CHAPTER 24
LEON P.O.V.
I carry her out of the bathroom with deceptive ease.
Her light frame feels practically hollow against my chest, a stark, jagged contrast to the heavy violence we just ripped our way through down in the street.
I lay her out on the charcoal-colored silk sheets of the massive bed in the center of my bedroom, the slick fabric rippling and dipping under her weight.
My wet, dark dress shirt is plastered completely to my skin, cold and heavy, my muscles locked tight with a protective, almost feral instinct I can’t quite shake off.
She’s shivering slightly in the cool air of the bedroom, her eyes glassy and distant, completely blasted on the adrenaline crash of committing her first murder.
I look at her and realize she isn't just an asset anymore, she isn't just a federal badge I flipped for leverage. She’s my masterpiece.
The thought of anyone else touching her, anyone else laying eyes on the blood I just washed off her skin, makes my fucking blood boil.
I use the toe of my shoe to kick a stray, blood-stained towel into the far corner of the room so she doesn't have to look at it.
"Stay here. Don't move," I tell her, my voice dropping into that low, even cadence that usually grounds her. "You did well today, Alessia. Christ, you did well." She just stares up at me, chest rising and falling in erratic little stutters. "Just breathe for me."
"Fuck," I mutter under my breath. "Not now."
I walk over to the shadows near the floor-to-ceiling windows, keeping my back to the bed.
I hit the answer button and hold it to my ear.
Ivy’s voice comes through the speaker frantic and strained, a sharp contrast to her usual cold-blooded logistics.
She gives it to me fast. Trenton Cross has gone completely rogue.
He’s sending a black-ops FBI team to clean up the penthouse, no warrants, no backup, just a pure execution squad.
They are four minutes and fifty seconds from my front doors.
I grip the edge of the balcony railing so fucking hard the metal actually groans in my fist, my knuckles turning white against the dark steel.
The cold wind whistles through a microscopic crack in the glass right next to my face, mingling with the sound of Ivy’s panicked breathing over the line and the very distant, low rumble of an approaching helicopter.
"How many vehicles?" my voice is a ghost of a whisper.
"Three armored Suburbans," Ivy shoots back. "They’re bypassing the lobby entirely."
"Tell the street teams to stand down. Don't engage. It’s a suicide mission."
"Leon, you have less than five minutes."
"Four minutes. I heard you."
My brain turns into a violent storm of tactical maps and exit routes.
Every blueprint of this building flips through my head in a microsecond.
Trenton isn't coming for an arrest. He’s coming for a massacre.
I ask Ivy for the status of the service elevator.
She tells me it’s already been remotely cut.
The subterranean tunnel is clear, but she confirms what I already know—it’s only designed for a single occupant.
The panic hatch in the floor of my office is way too narrow for two people to move through quickly enough before Trenton’s men blow the hinges off the reinforced doors.
I have to choose. The agonizing, sickening realization hits me dead in the chest. My presence is her death sentence.
If they find Alessia with me, she’s a traitor to the bureau and they’ll put a bullet in her skull on the spot.
If she stays and looks like a victim, she might survive.
I rub my thumb aggressively over the scarred, raised skin of my knuckles, a nervous fucking habit I haven't shown to a single soul in over a decade.
"I'm not leaving her to that butcher," I grate out, my jaw aching from how hard I’m clenching my teeth.
"You have to," Ivy insists.
"If they find her fleeing with me, they’ll shoot her in the back.
" I stare out at the flickering of a streetlamp fifty stories below, tasting copper and iron in the back of my throat. I have to break her. I have to make it look like I was her monster until the very last second. It’s the only way the FBI medics won't suspect she's turned.
"Fine. Get the car ready. I'll be there. "
Ivy hangs up. The sudden silence in my ear is deafening.
I crush the burner phone in my palm. The cheap plastic cracks, the circuit board snapping in half with a sharp pop, the smell of ozone leaking from the broken battery.
I drop the ruined remains into the pocket of my discarded suit jacket on the chair.
I turn back to the bed. The cold, dead mask of the syndicate boss slides perfectly over my features, burying the panic.
I wipe a smudge of phone grease off my hand onto my dark pants before I start walking toward her.
She has to hate me enough to survive the interrogation.
But first, she has to be mine. I need to mark her so thoroughly that when Trenton’s men rip this room apart, she smells of me, looks like she belongs to me, carries my brand on her skin.
"Look at me, Alessia," I command, my voice hard. She blinks, her eyes finally snapping to my face. "Don't look away."
I unbuckle my tactical holster and let the heavy leather and steel fall to the thick rug with a dull thud.
She watches me with wide, curious eyes, sensing the sudden, violent shift in the air pressure of the room.
I climb onto the bed. My weight creates a deep valley in the expensive mattress, instantly pulling her light body toward me.
I tower over her, a massive silhouette blocking out the dim ambient light of the city.
I untuck my damp shirt, the wet buttons straining against my chest as I move.
Three minutes. I can do a lot of fucking damage with three minutes.
"You’re shaking," I say, grabbing her hips and hauling her right down the slick silk sheets until she’s pinned squarely beneath me.
I don't give a fuck about being gentle right now.
I want her to feel my size. I want her to feel my absolute desperation.
My fingers dig brutally into the soft flesh of her waist, pressing deep enough to leave immediate white imprints that will bloom into bruises by morning.
I need to sear myself into her brain so she can't even hear Trenton's voice when he's screaming at her in a holding cell later.
"I told you I was your only anchor. I meant it," I tell her, my face inches from hers. "You belong to me now. No more FBI. No more lies."
I use my sheer body weight to force her legs apart.
I don't waste a single second on foreplay.
I reach down between her thighs and find her already completely slick, her body primed and wet from the raw, sick adrenaline of the night's shootout. I roughly brush her damp auburn hair back from her face with my other hand so nothing blocks my view of her eyes. She’s so fucking soft. Christ, I don't want to leave her.
"Tell me who you belong to," I demand, my thumb pressing aggressively against her clit. "Say it."
She gasps, her hips bucking up against my hand, the frantic thud of her heart practically visible against her ribs.
I line myself up and enter her with a single, brutal thrust. She takes all of me in one hit, a shattered gasp tearing out of her lungs as I bury myself to the fucking hilt.
I grip the heavy mahogany headboard with my free hand, the thick wood actually creaking under the strain of my grip as I ground myself in the tight, scalding heat of her body.
"Fuck, Alessia," I groan, the blunt force of our bodies slamming together knocking the breath out of me. "Stay with me." Two minutes and thirty seconds. I force my brain to stop counting the clock and just feel her.
She doesn't pull away. She never pulls away.
She wraps her legs tight around my waist, her bare heels digging hard into my glutes as she pulls me even deeper.
Her desperation completely matches my own.
Her nails rake viciously down my back, catching and tearing at the damp, expensive fabric of my shirt.
"More. Please, Leon," she begs, her voice ragged. "Don't stop."
I start a relentless, punishing pace. Every aggressive snap of my hips is a loud declaration of ownership.
I’m not making love to her; I'm colonizing her.
The mattress shifts violently with every movement, sliding an inch toward the wall with a rhythmic, audible smack of skin on skin.
The heavy, thick scent of sex and panic starts to fill the cold air of the room.
This has to be the only thing she remembers when the flashbangs go off in the lobby.
"You’re mine. Remember that," I growl, driving into her so hard her shoulders slide up the sheets. "Every inch of you."
I slide my hand up from the mattress and wrap it around her throat, applying just enough firm pressure to anchor her in place.
I want her dark eyes locked completely on mine, her entire world forcefully reduced to just my face.
My thumb brushes over her rapid pulse point, feeling her blood racing under her skin like a trapped fucking bird.
If I could stay, I’d keep her pinned to this bed until she forgot her own goddamn name.
"Look at me," I order. "Don't you dare close your eyes."
I lean down, burying my face in the curve of her neck.
I bite down on her shoulder, hard enough to hurt, hard enough to leave a ring of dark purple.
I need the FBI paramedics to see the bruises.
I need them to catalog the evidence of my abuse so they never suspect she pulled that trigger willingly today.
I taste the salt of her sweat and the faint metallic tang of her earlier trauma right on her skin.
She gasps sharply, her breath hitching at the sting.