Chapter 7
Natalia
The deadbolt slides into place with a metallic thud that echoes off the stone walls.
The sound vibrates right through my chest. The sheer, unadulterated audacity of the man.
Enzo Costa just claimed me, stripped away every ounce of my professional objectivity, kissed me until I forgot my own name, and then locked me in his bedroom to go murder people.
Typical Tuesday in Chicago.
My skin still buzzes from his touch. The phantom press of his hands lingers on my curves.
I pull the sheet tighter around my shoulders, the fabric grounding me while the war outside the door continues without me.
His scent lingers, an anchor in the middle of this chaos.
He practically tore out of here, radiating lethal, terrifying violence.
The precise, contractual man I met at Il Corvo had folded his ledger and walked out a weapon.
In his place stood a man ready to burn the city to ash just because a Bellanti enforcer breathed too close to my name.
A normal woman might panic. A normal woman might cower on the king-sized bed, clutching the sheets, waiting for her fixer to come back from rewriting the math in someone else's blood.
I am not a normal woman. I am a corporate litigation associate. I dismantle hostile witnesses for a living. I survive in rooms full of predatory men by staying three steps ahead of their egos. I do not wait in towers.
My bare feet hit the cold hardwood floor.
The adrenaline crash from our intimacy and his sudden, violent departure leaves a sharp ringing in my ears.
I need to move. I need to process. The reinforced glass of the bedroom window reveals nothing but the rain-slicked grounds of the Costa compound.
The high stone walls loom in the distance, bathed in the harsh glare of security floodlights.
He turned this place into a fortress long before I arrived, but tonight, the air inside feels different.
The lock on the door mocks me. Turi stands guard out in the hall.
I know the old man is out there. I can picture him, silver hair neat, leaning against the plaster with that warm, deceptively gentle smile, armed to the teeth.
Arguing with Turi is useless. Enzo gave him a direct order, and this family operates on a terrifying, absolute loyalty.
I turn away from the door and face the room. Enzo's sanctuary.
It matches the man perfectly. Stark, brutally organized, devoid of useless sentiment.
The king bed dominates the center, the sheets still tangled from what we just did.
A flush of heat crawls up my neck at the memory.
He worshipped me. He took every cynical, hardened piece of my soul and dismantled it with terrifying precision.
He set his mother’s engagement ring in my palm, dared me to wear it, and I slid it onto my own finger like a verdict.
But my eyes drift to the far corner. The desk.
An antique oak monster of a desk sits against the wall. Three computer monitors sleep in the dark. Stacks of files rest in perfect, geometric alignment. Every pen sits parallel to the keyboard. The man measures his life in alignment, in pages squared to the inch.
My legal instincts flare, sharp and undeniable. He just went to war over the Bellanti money-laundering ledgers. Jeff, the compromised transit manager, ran. Rourke is tearing up the West Loop hub. Enzo threw away his perfectly constructed plan because the math changed. He risked his own operation.
I march toward the desk.
Reviewing the Jeff files is one thing. Digging through the nerve center of the Costa family’s fixer is another.
But I need to understand the legal and tactical disaster he just walked into.
If this blows back on Enzo’s operation, I need to understand the paper trail.
I need to know what the Bellantis could use against us.
I pull back the leather chair and sit. The first drawer slides open with smooth, silent resistance. Pens. Blank stationery. Encrypted hard drives. Nothing useful.
The second drawer holds the current operational files.
My fingers brush over the thick manila folders.
The tabs are meticulously labeled with his aggressive, blocky handwriting.
Jeff Debt Profile. Rourke Movements. West Loop Transit Logistics.
I pull them out, spreading them across the smooth wood.
The top folder catches the dim light from the desk lamp.
The label reads: Kim, Natalia - Asset Profile.
My stomach plummets. The air in the room suddenly turns to ice.
My hand hovers over the tab. The rational part of my brain screams a warning. Do not open it. You know exactly what it is. You knew the deal. The contract was a fake engagement. A public cover. He needed a lawyer with zero mob ties to act as a shield while he infiltrated the Bellanti front.
My fingers pinch the cover and flip it open.
The truth sits right there on the paper in stark black ink.
It is a ruthless deconstruction of my life.
Page one is a ledger of my law school debt—every loan, every interest rate, every missed payment during my second year.
Page two is a psychological profile. Target is cynical, deeply independent, distrustful of authority.
Weaponize financial leverage to secure compliance.
The words blur. A bitter, metallic taste floods my mouth.
I flip to the next page. A background check so deep it lists my favorite order at the coffee shop near my office. It lists the names of the predatory partners at my firm whom I clean up after. It details my apartment building's foreclosure status.
Recommendation: Purchase building via shell corporation. Guarantee eviction protection in exchange for operational cooperation. Target will not resist financial freedom.
The corporate litigation armor I just shed on that bed slams back into place, cold and suffocating and brutally familiar.
I knew I was a tactical asset. He never hid that part.
But knowing it and reading it printed in clinical block letters on a profile sheet are two completely different injuries.
I was a transaction. A variable on a ledger.
He calculated my breaking point, offered the exact sum required to shatter my defenses, and drafted me into his war.
Every word, every touch, every command to move into this compound was documented right here as manipulation.
My jaw locks so tight my teeth grind together. I stare at the sterile, typed font. The man who just laid me bare on those sheets, who claimed me with an intensity that defied all logic, built the entire foundation of our relationship on a risk-assessment matrix.
I slam the file shut. The sharp smack echoes in the quiet room.
I push away from the desk, ready to tear the door off its hinges, ready to scream at Turi, ready to pack whatever dignity I have left and walk out into the storm. I survive. That is what I do. I do not let men turn me into collateral.
But the file sits crooked on the desk.
Enzo Costa does not leave things crooked. The man aligns his pens parallel to his keyboard. He shuffles cards without looking, squaring the deck every time.
I stare at the misaligned folder. A second folder sits beneath it, hidden until my angry shove exposed the edge.
This one has no typed label. The tab is covered in thick, aggressive black marker. It simply reads: N.K.
My breath stalls in my throat. I step back toward the desk. My hand trembles slightly as I reach for the second folder. I pull it open.
Chaos spills out.
The sterile spreadsheets are gone. This folder is thick with loose papers, sticky notes, torn margins, and heavily annotated floor plans. The pristine logic of the fixer is absent.
I pick up the first sheet. It is a copy of the original fake engagement contract. The one I signed. The legal document detailing the parameters of our public relationship. But the text is barely legible beneath a sea of furious red ink.
He crossed out the phrase Public performances only. In the margin, his sharp handwriting dictates: Cancel restriction. She attends all events with me. No exceptions.
He crossed out the clause regarding my separate living quarters. The annotation reads: Unacceptable. Move her to the compound immediately. Secure the east wing.
I flip to the next document. It is a security threat assessment dated yesterday.
The day he forced me into his armored SUV and brought me here.
He told me the Bellantis were tracking me.
He told me I was in immediate, lethal danger.
The background check stapled behind it is dated six months earlier—he has been mapping my life since long before Il Corvo.
I keep flipping. The next page stops my heart.
It is a corporate filing for one of his West Loop shell companies, Delaware LLC, registered six months ago.
My firm is listed as legal counsel of record.
My bar number sits in the metadata. My digital signature—my real signature, pulled from the firm's secure portal—is on the formation paperwork.
I do not remember this client. Of course I do not remember this client.
The retainer was blind. The partner handed me a stack of boilerplate corporate filings six months ago and told me to clear them by Friday.
I never asked who the end client was. Junior associates do not ask.
He did not need to forge anything. He hired my firm.
He let the partner assign me to his paperwork.
He buried me in his crimes before he ever walked into Il Corvo, and the worst part is that every signature is legitimately mine.
The threat assessment matrix is blank. The Bellanti activity log for my neighborhood reads: Zero.
He lied.