Chapter Twenty-One
Gualtiero
Night after night, I lie awake in my bed, staring into the dark, every nerve tuned too sharp. It’s the longest I’ve gone without sex, but that isn’t the problem. I don’t crave release.
I crave her.
My body remembers Ella even when I try not to. And it reacts before my mind can catch up. The way she fit against me like she’d been shaped for it. The brush of her hair across my chest when she shifted in her sleep, soft and familiar, enough to pull me halfway under even now.
Sometimes she spooned me from behind, her fingers hooking into my waist, possessive without meaning to be. Heat pressed along my spine, her breath warm against my skin. Other nights she sprawled over me entirely, thigh thrown across mine, weight pinning me in place.
That was my favorite.
Now the bed is empty beneath me, but my body still reacts as if she were here.
Sleep comes in fragments, broken by the memory of how she felt wrapped around me.
I wake in the dark, hard and frustrated, my arousal almost painful with nowhere to go.
My hands curl into the sheets instead of around her, jaw clenched as I force myself to close my eyes again.
Fuck, I miss her.
Rhia’s burner phone is the last barrier between me and Ella, and it’s driving me insane.
She keeps it on her at all times and never leaves it behind. Her bag is always within reach, the phone most often tucked into her jacket pocket.
Frustration hums beneath my skin.
I feel like an animal straining against a leash, my patience wearing thinner by the day. The carrot dangles just out of reach, a promise and punishment all at once.
Sooner or later, something will give. It has to.
A few days later, it finally does.
I’m in a meeting with my capos, going over the logistics of the new integration, when my phone rings. Pulling it from my pocket, I see Uberto’s name on the screen. I consider letting it go to voicemail, but something inside me sharpens.
“Carry on,” I tell the room as I step outside.
Uberto doesn’t waste time. “Toto called from Heathrow Airport.”
That in itself isn’t unexpected. Rhia was scheduled to fly to London for a work meeting.
“When Miss Bannaghan arrived, he lost sight of her.”
My teeth grind together, but I stay silent.
“But he had dropped a tiny tracker into her purse earlier when he passed her, and was able to locate her again,” Uberto continues. “She disguised herself. Toto didn’t recognize her. She switched—”
“Get to the point,” I cut in, my patience gone.
“He followed her to the gate for her next flight.”
A brief pause.
“She’s in the air, headed to Canada as we speak.”
Bingo.