Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Maya
Iknow how to act as someone else.
It is not magic. It is work. Shoulders lower. Breathing evens. Eyes soften or sharpen depending on what the room expects. Fear becomes calculation. Anger becomes a smile. Disgust becomes interest.
I have worn names that were not mine in hotel bars, private offices, back rooms, dockside warehouses, and dining rooms where men with expensive watches discussed women the way other people discuss shipment delays.
I have flirted with criminals, laughed at jokes that made me want to draw blood, accepted drinks I didn’t drink, and let men underestimate me.
I know how to walk into the private club tonight and make Leon O’Reilly believe exactly what Stefano needs him to believe.
I know how to play the woman who survived an auction because the right dangerous man bought her before the federal raid destroyed everyone else’s plans.
I know how to look relieved. I know how to look owned.
Captivity beside Stefano Savarese is better than whatever waited for me in Leon’s hands.
What I do not know is how to do any of that with Stefano close enough to touch me.
That is the complication I keep refusing to name while I stand in front of the mirror in another dress he sent upstairs.
This one is black.
Not plain. Nothing he chooses is plain. It fits close through the hips and falls smoothly to my knees, with a slit just high enough to make walking easier and a neckline severe enough to make the whole thing worse.
There is less exposed skin than last night’s red dress, but the shape is sharper.
Colder. More expensive. A woman doesn’t wear a dress like this by accident.
Nor does a man send it unless he wants the room to understand he has taste and ownership.
I hate that it fits so perfectly, but I hate that I look good in it even more.
Erin told me so twenty minutes ago, sitting cross-legged with her dog-horse drawing in her lap. Heath didn’t say anything, but he looked at the dress, then at the guards, then at my face. Measuring the same thing he measures every time I leave him now. Whether I am coming back.
I promised him I would. Apparently, I have quit pretending I am intelligent when it comes to those children.
A knock sounds on the door.
Not Omar’s. He has a way of knocking that sounds like he is disappointed the door exists.
“Come in,” I say.
The door opens, and Stefano steps inside.
I should have known.
He pauses just past the threshold, closing the door behind him with one hand while his eyes move over me.
Slowly. Not like the men at the auction, and not even like he looked at me last night in the red dress.
This is more precise. More controlled. Worse, because nothing on his face gives away what the look does to him.
But his silence does.
It stretches too long.
I lift my chin. “If you hate it, blame yourself.”
His mouth curves faintly. “I don’t hate it.”
“Try to sound less devastated.”
“I am adjusting.”
“To what?”
“To how much trouble you’re going to cause me in that dress.”
The compliment lands before I can dodge it.
I turn toward the dresser and reach for the earrings because doing something with my hands is better than standing there while he watches me like that. “You picked it.”
“I did.”
“So any trouble caused by the dress is legally entrapment.”
“You are using that word incorrectly.”
“I’m using many words incorrectly tonight. It’s part of the act.”
He crosses the room behind me, silent on the carpet. I see him in the mirror before I feel him, which doesn’t help as much as it should. His suit is black, his shirt white, his tie dark enough to disappear beneath the jacket. No visible weapon. No unnecessary jewelry. No effort to prove power.
That makes him look more dangerous, not less.
He stops behind me and reaches for the clasp near my throat.
I go still.
“It’s crooked,” he says.
“It is not.”
“It is.”
His fingers skim the back of my neck as he adjusts the necklace I didn’t ask him to touch. The contact is quick. Barely anything. Skin against skin, the graze of his knuckle beneath the line of my hair, the heat of him at my back.
My breath catches.
Not enough for most men to notice.
Stefano notices.
His eyes lift to mine in the mirror. “Careful, Maya.”
I hate my name in his mouth. I hate that it doesn’t sound like a warning when it absolutely should.
“I know how to work undercover.”
“Yes.”
“I know how to play a role.”
“Yes.”
“I know how to let men think what I want them to think.”
His thumb rests for half a second against the pulse at the side of my neck before he steps back. “Then tonight should be simple.”
It won’t be.
He knows it.
So do I.
Omar waits near the stairs when we come down, arms crossed, expression carved out of disapproval and bad timing. His gaze moves across me once and away again with enough professionalism that I almost miss the trace of assessment.
Almost.
“Well?” I ask.
He looks pained. “You look like trouble in expensive packaging.”
“That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“It was not intended that way.”
“Still keeping it.”
Stefano passes him without slowing. “The children?”
“Settled,” Omar says. “Two men in the hall. One at the interior stair. No changes visible enough for her to complain about.”
“Too late,” I say.
Omar sighs. “Of course.”
Stefano glances at me. “You saw the second guard?”
“I saw both.”
His mouth curves. “Good.”
“Don’t sound proud. It makes me want to disappoint you.”
“That also interests me.”
Omar makes a low sound under his breath that might be a prayer if either of us believed he was that optimistic.
Outside, the nighttime air is humid and full of Miami warmth. A black car waits in the drive, engine running, driver already at the door. Stefano places his hand at the small of my back before I can step ahead of him.
The touch isn’t hard, and that is exactly the problem.
Force would be easier to hate. Stefano uses pressure instead. A controlled hand on the contour of my back, guiding without shoving, claiming without bruising. To anyone watching from the house, it looks attentive. Protective. Possessive in a polished, expensive way.
My body knows the difference, but honestly my body doesn’t care about the difference. It cares about the man with his hand on it. I slide into the car, and Stefano follows. The door shuts us into leather, dark glass, and silence.
For the first few minutes, neither of us speaks.
Miami moves beyond the tinted windows in streaks of gold and red. Palm trees. Headlights. Nightlife sharpening at the edges. The kind of city that knows how to make sin look like tourism.
Stefano sits close enough that his knee nearly touches mine.
“Rules,” he says.
I look over. “How romantic.”
“You stay close.”
“I gathered.”
“You do not scan the room like an agent looking for exits.”
“I don’t.”
“You do when you are angry.”
That is, unfortunately, true.
“You do not speak to Leon unless necessary,” he continues. “You do not react if someone refers to the auction. You do not correct details unless I give you room to do it. If I touch you, you lean in. Not away.”
“I know how undercover work functions.”
His gaze settles on me. “Tonight you aren’t undercover for the FBI.”
I wait.
His mouth barely moves. “Tonight you are under me.”
Heat flashes through me so quickly I almost miss the anger behind it.
“Careful,” I say.
“There it is.”
“What?”
“That look.”
“I have many looks.”
“That one says you are deciding where to stab me.”
“Then it’s my honest one.”
“No.” He reaches across the small space between us and brushes a wisp of hair off my shoulder. “Your honest look is worse.”
I should slap his hand away.
I do not, because we are practicing. Because the driver can see just enough in the mirror. Because every second between now and Leon matters.
Because I am better at this than my pulse suggests.
Stefano’s fingers pause against my shoulder, then fall away.
“You need to stop fighting every reaction,” he says.
“Stop giving me reactions to fight.”
His eyes darken with something that might be amusement if amusement carried a knife. “I don’t think you want that.”
I look back out the window.
The club is tucked behind a hotel that doesn’t look expensive unless a person knows what they're looking for. No sign at street level. No line. No drunk tourists spilling over the sidewalk. Just a valet stand, a private entrance, two men in black suits, and cars that cost more than most people’s homes moving through the circular drive without anyone needing directions.
The second the car stops, Stefano changes almost instantly. Whatever dangerous warmth he gives me in private disappears beneath something colder. His face settles. His eyes sharpen. The man next to me becomes the man the room knows to fear before he reaches the door.
The Don.
The driver opens my side first. I step out carefully, aware of the dress, the heels, the guards, the cameras hidden near the entrance. Before I can take a full breath, Stefano is beside me.
His hand finds my waist. Firm. Public. Unmistakable. The role locks into place.
I lean into him.
His thumb presses once against my hip. Approval or warning. With him, those things share too much blood.
“Better,” he murmurs near my ear.
“Don’t praise me.”
“Then stop earning it.”
I smile because cameras exist and because the woman I am pretending to be would smile if Stefano Savarese spoke that close to her ear.
The fact that the smile comes too easily is between me and whatever god has given up on this evening.
Inside, the club is all low light, varnished wood, dark glass, and controlled vice.
Music moves beneath the floor more than through the air, a slow pulse from another room.
Men sit in curved booths, with women draped beside them as proof of wealth.
Staff appear exactly when needed and vanish before questions can attach to them.
The room sees Stefano and adjusts.