Chapter 9
Natalia
Concrete dust and copper coat his usual scent.
The sharp, metallic tang of blood hangs in the air of the bedroom.
The Costa family's fixer—the man who calculates every variable in this city—is currently kneeling on the hardwood floor, burying his face into my stomach.
His shoulders tremble under the ruined combat gear.
He grips my hips with a desperation that borders on madness.
His hands are strong, smeared with crimson.
The blood stains the edge of the duvet around my shoulders.
The cold, calculating fixer of the Costa family did not vanish tonight. He simply redirected the math. The man who treats human lives like entries on a spreadsheet has rewritten the only line that matters.
He destroyed the primary upload.
The truth echoes in the silent bedroom. He burned the cleanest angle of a six-month operation.
He shattered Matteo’s fastest path into the Bellanti money-laundering network.
The transit hub sting is dead. The Costa family will have to rebuild leverage from a worse position than they had this morning.
His hair is matted with sweat and dirt. I plunge my fingers into the thick strands.
The texture is gritty. Ash and debris flake off onto the silk of my robe.
He presses his face harder into the soft curve of my belly.
A low, ragged sound tears out of his throat.
It is a terrifying noise. Pure, primal relief crashing headfirst into the adrenaline of a kill.
Years of cleaning up predatory financial messes, drafting ironclad non-disclosure agreements, and fighting silver-tongued executives in glass boardrooms taught me everything about the ugly side of men.
Usually, when a man ruins a multimillion-dollar deal, he comes to my office demanding a legal loophole.
He paces. He yells. He threatens my career.
Enzo Costa just ruined a multi-million dollar mafia war strategy. He is not asking for a loophole. He is just begging me to stay.
My thumbs stroke the nape of his neck. The muscles corded beneath his skin are locked tight.
He expects me to run. The fake engagement contract is legally moot.
The cover story is no longer just a cover.
The tactical mandate that brought me into this fortified compound is nothing but ash in the underground transit tunnels.
According to every logical parameter he established on day one, I should be packing my bags.
I should be demanding my extraction. I should be terrified of the blood rapidly drying on his knuckles.
I am not packing. I am not terrified.
My lawyer instincts demand I assess the damage. My chaotic, impulsive heart demands I claim the man who just chose me over his own family's vengeance.
"Enzo." My voice is unnervingly steady.
He does not move. He just tightens his grip on my waist. His knuckles press into my hip through the silk of the robe, raw and split from the tunnel fight. The dried blood catches the dim light from the bedside lamp.
"Eyes on me, Costa." I curl two fingers under his jaw and lift.
A slow, rigid shift. He lifts his head.
The calculating gaze is gone. His eyes are wild, dilated, and vulnerable. A smear of grease and soot cuts across his sharp cheekbone. Blood spots his neat beard. He looks like a demon dragged straight out of the Chicago underworld. He looks magnificent.
"They don't have it." His voice is gravel and smoke. The vocal cords are shredded from barking orders or screaming in a collapsing tunnel. "The hard drive is slag. Rourke is dead. No one has your name. No one."
"You destroyed the data." I need him to say it again. I need to establish the undeniable facts of the case. "The ledgers proving the Bellanti money laundering. The sole objective of this entire operation. You smashed it."
"Yes." No hesitation. No regret. Just a flat, brutal admission.
"Matteo is going to kill you."
"Let him try." The muscles twitch in his cheek. "Matteo will understand once I tell him what Rourke said in that tunnel. Until then, I do not care what he thinks. Rourke threatened what is mine. That ended his usefulness as a source."
Mine. The word drops between us like a judge's gavel.
I trace the line of his jaw. The coarse hair of his beard scratches against my fingertips. This is the man who learned at ten that love is a liability. For every year since, he ran every emotion through a probability matrix and called the output strategy. Tonight, the math broke.
"Get up, Costa." I tug on his hair, ignoring his lethal reputation. "You are bleeding on the vintage rug."
He blinks. The sudden shift in my tone throws his tactical brain off balance. He expected a hysterical civilian. He expected tears. He expected me to scream about the violence and the danger.
I am a Kim. We do not do hysterical.
"Natalia." He says my name like a prayer. Like an anchor in a raging storm.
"Up. Now." I step back, breaking his grip on my hips. The sudden loss of contact makes him flinch. A genuine, physical flinch. The sight of it sends a fierce, protective surge straight through my chest.
He rises slowly. His frame towers over me in the dim light. Tonight, his height is just an obstacle to getting him clean. The tactical vest is scored with deep gouges. A tear in the dark fabric of his sleeve reveals the corded muscle of his forearm underneath, streaked with grime from the tunnels.
I grab his wrist, my small hand barely wrapping halfway around the thick joint. I drag the most dangerous strategist in Chicago toward the master bathroom. He follows me with blind obedience.
The bathroom is a cavern of black marble and brushed steel. I flip the switch. The harsh overhead lights reveal the true extent of the carnage. His face is a canvas of violence. Blood soaks the right shoulder of his combat shirt.
"Sit." I point to the edge of the massive sunken tub.
He sits. The thud of his boots echoes off the tile. He tracks every movement with brutal focus. His eyes never leave my face.
I step between his spread knees. I reach for the velcro straps of his tactical vest. He does not try to assist. He simply lets me disarm him.
The vest drops to the marble floor with a metallic clatter.
Magazines of ammunition, a serrated combat knife, encrypted radios.
A small arsenal. I kick it out of the way with my bare foot.
"Arms up."
He obeys. I grab the hem of his ruined combat shirt and pull it over his head.
His chest is exposed. Bare skin pulled tight over heavy slabs of muscle, a faint silver scar above his sternum that I have never asked about.
Bruises are already blooming across his ribs in ugly shades of purple and black.
A shallow, jagged cut runs across his left bicep.
The blood is still sluggishly oozing from the wound.
"You need stitches." I run a clinical eye over the cut.
"No." His voice is flat. "Just butterfly bandages. Turi keeps a med kit in the bottom drawer of the vanity."
I step over to the massive dual-sink vanity. The bottom drawer slides open on silent runners. A fully stocked trauma kit sits inside. Sterile gauze, saline wash, surgical tape, sutures. The reality of life in the Costa compound. You keep trauma kits next to the luxury shaving cream.
I pull out the supplies and carry them back to him. I grab a thick, white Egyptian cotton towel from the heated rack and run it under the warm water from the faucet.
Stepping back between his knees, I press the warm, wet towel to his chest. The water instantly turns pink.
He hisses. The sudden sting of the hot water against battered skin forces a sharp exhalation through his teeth.
"Don't be a baby." I scrub the drying blood off his collarbone. "You literally escaped a blown-up transit hub tonight. You can handle a wet towel."
A low, rough sound rumbles in his throat. It sounds dangerously close to a laugh. The tension in his shoulders drops by a fraction of an inch.
"You are a menace, Natalia."
"I am a lawyer. We are trained to be menaces." I rinse the towel in the sink, watching the red swirl down the black marble drain. "You should have read the fine print before you hired me."
"I didn't hire you." He catches my wrist as I bring the towel back to his chest. The grip is firm but incredibly gentle.
His thumb brushes the diamond ring on my left hand.
His mother's ring. The cold metal sits heavily on my finger.
"The contract was a lie. I knew it the second you walked into Il Corvo. "
The admission strips the air from the room.
We spent days that felt like weeks playing a high-stakes game of corporate warfare against each other.
Every conversation was a battlefield. He used my crushing debt.
I used my cynical armor. We fought tooth and nail to maintain the illusion of a business arrangement.
He just admitted he rigged the game from the start.
"You told me I was a tactical asset." I press the towel against the muscle of his chest. The friction makes his skin flush.
"I lied." He doesn't look away. "I needed you in my territory. I needed a reason to put my ring on your hand. The Bellanti operation was just a convenient excuse."
The arrogance of the man. The unmitigated audacity.
"You bought out my landlord's holding company, leveraged eighty-four thousand dollars of law school debt against me through a shell, and engineered a fake retainer—just to get my attention?"
"I would have bought the entire city block if that was what it took.
" The edge in his voice sharpens to a lethal point.
The contract is being rewritten in real time, every clause tilting toward me.
"I mapped your daily commute. I memorized the layout of your office.
I ran a full background check on every opposing counsel who got too close in a deposition. "
"That is stalking, Costa. It is a federal offense."