening around my torso like a hug that doesn't ask permission.
The aged brown leather shoulder holster went on over it all like a physical reminder of who I was. The familiar weight of the Sig Sauer pressed under my left arm. The cold metal touched my skin and brought me back to center.
Navy blue silk tie. Perfect Windsor knot, tight enough to remind me I was breathing, but controlled. I tightened the knot more than necessary. The silk bit into my throat. I deserved a mark that hurt from within.
Each piece was another layer of control restored.
When I finished, I stopped before the full-length mirror.
I adjusted the thin-framed glasses on my nose, aligned the collar, ran my hand back through my hair until the line was smooth.
The man staring back at me was the Consigliere.
Impeccable. Untouchable. A face that gave nothing away.
The other man—the one who'd completely lost his head on the kitchen island, who'd torn a silk dress with his teeth, who'd begged in Italian while inside her—had been filed in a folder marked “never open.”
I stepped out of the closet.
And stopped at the bedroom door.
The bed was a battlefield. Dark gray sheets twisted like ropes after a struggle; pillows thrown on the floor; comforter hanging haphazardly, sliding down the side of the bed like a fallen flag.
Morning light slanted in, golden, making dust motes dance slowly above the chaos, indifferent to the night's war.
In the center of it all, Solaia slept on her stomach, one arm dangling off the bed as if she'd given up reaching for something.
Black hair spread in messy waves over the white pillow—a contrast that cut right through me.
The comforter covered only half her body: the curve of her waist, her hip.
Her delicate shoulder and one long bent leg lay exposed to the light.
There were marks. Faint purple bruises, fingerprint impressions on the inside of her pale thigh. My marks.
My stomach clenched into a dry knot, so tight it almost hurt. It wasn't guilt. It wasn't pride. It was something more primitive, more base.
Possession.
A feeling that doesn't fit my work or my life. An addiction that kills better men than me.
I tightened my tie until the silk bit a little deeper and left without a sound. I closed the door with exaggerated care, as if any noise might wake not just her, but the version of me I'd tried to lock away.
The kitchen was flooded with the cruel light of a Chicago morning.
Winter sun poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows, wounded white, reflecting off Lake Michigan below as if the world out there were still normal.
The wood floor was cold under my shoes. The air had that expensive apartment smell that's never just “air”: a faint note of neutral cleaning products, steel, old coffee, and the ghost of her perfume hiding in some corner.
I went straight to the coffee machine—the professional Jura that cost more than a car.
I opened the compartment with my thumb, dropped in the Ristretto capsule, snapped it shut.
Pressed the button. The grinder growled first, then the steam hissed, and the strong, bitter aroma began spreading like a command.
I breathed deep, trying to replace her scent with caffeine.
I grabbed the tablet from the island. The screen lit up with reports.
Nikolai Kovacs. Distribution routes along I-94.
Port security reports. I scanned the lines and realized none of it was sinking in.
My traitorous mind was elsewhere, replaying the sound she made when she came for the third time, on her side, my teeth sunk into the back of her neck.
“Good morning.”
Her voice came out hoarse, sleepy, lazy—as if she hadn't crossed any forbidden boundary with me.
My entire body went rigid. I didn't turn right away. I grabbed the hot cup, let it burn my fingers on purpose. The pain was clean. I took a long sip that scalded my tongue and throat. Used the burning as an anchor.
“Good morning,” I replied, voice neutral. Eyes fixed on the screen. “Painkillers in the cabinet to the right of the fridge, if you need them.”
I heard bare feet on the wood floor. Light steps, almost silent. Except every footfall echoed inside my chest like a gunshot.
“No hangover today,” she said, closer now. “Just… hunger.”
The word brushed against something in me I didn't want to name.
Only then did I turn.
And the air left my lungs.