Chapter 2 #2
"I am an excellent actress." She steps closer, invading my personal space. The mint and sweet basil scent envelops me. "I can pretend to tolerate you perfectly."
My voice lowers to the register I use when a deal stops being negotiable. I step into her, closing the distance. The tips of her breasts brush against my suit jacket. She gasps, her eyes widening as the unyielding wall of my body meets her soft curves.
"You will not have to pretend." I murmur, looking down into her dark, defiant eyes. "Because by the end of this operation, you are going to realize exactly where you belong."
She does not back down. She holds her ground, staring up at me with a breathless kind of fury. "You’re arrogant."
"I am precise." I correct her. "I've accounted for every angle."
Every variable except her. I am lying to her and I am lying to myself. I am a man free-falling through the air, claiming I planned the descent.
A sharp knock on the wooden door interrupts the tension.
"Enter." I command, stepping back from Natalia just enough to allow air between us, though my body protests the separation violently.
The door opens to reveal Turi. The older man stands in the threshold, his silver hair neat, his weathered face composed.
He radiates the quiet, steady loyalty that has kept this family functioning since the night our parents died.
Carlo's best friend. The man who raised us when the blood washed away our childhoods.
He calls Dominic 'figlio'. He is family.
"Enzo." Turi's kind eyes flick from me to Natalia, assessing the sudden shift in the room's atmosphere. A knowing smile touches the corners of his mouth. "The car is ready. The storm is getting worse. I suggest you move the young lady before the streets flood."
"Thank you, Turi." I nod, gathering the files from the table in one smooth motion. I slide them into my leather briefcase and snap the locks shut.
Natalia grabs her leather briefcase from the chair. She moves with a chaotic, unchoreographed grace. She bumps her hip against the table, curses under her breath, and rights herself. I watch the sway of her hips. I memorize the exact angle of the curve.
"Ready to go, darling?" I ask, letting the fake affection drip into my voice for Turi's benefit.
She shoots me a venomous glare, masked instantly by a bright, artificial smile. "Of course, sweetheart. Lead the way."
I step behind her, placing my hand flat against the small of her back. The contact is electric. Even through the fabric of the crimson dress, the heat of her skin scorches my palm. She stiffens for a fraction of a second before relaxing into the touch. An instinctual surrender.
We walk out of the private room, moving through the dimly lit corridors of Il Corvo.
Turi trails behind us, a silent guardian.
The restaurant is quiet tonight, the storm keeping the usual clientele away.
The rich scent of garlic and roasting meat drifts from the kitchen.
The espresso machine hisses in the background.
I keep my hand firmly planted on her spine. Claiming her. Guiding her. Every step we take toward the exit cements the reality of the situation. I am bringing a civilian into a warzone. I am using her as bait. The calculation is flawless. The logic is sound.
But my chest feels tight. A suffocating pressure building behind my ribs.
I open the wrought-iron front door of Il Corvo. The Chicago storm hits us instantly. Wind howls down the West Loop streets, driving sheets of freezing rain against the pavement. The streetlights flicker, casting long, distorted shadows across the wet concrete.
My armored SUV sits idling at the curb, the engine a low rumble.
"Go." I instruct her, raising my jacket over her head to shield her from the rain.
She ducks under my arm, sprinting the few feet to the passenger side. I open the ballistic steel door for her, ushering her inside. She slides onto the leather seat, pulling her dress down over her thighs.
I shut the door, cutting off the wind. I walk around the front of the vehicle, the rain soaking through my suit in seconds. I do not care. The cold water is a welcome shock to my overheated system. I slide into the driver's seat, pulling the door shut behind me.
The interior of the SUV is silent. Sealed. Insulated from the chaos outside.
Natalia shivers, rubbing her arms. Her crimson dress is damp at the shoulders. Her dark hair is windswept, framing her face in wild, beautiful disarray. She looks out of place in the dark, tactical interior of my vehicle.
I turn the heat up, angling the vents toward her.
"Thank you." She murmurs, her teeth chattering.
"Don't thank me." I put the SUV in drive, pulling away from the curb. The tires grip the slick pavement. "We have a lot of work to do. Tomorrow, we start rehearsing the cover story. You need to know my history. My preferences. My daily routines."
"And you need to know mine." She points out, leaning her head against the headrest, watching me in the glow of the dashboard lights.
"I already know yours." I state calmly, navigating the dark streets.
She frowns, her brow furrowing. "Excuse me?"
"You drink your coffee black because you do not have time to wait for the barista to steam the milk.
" I list the facts effortlessly, pulling them from the dossier I memorized days ago.
"You run three miles every morning at five-thirty, regardless of the weather.
You despise corporate networking events but you attend them anyway because you are fiercely ambitious.
You have not spoken to your father in four years.
You are allergic to penicillin. And you sleep on the left side of the bed. "
Natalia stares at me, genuine shock radiating from her wide eyes. The cynical armor is gone, replaced by a raw, exposed vulnerability.
"You investigated me." Her voice is a whisper.
"I investigate everyone." I stop at a red light, turning my head to look at her. The shadows of the rain streaking across the windshield play over her face. "I do not introduce unknowns into my life, Natalia. I know everything about you."
"You do not know everything." she snaps back, a defensive fire igniting in her eyes. She hates feeling exposed. She hates being analyzed.
"No?" I let my gaze drop to the flush rising on her cheeks.
"No." She crosses her arms again. "A dossier can’t tell you everything. It tells you facts. It doesn’t tell you the truth."
She is right. The dossier told me her measurements, but it did not tell me how her body would fit against mine.
The dossier told me her favorite perfume, but it did not prepare me for the devastation of mint and sweet basil wrapping around my senses.
The dossier told me she was impulsive, but it did not calculate the way her defiance would make me want to conquer her.
The light turns green. I press the accelerator, the powerful engine surging forward.
"Then you will have to teach me." I keep my eyes on the road. "Because starting tomorrow, you are moving into the Costa compound."
"What?" Natalia bolts upright in her seat. "Absolutely not. I have an apartment. I have a life."
"You have a life that is currently unprotected.
" I cut her off, my tone leaving no room for argument.
"Rourke is not a fool. He will verify our relationship.
He will have men watch you. If you are sleeping alone in a West Loop high-rise while I am ten miles away at the compound, the cover is blown. You sleep where I sleep."
"I am not moving into a mafia fortress!" she yells over the sound of the heater. "We agreed to a public performance. Not a hostage situation."
"It is not a negotiation." My grip on the steering wheel tightens. The leather groans under the pressure. "You wear my ring. You sleep under my roof. The compound is secured. Twenty-four-hour surveillance. Stone walls. Iron gates. You will be safe."
"Safe from the Bellantis." She glares at my profile. "What about safe from you?"
The question hits me dead center. A direct strike to my chest. I glance at her. The fierce, beautiful challenge in her eyes. The way her chest heaves with indignant breaths.
I am a man who built his entire existence on control. I analyze the risk. I neutralize the threat. I protect the family. But looking at her, trapped in the passenger seat of my car, radiating warmth and chaos and defiance, I know the truth.
She is not safe from me.
She is the furthest thing from safe. My protective instincts have warped into something I cannot name.
I do not just want to keep her alive. I want to keep her.
I want to strip away the cynical litigation associate and uncover the woman underneath.
I want to break down her defensive walls with the same brutal efficiency I use to dismantle rival crime syndicates.
“You're safe from the world, Natalia,” I say quietly, my voice barely audible over the hum of the tires on wet asphalt.
She catches the evasion. Her brilliant mind processes the omission instantly. She swallows hard, turning her face toward the passenger window. She watches the rain-soaked city blur past us, the neon lights bleeding into the darkness.
The silence sits between us, dense with everything we are refusing to name.
I turn the SUV north, heading toward the compound. Toward the stone walls and the reinforced steel doors. Toward the war room in the basement where I will spend the rest of the night tracking Jeff and Rourke through a maze of encrypted ledgers.
The operation is already moving. Jeff. Rourke. The ledgers. The compound. Every piece has a place.
But the man underneath the tailored suit is wide awake, too. He is pacing the perimeter, staring at the woman in the passenger seat who has already rewritten three of his certainties tonight.
She thinks she is a cover story. She thinks this is a transaction to clear her law school debt and buy her apartment building. She thinks she can wear my mother's ring for a few weeks, crack the financial ledgers, and walk away clean.
She is wrong.
A mathematical error. A fatal miscalculation.
I reach across the center console. I do not ask for permission. I simply take her hand, pulling it from her lap. Her skin is warm. Her pulse jumps erratically against my thumb. She gasps, startled by the sudden contact, but she does not pull away.
I thread my fingers through hers. I lock my hand around hers, the platinum ring cold against my palm.
On the board. Under my protection. Past the point of withdrawal. I do not say a single word out loud. I let the pressure of my grip convey the message.
The rain hammers against the roof of the SUV.
The Costa-Bellanti war rages in the shadows of the city.
The ledgers sit in the trunk, waiting to be decoded.
But right now, none of it matters. The only thing that matters is the scent of mint and sweet basil, and the terrifying certainty that I am never letting her go.