Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
NICO
The end goal hadn’t changed. I still wanted her to kill me. She should do it. After I’d had my way with her.
Telling myself I couldn’t have her had only turned my infatuation into a deadly obsession. Now I was an animal who’d caught the scent of its prey. Nothing could keep me away from sinking my claws into her and tasting her again.
I’d set a deadline. The longer the better. Of course she’d be the one to make me lose control and come in my boxer briefs. Worse. I wanted to do it again. Preferably the next time with my dick buried inside her.
Six hours and twenty-four minutes later, I still couldn’t shake the idea off me.
The screen displayed dashboards of money flow and risk levels.
The risk analysis of consuming the woman I’d wanted for eleven fucking years seized my vision.
She was nothing like the meaningless fucks I’d indulged in for more than a decade.
The woman was my ultimate distraction. High probability of emotional compromise plus catastrophic consequences.
That equaled an unacceptable risk. I was going to take it, anyway.
What was the point of living a long life if I couldn’t have her?
I didn’t need a tomorrow if I could have her for my today.
I’d done the decent thing the night before.
Let her stab me in the neck. Draw a bit of blood.
What was another bandage when I had her?
I may have been distracted, but I’d refrained from watching her on screen afterward.
But six hours and thirty-eight minutes later, I lost the battle with myself and switched on the screens.
The only movement came from the kitchen, where Magda and the other girl were busy cooking.
Something was off. I shifted from room to room.
Living room. Nothing. Dining. Nothing. Storeroom.
Nothing. Her bedroom. Niente. Guest bedrooms, hallway, my bedroom.
Niente. She must have been in one of the bathrooms. I watched the screen for movement.
Sixty seconds. One minute. Another minute. Three.
Niente.
Niente.
Niente.
Where the fuck was she?
My body moved. Four thousand one hundred and eighty-one, six thousand seven hundred and sixty-five, ten thousand nine hundred and forty-six… three hundred seventeen thousand, eight hundred eleven.
“Where the fuck is she?”
Porcelain shattered onto the tiled floor, and the girl gaped at it as the red sauce smothered the floor.
“Well?” I glared at Magda. She stared back. Wasted time observing me crowding the doorway. When she finally opened her mouth, she didn’t do it justice by giving me an answer.
“Who?”
Fuck’s sake. “Let’s not play this game. You know who the fuck I mean.” My hands fisted into balls inside my pockets.
“We don’t know.”
I took a threatening step inside. “Explain.”
She spoke as if she dusted each word inside her mouth before it spilled from her lips. “I don’t know. She was here last night. This morning, she wasn’t.”
Fuck.
“Her belongings are gone, too,” the girl spoke up, a slight accusation in her tone that I ignored.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. My heart raced at double the speed.
Of course she would run. On the one night that I was distracted enough to forget to set the alarm.
I was the one to track patterns before anyone else.
How the hell had I missed this? I hated that my fingers shook when I called my brother.
It took him three agonizingly long rings before he picked up.
“Check the flights that took off for Spain.”
“What did you do?”
I wanted to smack Stefano’s teeth out of his jaw. I answered him through gritted teeth. “Check for Malaga, Barcelona, and Madrid.” Then I stormed into the living room. “Never mind. Check all the fucking airports.”
“Sì, Maestro.”
“Shut up and do it before I empty your funds from your bank accounts.”
He whistled a slow, irritating sound that I felt all the way to my toes. “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”
I hung up. Contemplated moving his money around. At the least, his bonds.
“You could call her.”
I turned to find the girl two steps away from the kitchen. She took in my glare but didn’t back off. “She has a phone.”
She fucking did. Why was I losing IQ points?
Everyone who worked for us got new phones.
Ones that we could track. Something we’d learned after the last time Enzo lost his shit trying to find Daria.
But I wouldn’t call. Wouldn’t give her the chance to refuse it.
I’d just track her down and drag her back.
ANNA
5th August
Es tan peligroso que no sobreviviré. No puedo jugar sus partidas.
He is the kind of dangerous I won't survive. I can't play his games.
Each tick on the rusty clock pounded in my pulse. Another twelve hours to crawl by before my flight. It was too risky to hang around the airport. So I’d made the Uber drop me back at the first dingy motel I’d stayed in before getting the job as Niccolò’s housemaid.
Lying on the bed, I stared at the ceiling. Counted the number of damp stains and bubbles around the cracked plaster. It was as messy as my life.
I’d only had one job to do. Even that, I had failed.
The memory of him pulsed in my core. His hand gripping my ass, fingers coiling in my hair, the way he’d buried his groan in my skin, the way he’d jerked beneath me.
Anna. His voice… the weight of lust in it.
Remembering his touch made me cross my ankles, squeeze my thighs, and bury my hands under the weight of my head.
Next to the door, my bag lay where I’d abandoned it.
The weight of it was far less than my conscience.
Guilt twisted my insides like the stain of oil on clear water.
Papá’s death was in vain. A sudden memory hit me.
Papá standing near his office window, smoking a pipe.
I scrunched my forehead, trying to see more.
But as always, it drifted away like smoke.
Something always blocked me from seeing more.
I had so many questions. He taught me to play the piano. I knew that. How could a boring accountant do something magical like that? How could he have been killed? What had he done to deserve it? How could I think of getting answers when I didn’t even remember that he’d smoked a pipe?
So many unanswered questions. And his killer was still alive.
New York traffic buzzed outside. Every few minutes, sirens filtered into the room as loudly as if I were out there on the street.
In my hurry, I’d left my headphones behind.
Another mistake among so many. The bubbles and cracks on the ceiling merged into one blurry mess.
A painful realization ate into me. I was done.
This was it. It was already a miracle that I’d managed to kill the Don.
A double miracle that I hadn’t been caught.
I knew I should cut my losses and go back home because this was as far as I was going to get.
I couldn’t move on. But at least I’d tried.
The disappointment tasted like ashes in my mouth. That had to be enough.
The door clicked. Swung open. Niccolò Martello walked in.
My guilt was walking into the room. I blinked.
It was an absurdity that I wasted minutes on before I realized it wasn’t all in my mind. He was really there.
?Qué demonios?
I didn’t move because I was too stunned to understand his presence. He’d found me so easily. So calmly.
His eyes traveled over my body. Cold steel plates that took in my crossed naked feet and legs.
They walked up to my dress that stopped a hand's breadth above my knee.
His stare fixed on it for a heartbeat, like he was willing the fabric to move.
His jaw flexed. With a soft hiss of his breath, his gaze climbed up to my face.
No part of that journey had left me cold.
“Get your bag.”
His hypnotizing gaze lost its hold. My brain thawed, and I moved into action. Sitting up in bed, I glared at him. How the hell had he even gotten inside my room? Completely intact except for the bandage on his neck. A joke on my behalf because it was ridiculously small.
I didn’t waste my breath asking him. There was only one thing I was sure of. I was done with this man. “No.”
For a beat, dark annoyance stared back at me. “Get your fucking bags, Anna. You don’t get to quit on me.”
He was back at his boot camp. I had to move or smash my head against the wall. Jumping off the bed, I said, “You don’t get to come here and tell me what to do.”
He didn’t move from his spot. Not a shiver of emotion crossed his sharp face. “What you need to do is avenge your father’s death. You need to fucking kill me.”
The snap of intonation on the word fucking ripped through the room. One word that told me I’d got under his skin. Well, so had he, which was why I knew I was done. “I’ll let you live.” I wasn’t getting burned again.
He studied me. Tapped the side of his thigh, one finger at a time. I frowned. Was he counting? His gaze dropped to the carpet. A red that had faded into a dirty brown.
“Are you going to be a coward, mia piccola assassina?”
My heartbeat snagged. No somos cobardes. If he’d spoken those words in my language, they would have been Papá’s. I shook my head. It was just a coincidence. I was letting him confuse me. He was playing his game again. “I told you; you can live.”
He shocked me by snapping at me. “Come back to my fucking home and kill me there.”
?Qué demonios? “No.”
He swallowed half the room with a sudden step. I stumbled back three and hit the wall. He studied me, gaze unblinking. Scrubbed a hand on his jaw.
“Haven’t you ever wondered why he was killed?”
His words fell in the room like a confession. My breath came to a stuttering pause. How did he know my deepest need? Only one thing kept me from wanting to find out. His eyes were two pinpoints. His words were soft and seductive. “I can tell you why.”
It was a trap. “Why?” I half-whispered anyway.
“One month.”
“?Que?”
“I want you to wear my last name for a month.”
I frowned. Like a tag?
“Then I’ll tell you everything about your father and why he was killed.”
I’d moved. Taken one step forward. Everything about Papá? I’d know him again. My heart pounded inside my rib cage. “You don’t know him.”
“I do.”
The way he said it. So calm. Final. Confident. He knew everything about him. Why? How?
“Why can’t you tell me now?”
“One month.”
“Tell me now,” I insisted.
“This isn’t a negotiation.”
I stared at him. He stared right back. Something was off. The speed of his fingers on his thigh had picked up. He was nervous. I think. My eyes narrowed. “What did you mean ‘wear your last name’?”
He delivered his words in a calm, dead tone. “Marry me.”
I jerked back.
“?Estás loco!” He was crazy. What was he even asking?
He turned his head, gaze trained outside, and muttered almost to himself. “Definitely.”
I shook my head. Nope. I wasn’t doing this level of crazy.
I’d already decided. I was out of here on the next flight.
Marry him? I scoffed. The man who’d killed my father?
I whacked myself on my forehead. I’d rather throw myself off a cliff into a cave of snakes, roll through poisonous cactuses to a wild ocean and drown. “I’d rather die than marry you.”
Instead of answering, he turned around and walked to the door. About time. Picking up my bag on the floor, he stood at the door. Waiting. So fucking sure of himself.
I paced the short stretch of the room. Once.
Twice. So many times that I lost count. Maybe there was something wrong with him.
He needed to get someone to look into his head.
I stopped and stared at him. He stared right back at me.
His chest rising and falling. Bullshit. I paced again.
He was the kind of crazy that even the best doctors couldn’t cure.
“Estás loco. Why on earth would you suggest such a thing?”
He didn’t reward me with an answer. I stopped and snapped at him. “Ridiculous. You’re an idiot, or you’re crazy.”
He remained silent.
“No.” I corrected myself. “You’re both. And an asshole, and a murderer, and, and… and,” I cried out in frustration, “Tell me why!”
“Does it matter?”
“?Sí, joder!”
His fist curled and uncurled at his side.
“This is absurd. You know I’ll kill you,” I threatened.
His mouth twisted. “I'm going to die one day, anyway. Dying buried inside you sounds like a good way to go.”
Joder. The room was turning red. “There’s no fucking way I’m sleeping with you.
” I paced again. Every muscle in my body was throwing a fit.
I thought I might be sick. I clutched my stomach.
“No way,” I muttered. Get the hell out of here.
So he had my bag, so what? I could get a new passport or something.
Crawling to my death would be a better option than marrying him.
I wanted to off him, not marry him. I stormed toward the door.
“I don’t need a month. I can kill you now. ”
He cocked his head. “How?”
?Puto gilipollas! Was the fucker laughing at me? “I’d find a way.”
His lips twisted. “We both know I can block you at every turn, mia piccola assassina. One month and I’ll help you finish the job.”
“Yeah, right.” I scoffed. “You’re going to help me kill you?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Why?”
“Because I deserve it.” He opened the door. “You get five minutes.”
I grabbed the door. “I don’t need five. The answer is no.”
He shot me a look, and I took a hurried step back. Violence brewed in his eyes. Suddenly, I remembered how dangerous this man was.
“Suit yourself. But if you’re not in my car in five minutes, I’ll show you my next card.” He swallowed the space between us with one threatening step. “You have no fucking idea what I’m capable of, mia piccola assassina. Believe me, you don’t want me close to your family.”
My chest hollowed. “You know nothing about my family,” I choked out.
He put his mouth close to my ear. His words sent a chill through my body. “I know fucking everything about your family.”
With that, he walked out the door.
My legs turned to rubber. I collapsed onto the floor.
I know fucking everything about your family.
He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. But was I going to take the risk? He’d taken Papá from me. Like hell if I’d allow him anywhere near Mamá or Mara.