Mafia King’s Deadly Alliance (The Crimson Empire #19)

1. Giulia

ONE

Giulia

The door swung farther than it should have. A sigh of linen and something warm hit me before the room did, and I slammed to a stop with my hand on the jamb.

I shoved my hair behind my ear and forced a smile that read professional annoyance, not adrenaline. Giulia Romano—senior corporate lawyer—does not open the wrong door in a palazzo built to make the indecisive feel small.

There was a man in the room. Half-dressed, towel hanging from his hip, hair wet and unruly on top.

Federico De Santis, tall and broad-shouldered with a pale scar catching the light at his brow, looked up from where he'd been bent over a low table.

His eyes were storm-gray and they catalogued me the way I catalogued clauses—fast, precise, without pity.

I should have closed the door and retreated. Instead my mouth said, “I asked for the storage room. This—this isn’t storage.”

He blinked once. The towel did nothing to hide the slope of his shoulders or the hard plane of his chest. My pulse thudded like a misdemeanor—stupid, sharp, impossible to ignore.

“Storage is downstairs,” he said. His voice was a low thing, velvet and gravel, and it pulled my attention to his mouth. “This is my private sitting room.”

My cheeks did not have the luxury of flushing. I had rehearsed composure for a decade; my mother had confirmed the plan twice this morning. I owed the Romano name steadiness, not scandal. I said, flat, “Then you might lock the door next time before you towel off.”

He smiled in a way that was almost indulgent. “Or you could knock.”

“I did,” I said. “Someone should have answered.”

He let the towel slip a fraction lower and the scar along his brow transferred from detail to punctuation.

My eyes traveled, disloyal as a file drawer: the line of his sternum, the shallow ridges of muscle beneath bronzed skin, the long fingers—hands that looked able to sign a check, or close a jaw.

“What’s your hurry, Ms. Romano?” He pronounced my surname the way a judge pronounces guilt and amusement at once.

“For once, the hurry is not mine.” I let my glove fingers curl on the handle of my leather briefcase.

My throat had gone dry. “I’m here for the Romano–De Santis negotiation.

The family mobile will be in the salon in twenty.

I—” I stopped. Saying I was late felt stupid and small.

Saying I was flustered was not an option.

“Ah.” He straightened, towel tucked, and the hush he carried filled the small room. “You’re Romano.”

“Yes.” I kept my voice level. “And you’re De Santis. Thank you for the clarification.”

He moved a half-step closer with all the small, thoughtful motions of a man who measured distance like currency.

Up close, bergamot clung to him—clean, green, a citrus I always associated with expensive soaps and travel.

The scent was disarming. My hand, stupid traitor, went to my collar to check if my pulse was visible.

“You shouldn’t be walking around an unfamiliar palazzo without a guide,” he said. “The floorplans are confusing.”

“It’s not unfamiliar,” I said. “It’s just—” I looked for the word that would keep me competent. “Different.”

He tilted his head, and I saw the pale crescent behind his ear where a lock of hair wanted to fall. He watched me as if considering whether I was a chess piece or a person. “Different can be interesting.” His eyes dropped to the pale hollow at the base of my throat when I swallowed. I felt exposed.

“You're not charming me,” I snapped. The retort came out sharper than intended and made him smile, small and private. “And I'm in the middle of an alliance negotiation. I promised?—”

The sentence stopped there because it was the only honest thing I’d allowed myself in days. I had promised my mother I would remain composed, not become compromised by headlines or hospital beds. Saying it aloud felt like folding a paper sword against a cliff: fragile but real.

He seemed to understand the unspoken more quickly than most men. “Composure suits you,” he said. There was no irony in it. Only observation.

I pivoted on my heel, intending to leave with dignity.

My elbow caught the shallow table; a pale glass trembled.

Federico's hand closed around my wrist, steady as a law clerk's stamp.

His fingers were warm and blunt, callused in the right places.

The touch was brief but held more than enough time to be noticed.

Electricity, stupid and cinematic, flared.

“Careful,” he murmured. Up close, the scar at his brow was a pale slash that softened his otherwise severe face. He didn't let go when I met his gaze. “You could have cut yourself.”

I swallowed. “I'm fine,” I said, and the lie was as pretty as any brief I'd ever filed.

He guided the glass back to safety with the same precise touch.

“You don't seem fine.” His thumb brushed the pulse point at my wrist—a casual, expert observation—and my breath stuttered.

My law training told me to parse that touch: was it to steady the glass or to steady me?

The part of me that kept an emergency legal binder in my head labeled it Not Safe.

The other part, human and inescapable, read it as intimate.

“You're very observant,” I said.

“Only of what matters.” He stepped back, releasing me. The towel had slipped further; I saw the dark sweep of hair at his navel. My mouth—traitorous again—said, “You're rude.”

“Only to those who deserve it,” he replied. “And you, Ms. Romano, look like someone who can take it.”

I wanted to say every line I'd stored for negotiation—Positioning, Concession, Leverage—but the heat of the room pooled at the base of my throat.

His proximity made my chest tight in an unfamiliar, almost territorial way.

My brain supplied a fact: I noticed the curve of his neck and how a single vein ran under his clavicle. It was shamefully specific.

He laughed then, low and without malice. “You argue beautifully in court.” The compliment landed softer than I expected. “You keep composure like armor.”

“You keep your towel like armor,” I shot back, then regretted my flippancy when his eyes darkened. He had that look—closed, assessing, like someone who weighed risk in a second. “I should go,” I added, because there are battles a lawyer chooses not to pick.

He moved to the wardrobe and, without looking at me, drew a dark jacket from a hook. It smelled of bergamot and something leather-deep—his scent again, uncanny and consistent. He walked back and offered it to me with an almost ceremonious pause. “Take this,” he said. “You'll need it in the hall.”

I blinked. Offerings in this building were usually political, or purely performative. A jacket was none of those. I hesitated, then took it. The fabric swallowed my shoulders and was warm from his body. The sleeve touched my cheek when I adjusted it.

“There are pockets,” he pointed out. “Keep it close.”

I slid my hand into the pocket to steady the jacket and felt paper—a pressed stub, creased and old.

I drew it out under the pretense of inspecting a seam.

It was a ticket, the kind you'd keep to remember a small private thing: a name of an opera house, a date months ago.

My fingers brushed the edge and something small and ridiculous and tender bloomed—proof he'd kept something that wasn't necessary.

The ticket smelled faintly of bergamot, the same waft as the jacket, and a smaller, human smell I couldn't place.

“You keep things?” I asked.

He shrugged, one shoulder rolling like someone shrugging off a threat. “Sometimes. Things matter differently when you don't have them for long.”

I thought of the promise again. The jacket fit well. The ticket was small, intimate, proof of attention. For an instant I imagined a life where such attentions weren't armor-testing but ordinary.

“Thank you,” I said, because manners were useful and because I didn't have a script for gratitude that sounded like a trap.

He cocked his head. “You're welcome, Giulia.” His voice had softened on my name; it wasn't for the headlines. It was private, and it landed with a weight that made my knees forget their job.

My shoes squeaked on the polished stone as I backed toward the door, intent on rejoining the world where alliances were written on tablets and not in the private giving of jackets. “I should find the salon,” I lied, the composure reconstructing itself.

He watched me go, eyes following the line of my back under his jacket. For a stupid, perilous second I wondered if he'd reach out again—if he'd ask me to stay, or to explain, or to laugh the way civilized people laugh after an intrusion. Instead, a knock sounded at the inner door, neat and formal.

We both turned. The spell broke; my chest unclenched in a way that felt like relief and like loss. The knock was answered from inside and then the door swung wide.

A figure filled the doorway—tall, neat, eyes quick and amused. Marco De Santis.

Federico's hand closed on my wrist. He murmured a single name—soft and intimate, the kind of pronouncement that refused the public scripts. “Giulia.”

My mouth opened. The corridor smelled of bergamot, stone, and something older—family wood and expectation. I could feel every eye that wasn't in the room yet on us: my mother's, Lucia Romano's, invisible and judging. I had one job left—leave without betraying my composure or humiliating him.

I should have stepped forward to explain. I should have twisted free and smiled an appropriate smile. Instead my pulse plastered my ribs against the fabric of my jacket and his thumb dug gently into the underside of my wrist.

“Giulia.” His voice was a private pull, and Marco’s shadow in the doorway made the palazzo suddenly small and very public.

The door framed Marco's expectant face, and everything I'd kept folded for propriety unfurled with a single, dangerous seam.