Chapter 9
BEA
I’m in his penthouse.
I’ve been parked on his couch for ten minutes, completely frozen. Hands useless. Eyes restless. Brain running in circles with nowhere to land.
The place is absurd. Floor-to-ceiling windows laying the city out in front of me.
Furniture that looks staged rather than lived in.
Art that makes zero sense to me but screams money.
Everything is sharp, polished, obsessively arranged like someone tried to engineer perfection and forgot to include anything human.
I’ve already done a full sweep—every corner, every surface—like if I stare hard enough, the place might give up something about him.
There’s one photo. Just one. Sitting off to the side. It’s of him, younger—late twenties maybe—next to an older man I recognize. Vincenzo. Neither of them smiling, not really, but the way they stand… There’s something there. Respect, it seems.
And that’s it. No family. No history. No warmth.
Just this carefully constructed emptiness.
What is he going to do to me?
The shower turns off.
I tense.
A door opens somewhere down the hall. Approaching footsteps. Then he walks out.
In nothing but a towel.
It hangs low on his hips. Water is still beading on his shoulders, and his hair is slicked back, darker when wet.
I stop breathing.
I’ve never seen him without a suit. Without the armor of professionalism that he wears like a second skin. The tailored jackets and crisp shirts and perfectly knotted ties that make him look like a respectable lawyer instead of what he really is.
Now—
Jesus.
He has tattoos. They cover his chest, his arms, his ribs. Black ink against tan skin, intricate patterns that I recognize from case files. Mafia symbols. Marks of rank. Some that might represent kills, if the research I’ve done is accurate.
A scar runs along his left side. Another near his collarbone—smaller, older, almost hidden by the ink.
And underneath all of it—muscle. More than the suits ever suggested. Shoulders capable of carrying any weight. Arms that could pin someone to a wall without effort. Chest and abs that look like they were carved rather than built.
Every muscle is evidence that he fights. He’s always fought. His body is a weapon, same as his mind.
I’m staring.
I can’t stop.
My eyes travel down the center of his chest, following the trail of dark hair that disappears beneath the towel. The towel that’s sitting so low on his hips that I can see the V of muscle leading down to—
“My eyes are up here, princess.”
My gaze snaps to his face.
He’s smiling. That infuriating, knowing smile that says he’s enjoying every second of my discomfort.
“I wasn’t—”
“You were.” He walks toward the kitchen, completely unbothered by his near-nakedness, by my obvious staring, by any of it. “I don’t mind. Look all you want.”
I don’t know what to do with that.
He opens a cabinet, takes out a pan, and sets it on the stove like it’s routine.
“You know,” he says, back still to me, “I’d love to get more comfortable. Lose the towel. But that might not be appropriate for the workplace.” He glances over his broad shoulder, eyes finding mine. “Speaking of which—you can take off that dress. Get comfortable.”
Heat floods my face. “No, it’s—it’s fine.”
“Suit yourself.” He turns back to the stove. “But if you’re going to sit there all night, you might as well be useful. Come here.”
I don’t move.
“That wasn’t a request, assistant.” His voice carries that edge of command I’m learning to recognize. “Come assist.”
I push myself up and cross into the kitchen.
He’s already at the fridge, pulling things out. Tomatoes. Garlic. Fresh basil. A bottle of wine with a label I don’t recognize but know I’m not meant to touch. He moves the way he does everything—efficiently, deliberately. No hesitation. No wasted motion.
A cutting board appears in front of me, a knife set neatly beside it. He nudges the tomatoes closer, like the next step is obvious.
“Dice these. Small pieces. Uniform.”
“I’m not your sous chef.”
“Tonight, you are.” He’s already working on the garlic, knife moving fast and precise. The muscles in his forearm flex with each cut. “Consider it job training. You never know when you’ll need to make pasta at one AM for a mafia boss.”
I pick up the knife and start cutting. Poorly.
“Smaller.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
I slice through a tomato with more force than necessary.
“Aggressive.” He sounds amused. “Taking something out on the produce?”
“Just doing what you asked.”
“Mmm.”
We fall into silence.
He moves through the kitchen like it’s second nature—oil in the pan, heat adjusted without checking, garlic crushed under the flat of his blade. Each motion is clean, controlled.
It feels wrong. Too ordinary. Like I’ve stepped into the wrong version of this story. This isn’t how criminals are supposed to spend their nights.
But he’s not just a criminal, is he?
There’s too much to him. Too many layers.
And I hate that I keep trying to peel them back anyway.
“The sauce needs checking.”
I look up.
He’s holding a wooden spoon, steam rising from the pan behind him. He dips it into the sauce, brings it toward me.
“I can check it myself—”
He puts the spoon to my lips. Doesn’t wait. Doesn’t ask.
The sauce touches my tongue before I can protest. Rich. Warm. Tomatoes and garlic and something deeper.
I swallow before I can stop myself.
“Well?”
“It’s fine.”
“Fine.” He sets down the spoon. Returns to the stove. “Generous, coming from someone who can’t dice a tomato properly.”
“Don’t do that again.”
“Do what?”
“Feed me. Touch me.” I step back, putting the island between us. “Any of it.”
“Any of it.” He repeats the words slowly. “That’s a broad restriction.”
“I never wanted this. The dress, the penthouse, your protection—”
“And yet here you are.”
“Because Nico’s men showed up at my workplace. Because you nearly killed someone in front of me. Because you dragged me here without asking.”
“I asked.”
“You didn’t.”
“I offered you the bus. You declined.”
“That’s not—”
“There’s always a choice, Bea.” He stalks around the island, closing the distance I tried to create. “You could have fought harder. Could have screamed. Could have run when those men showed up instead of standing there, backed against a wall, waiting.”
“I wasn’t waiting for—”
“You were.” Softer now, but no less dangerous. “You looked for me in that office. The same way you looked for me when Lorenzo got too close. The same way you looked for me tonight when I described myself and you couldn’t keep your composure.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“No?” he says. “I know about the debt. The loans you’ll be paying until you’re forty. The apartment you can barely afford, in a neighborhood where the locks don’t work and the elevator hasn’t run in months.”
“You had no right—”
“I know about your grandmother.”
Ice sweeps through me.
“Sunrise Senior Care. Three months behind on payments.” He studies my face. “They were going to transfer her to a state facility. Somewhere cheaper. Somewhere that would have killed her inside of a year.”
“How do you—”
“Or she was. Paid in full. Six years in advance. Private room. Full-time care. Everything she needs.”
The floor shifts under my feet. I reach for the counter to steady myself.
“When—how—”
“I made a call.”
He says it so casually. It was just a call. Just another thing to be handled, fixed.
And he could undo it just as easily.
“You— You had no right. I didn’t ask you to—”
“No. You didn’t.” He reaches out. Tucks a strand of hair behind my ear—almost gentle, if I didn’t know better. “But I did it anyway.”
“I don’t want your charity.”
“Then don’t call it that.”
“Then what should I call it?”
“Insurance. Investment.” His thumb traces along my jaw. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
“I’m not something you can buy.”
“Everyone has a price, Bea. The question is just what currency they accept. Your grandmother is safe now. Your debts won’t drown you. Your life isn’t a countdown to poverty anymore.”
“So, what, I’m supposed to be grateful?”
“You’re supposed to be smart. We can do this the hard way. You fight, I push back, we exhaust each other. Or you accept that the only way out is through me.”
I try to step back. His hand holds me in place.
I let out an exasperated sigh. “What the hell do you want from me?”
He laughs.
“That’s a stupid question.” His eyes drop to my lips. “You already know the answer. You figured it out days ago.”
“I don’t—”
“You’re three inches away from your half-naked boss in his penthouse at one AM.” He tilts my chin up, forcing me to meet his gaze. “What do you think happens next?”
My heart pounds. I feel it in my throat. In my chest. Between my legs.
“I don’t have feelings for you.”
“Good.” His hand slides to the back of my neck. “I didn’t ask for feelings.”
I should say something.
I open my mouth—
He kisses me.
No hesitation. No question.
There’s nothing tentative about it. No space to think, no room to decide. It’s immediate, certain—like this was inevitable and we’ve both been circling it for too long.
His hand slides into my hair, guiding, tilting my head just enough to deepen the kiss. The other pulls me closer, closing the distance until there’s barely anything separating us.
I don’t step back.
I don’t stop him.
My hands find him instead—his hair, his shoulders—holding on without thinking about it too much.
The realization flickers, then fades.
I’m kissing him back.
He pulls away just enough to look at me.
“Good girl.”
It shouldn’t land the way it does.
But it does.
Something low and immediate, tightening in a way I don’t have time to analyze.
Before I can react, he lifts me effortlessly, like I don’t weigh anything at all. My legs wrap around him without instruction, locking into place.
The shift in proximity is instant.
Now we’re closer, pressed together with no space left to pretend this is anything but what it is.
He kisses me again, deeper this time, moving as he does—out of the kitchen, down the hall.
I lose track of direction.
Of anything, really.
There’s only movement, heat, contact—too much and not enough at the same time.
A door opens.
His bedroom.
City lights spill through the windows, distant and bright. The bed is massive, untouched, almost staged.
He sets me down on the edge.
For a second, everything stills.
He’s standing over me. Taking me in—like he’s assessing, deciding, something I can’t quite read.
My pulse doesn’t slow.
His hand moves to the towel.
And whatever was left of rational thought drops to the floor along with it.