Chapter Seven
Erin
We went to that little karaoke dive bar like we planned, only us girls, Lily, Chiara and me.
And honestly? It was stupid fun. That is, if you ignored the fact that a small army of men in black shadowed us the entire night or that half the regulars cleared out within ten minutes of our arrival, either intimidated by the sudden shift in atmosphere or kindly asked to leave by a few muscle-bound shadows who took their job very seriously.
Subtlety clearly isn’t part of the Santaluccia security protocol.
Still, we sang badly, laughed too loud, and for a few hours, it was like any regular girls’ night of off-key duets, cheap cocktails and mocktails for Lily, and a lot of teasing.
But now, hours later, back in the quiet of my borrowed apartment, I’m still wired. Too many margaritas, too much adrenaline and too much Matteo spinning circles in my head.
So I open my laptop, settle in, and do what any irrational and slightly tipsy woman would do after a night of bad karaoke and worse decisions, I start stalking Matteo. Digitally, of course.
I am sitting cross-legged on the sofa, my civvy laptop, the one for everyday use, perched on my lap.
I am aware that if—when—I open this door, there will be no turning back.
I type Matteo and Damiano Santaluccia in the most obvious search bar.
Pages of results explode over the screen.
There he is, Matteo Di Rossi, thirty-two, businessman, private security consultant and risk specialist, king of the Di Rossi Corporate empire.
There’s even a picture of him in a black suit, gaze dark and glowering, and my heart does an involuntary somersault.
I click on the links to read one article after another.
There’s no mention of his family, or of any wife or girlfriend, for that matter.
Not that I was particularly looking for this information. Nope, not me.
However, his ties to the Santaluccia family are mentioned several times. He owns a handful of successful businesses and… What the actual hell?
I blink. Then read the information again. And again.
A club owner? A kink club owner!
The Second Circle. Allegedly, it’s a members-only club operating well below the surface of the city. Some say it doesn’t even exist. Others whisper it caters to the kind of appetite that comes with money and power. It’s only one paragraph, one unverified claim. But Matteo’s name is right there.
I lean back, dumbstruck. Matteo and kink , in the same sentence? I try to imagine it and short-circuit a little.
After I’ve read all the freely available information about him, I hesitate. Should I dig deeper?
Abso-freaking-lutely .
I grab my other laptop, the one I use for this kind of investigation.
I tether it to a burner phone, one of those I bought with cash and modified with a custom OS.
The SIM card runs on a prepaid plan registered to a fake name and will be disposed of after I’m done.
I boot up into a virtual machine layered in enough encryption to make a government analyst cry, and route myself through a cascade of proxy servers across three continents, just to be safe.
Then I access the darknet.
The site I am looking for loads slowly and I scroll through chat feeds for an hour before I find what I’m looking for.
A post about a specialist wanted for data extraction.
At first glance, it seems like a normal listing.
But something feels off. The way the ad is written, the specific words chosen, the careful avoidance of anything too direct, and of course the mention of an outrageous payoff.
To anyone else, it’s a typical job offer. To me, it looks like bait.
I check the date. This one was posted months ago. So, he wasn’t lying if this really is one of his attempts to contact me.
Then I check his username and snort. Erebus. Of course, only Matteo would pick the Greek word for primordial darkness of the Underworld as his username. So dramatic. So him. I roll my eyes hard enough to see my own brain.
I’m so tempted to reply, no more than a little, teeny-weeny message, like a digital poke, but I don’t. Taunting him would be a bad idea. It’s too risky, and the last thing I need is to feed his fixation on the individual he calls the Ghost.
Instead, I switch gears and try to cautiously dig into his network.
But it’s no use, whatever openings I had found months ago are gone.
Everything is locked down again, triple-firewalled and buried behind layers of encryption.
I don’t really know what I am looking for, but I feel restless.
I linger for a second longer, fingers hovering over the keys, itching to leave a trace, to remind him he’s not alone in there.
But I force myself to disconnect, my pulse hot with frustration.
My mind is reeling from what I’ve learned, and I have to admit that my interest in Matteo has taken a new notch.
Not only is this guy insanely hot, but if he is really the mastermind behind the digital wall around the Santaluccia organization, then he is playing in a league of his own.
He doesn’t merely understand systems, he bends them to his will.
I may have taught myself everything I know and I am admittedly not bad, but I have to concede that he is not just good, he is brilliant. And that earns my respect.
I am also aware that he is way more dangerous than I’d first thought. He is not the gatekeeper of the Santaluccia organization like I first thought. He is the effing lord behind those gates. A chill runs down my spine. Is it in fear, or in awe?
I power off the laptop and bury my face in my hands and groan. Why do I have to be attracted to the one person I absolutely shouldn’t be? This has disaster written all over it.
* * * *
Matteo
A buzzing sound snaps me upright. I’m instantly awake, already reaching for the tablet on my nightstand. That specific device isn’t for messages or calls, it’s for the notifications of anything happening in the system. Like someone triggering a tripwire.
I swipe it open.
Security alert, System breach attempt.
My pulse spikes. I’m out of bed in two strides, pulling on sweatpants as I head out of the door to the elevator. The penthouse is silent and dark, but my mind is wide awake, focused on one possibility.
The Ghost.
I don’t allow myself to hope but I feel it rising anyway, that familiar tension coiling my muscles. It has to be him .
The elevator opens on the third floor, my private operation center.
No one else is allowed up here without my say-so.
The two techs I trust with more sensitive activities for our business left hours ago, and I don’t bother with the lights, the soft glow of a dozen monitors is all I need.
I step into my office and drop into my chair, log in, and immediately start scanning the security history.
One look at the alert log tells me everything I need to know. Someone bypassed the first wall and tried to break in. The breach was brief, but not brief enough that my tripwire didn’t catch the signal.
I follow it, tracing it back through the spoofed channel. I frown. They went to great lengths to hide their point of entry. But I keep going until the origin finally displays.
And I freeze.
Location, Boston MA. Downtown, a street I know well.
No, this can’t be fucking right.
I rerun the trace. I triple-check it. They all come out with the same result—the signal came from within a block of the apartment complex where my employees live. The one I own, where I keep people I trust, or at least I think I can trust. The Atrium.
Fuck .
The unease that’s been hovering in the background for days suddenly ignites, twisting in my gut. Either the Ghost is close, or someone inside that building is working for him.
Neither sits well with me.
I stand slowly, eyes locked on the screen, rechecking the signal trace over and over. It’s not a mistake, the origin is too precise. I exhale slowly through my nose, trying to settle the pounding in my chest. But it doesn’t work.
I bring up the building’s surveillance feeds, but nothing is out of the ordinary. On a hunch, I increase monitoring protocols on all units. No one can move in or out without me knowing now. I don’t care how careful they think they are, they won’t fucking get away with it.
I am aware that it could be a coincidence. It could be a neighbor piggybacking off someone else’s signal. It could be a hundred other things.
But my gut says otherwise.
Then, without permission, my thoughts drift to her.
Erin.
She’s in that building.
I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to link her to any of this, but ever since that night, she has never been far from my thoughts.
And now that she is back in the fringe of my life, she seems to be all I can think about.
Because that night she got under my skin.
But now that I am seeing her again, with every smile, every word, every infuriating taunt she throws my way, she embeds herself deeper. Like a fucking thorn in my side.
She shouldn’t matter, but she does.
God help me, she does.
And that terrifies me more than any signal breach. She’s under my protection, whether she knows it or not, and if this Ghost or anyone else is getting that close to my system, it means she’s not safe and that’s fucking unacceptable.
I scrub a hand down my face, irritation flaring hot in my chest. Maybe it’s time I moved her into my building, into a space I control entirely. The Bastion has top-tier security, encrypted entry, biometric locks and a security surveillance team that could rival any army.
But who am I fooling? It wouldn’t solely be about keeping her safe.
It would be about keeping her close, and that is not a fucking option.