Chapter Twenty-Six
Lily
When I wake up, I am alone. As usual. The silence is heavy, stretching into every corner of the room.
I stare at the ceiling for a long time before I sit up, my body feeling like it’s made of lead.
My throat is raw, my eyes puffy and sore from all the tears I cried into Damiano’s chest the night before. I don’t even remember falling asleep.
Does Damiano ever sleep? Or does he sleep…elsewhere? Perhaps with someone meaningful? The thought makes my heart clench painfully in my chest. Could I get any more miserable?
I force myself out of bed and shuffle to the bathroom, rinsing the sticky ache of sleep from my face. I brush my teeth, trying to scrub away the sour taste of grief and helplessness. The mirror reflects a stranger, vulnerable, undone. Not me.
I walk back into the bedroom and automatically reach for one of Damiano’s shirts.
I’d started wearing them out of defiance, hoping it would annoy him.
But now? The soft cotton feels like a second skin, and somewhere along the way, it became a comfort.
They smell like him, citrus and cedarwood, and I hate that it calms me.
That I feel safer wrapped in something that belongs to him.
Worse, I think he likes seeing me in them.
I’ve caught that look in his eyes, quiet, possessive, almost reverent.
And each time, a part of me wanted to curl into it, to be wanted like that.
I pick up my phone from the bedside table and head to the door.
I pause at the door, resting my forehead against the cool wood.
What the hell am I doing? Letting him seep into my skin.
Letting his touch tangle with my thoughts.
Letting him unmake me one gentle caress at a time.
He’s a storm. A beautiful, dangerous storm.
And I’m the idiot standing in the middle of it with my arms wide open.
I have to go. I have to leave before there’s nothing left of me to protect.
Before I give him everything, my mind, my soul… my heart.
If I haven’t already.
This time, I won’t hesitate. No more waiting for the right moment. I will get away. And until then, I will guard whatever pieces of myself I still have left.
Squaring my shoulders, I open the door and step into the hallway, my heart steeled even if it’s already half broken. The living room is empty, as are the other rooms. The silence is oppressive. I try the front door and find it locked. Of course.
I have no more luck with the biometric lock. Suddenly my phone rings in my hand. I see the caller ID—Dark.
“Hello?” I say tentatively.
“There is breakfast on the kitchen counter, Rosa had to go out for a few hours.”
Well, hello to you too.
“A guard will be here in a few. Get dressed in something more appropriate!” he snarls before hanging up.
I am so dumbstruck I don’t immediately register that he knows what I am wearing. That jerk has cameras in the condo! I look around but I can’t see any so I give the one-finger salute in a general direction before stomping into the bedroom to get dressed.
* * * *
Damiano
The room is a fucking pressure cooker.
Voices explode all around the long mahogany table, a wall of curses and accusations overlapping in a storm of testosterone and fury.
Men who run entire districts like kings are now shouting like street dogs.
I let it continue for a few seconds, let the panic stew.
Then I slam my fist down on the table hard enough to make the crystal glasses jump.
Silence snaps into place.
My gaze sweeps over the room like a blade, over the nine men, each the face of a family with enough power to start a war. They’re all staring back, some fuming, some pale, all rattled. I let the tension hang there, let them feel it in their bones.
“I called you here,” I say slowly, my voice low and lethal, “because we have a situation. And it just became a problem.” They shift, restless. I watch every flinch.
“A human trafficking ring,” I continue. “Right under our noses. Operating on our streets. Using our people.” More swearing erupts, but no one dares to raise their voice again.
“How long has this been happening?” someone mutters.
“As far as we know, two months,” I say. “Could be longer. We don’t have proof…yet.”
“How many?” another voice asks quietly.
I grit my teeth. “Unknown. People disappear every day in Boston. But four of the missing have verified ties to the Families. Low-profile workers so far, fringe connections. Until now.”
A thick pause settles over the table. “Only women?” someone else says, voice tight.
“Yes.” My jaw tics. “Young women. Early twenties to thirties. All gone without a trace.”
The silence that follows is colder than a morgue.
“And the last one,” I add, “worked for Matteo directly. They’re getting bold.”
“Too bold,” Luc mutters.
“What do you propose?” asks a grizzled voice near the end of the table. “How do we protect our people?”
“We keep our mouths shut. For now. If this leaks, we’ve got panic in the streets, and they’ll vanish like ghosts.
Tell your women to stay in at night, and don’t let them go anywhere alone.
Say whatever the hell you want to make it stick.
We’re investigating. And if any of you see or hear anything, your first call is to me, Lucas or Matteo. ”
Everyone nods.
Everyone except him. Gian fucking Mancini.
He leans back in his chair with the smugness of a man who’s been waiting for his moment.
“You’re saying this has been happening for months, and you only tell us now?”
My eyes lock onto him. Cold. Unblinking. “As I said, we didn’t connect the dots until recently. We didn’t bring this here.” My voice drops. “But now that it’s here, we’ll end it.”
Gian tilts his head, lips curling. “Or maybe you did know, and you’re too weak to deal with it yourself. Maybe it’s time we start thinking about…alternative leadership.”
The air goes razor-sharp. Even the walls seem to hold their breath.
I lean forward, smile slow and dangerous. “Is that your way of nominating yourself?”
He shrugs, casual. “I’m just saying, maybe it’s time for fresh blood.”
I laugh, quiet and sharp, the sound of a predator right before the kill.
I shake my head, voice turning ice-cold.
“I’m going to let that slide. Once. Chalk it up to your shock.
But you challenge me again in front of these men, and I’ll deal with you the way my family’s always handled traitors.
You’ll leave this world in pieces even your mother can’t identify. ”
No one moves. Gian’s face is pale now. Good.
I stand and let my voice ring across the room like a hammer.
“Don’t forget who holds the fucking leash around here.
You all owe your power to the alliances my family built.
Don’t mistake my transparency for weakness.
I brought this to you because it affects all of us.
But make no mistake—if any of you cross me, you become the next problem I solve. ”
No one argues. No one breathes. “You’re dismissed.”
The chairs scrape back one by one as the leaders file out, silent and subdued. Gian meets my eyes once more before leaving, but there’s no fire left in his gaze. Good. Fire gets people burned.
Luc stays behind with Teo. I get up to look out through the window, wanting to punch something.
“Well,” Luc drawls. “That went well.”
I rub a hand over my face. “Expected nothing less.” I turn back and lock eyes with my enforcer. “Teo, got anything from the letter?”
“Nothing. The paper is not distinctive enough—it could have been torn from any notebook. The ink comes from a ballpoint, you can find a dime a dozen. The writing style gave nothing away either. The fuckers are careful.”
“Goddamnit,” I mutter. Another dead end.
Luc crosses his arms. “They’ll slip up eventually.”
“Yeah,” I say darkly. “But how many more girls will vanish before they do?”
Or worse…
‘…before something precious is taken from you.’
* * * *
When I finally step into the condo, it is well past midnight. My body is numb from exhaustion, but my mind is still thrumming, wired from hours of staring at screens and chasing ghosts that keep slipping through our fingers.
Every night this week has ended the same way—back at HQ, rewinding surveillance footage from the street outside Anastasia’s building, frame by frame. Watching her walk in alone at dawn after her shift. Watching nothing at all afterward. Because she never came out.
The lobby cameras had gone dark for exactly thirty minutes the night before we went to check on her. Just enough time for someone to make a woman disappear.
Teo’s tearing his hair out trying to retrieve that missing half hour of footage. Luc combed through her client list and found jack shit. We’re chasing shadows. And in the silence between clues, all I can hear is the echo of that warning.
‘…before something precious is taken from you.’
I lock the front door behind me and double-check the alarm.
I take no chances, not with her under this roof.
Then I stride toward the bedroom. Our bedroom, where my flower is sleeping.
I can’t describe the feeling that surges through me, all I know is that it is raw and burning, like a visceral hunger only she can alleviate.
I have been keeping my distance for the last few days. She needed space, so I gave her space. But fuck, it was killing me not to see her or touch her every second of every hour. She is in danger, being near me. But I can’t fucking let her go. Selfishly, I want her. No, I need her.
So I keep her, even if it means I can have her only during the hours of the night where we stay hidden in the shadows.
I pause at the bedroom door, taking in the room.
Her sleeping form is ethereal under the moonlight seeping in through the windows.
Her skin is milky pale, her hair a dark halo on the pillow.
She is a heavy sleeper and never hears me when I sneak into the room in the middle of the night.
She never wakes either when I get up in the early morning to head to the home gym and get ready for the day.
I strip and step into the shower, washing off the day—the rage, the tension, the failure.
Steam coils around me, scalding and unforgiving, but it doesn’t burn half as much as the ache clawing at my chest. When I slide under the sheets, my skin still damp, I am already hard from the scent of her—faint shampoo, her body wash, something that is entirely her.
As if on instinct, her small body moves closer to mine and I let out a groan when her thigh grazes my hardening cock.
I pull her against me, her back nestled to my front, and brush her hair gently from her neck, baring the curve of her throat.
Then I press my mouth there, leaving open-mouthed, hot kisses, grazing her delicate skin with my tongue and lips and a hunger I can’t contain.
I taste her, dragging my mouth slowly along her skin, and she moans softly in her sleep, the sound wrecking me more than anything else in this fucked-up world.
Even in sleep she is so responsive to me, as if every fiber of our beings is attuned to each other.
God, her scent. Her warmth. She undoes me without even waking.
I let my hand glide south over her tank top to her panties, and softly caress her pussy through the fabric until I feel her wetness seep through to my fingers.
My heart hammers in my chest. I want to rip the damn clothes off of her and pound into her like a savage.
But I force myself to take things slow. I slide my other hand under her top to caress her tits.
Her nipples are hard pebbles under my fingers and she moans again, writhing under my touch.
She begins to rouse. “Dark?” Her sleepy murmur makes every cell of my body vibrate with the need to possess her.
I undress her, all but tearing the clothes off of her.
When she is bared to me like the most precious of offerings, I trail kisses down her body until I am hovering over her pussy. I can smell her arousal.
Fuck. I will die if I don’t taste her. Now.
I part her lips with my fingers and begin to gently circle her clit with my tongue.
Her moans are hoarse and her hands grip my hair almost painfully.
That is all I need as encouragement so I feast on her, making her squirm and moan.
I alternate soft laps of my tongue with hungry sucks and nips and soft blows.
“Oh God, Dark.”
I suck her clit and her moans grow more urgent.
I know she is close. I slip two fingers inside her, matching the rhythm of the movements to the licks of my tongue.
Her pussy starts to pulse around my fingers so I graze my teeth over her clit and she explodes.
I hold her by her thighs and keep eating her pussy like a starved man until her cries become pants and she begs me to stop.
I move up the bed and crush my lips against hers until she submits and lets me in.
I dart my tongue into her mouth and let her taste her arousal.
She kisses me back hungrily, tangling her tongue with mine until I can’t take it anymore.
I push her thighs apart and position myself at her entrance and I slam into her in a single forceful thrust.
“Fuck, so wet. So tight.” I draw almost all the way out and slam back in, groaning from the sensation of her pussy gripping my cock.
Her head is thrown back and I fist her hair to keep her there while I suck and nibble on her throat.
Her hoarse whimpers and moans are music to my ear.
My thrusts become erratic. I am overcome with the need to fill her, to pump her full of my cum and claim her as mine for the world to see.
She is gripping my biceps and her nails dig into my skin.
I am about to come. My spine tingles and my balls are drawn tight.
I skim my hand over her down to her pussy and stroke her, desperate for her to come again.
“Come for me, love,” I all but beg. And she does. Her pussy convulses around my cock and she screams my name, sending me right over the edge with her. I slam in as deep as I can with a guttural growl and my cum shoots into her in hot spurts.
When our breathing has slowed and our heart rates are less erratic, I stand up and get a damp washcloth to clean her. Then I scoop her up into my arms so she is flush against me and kiss her temple. “Sleep now, little flower.”