CHAPTER 8
Roxanne
Grey eyes locked into mine.
Not startled. Not defensive. Not even angry.
Soft.
Soft in a way that made my stomach twist because nothing about him had ever been soft. Even when the blade at his throat threatened to carve through skin.
My pulse tripped. Betrayed me.
“Santino. Fucking. Rossi.” I spat.
Words left my mouth like venom, each word cutting sharper than the knife. The sound of his name on my tongue felt like poison. Like a relapse.
“In the flesh,” he said smugly, like he hadn’t detonated something inside me just by existing in my kitchen.
The deep tenor of his voice hit my skin like a whip, sharp and visceral, scraping across memory, muscle and nerve. My fingers tightened around the knife, fearing it might slip because my body wouldn’t have registered him as a threat even if my mind did.
“I told Marcello,” I said, pressing the knife harder, feeling the resistance of skin, “if I ever saw you again, I’d stab you in the neck.”
A slow, devious smile curled at his lips. Then he did something that made my pulse spike.
He tilted his head, baring his throat further, offering me the vein that pulsed so close, so easy, like a deliberate offering. As though he trusted me to decide whether he deserved to live.
Ink coiled around his neck, a black serpent curling at the base of his throat, just beneath where the blade rested.One slice and years of rage could spill out with his blood, washing the floor in red absolution.
The vein there throbbed—
“Go ahead,” he murmured, voice rough. “You know you want to.”
I bared my teeth and drove the blade deeper. The tip split open skin, and blood welled instantly—dark, thick, sliding down the curve of his throat. It followed the inked snake’s body, pooling at the serpent’s mouth like it was drinking him alive.
His jaw tightened. But he didn’t flinch.
Rage flooded me hotter. I wanted him to react. I needed him to react. To break. To bleed in a way that matched what he’d left behind in me. To feel something close to what I had felt the day he walked out like he’d never been there.
Bastard.
Instead, his hand moved fast. He caught my wrist, twisted, spun me so sharply the knife clattered across the floor. My back collided with his chest before I could process what just happened. One arm locked across my shoulders. The other forced behind my back, wrist bent just enough to sting.
“Not quite the welcome I expected,” he breathed against my ear.
The warmth of his breath slid down my spine like a live wire, heat cascading down in a violent shudder. His grip tightened as he felt it.
God, I hated him.
Don’t show weakness. Don’t show weakness.
“Are you scared, little Volpi?” he whispered against the shell of my ear.
My vision tunnelled at the heat of him, breath heavy against my skin. My heart pounded so violently it blurred thought. Heat pooled low in my belly in a traitorous rush that made shame claw up my throat.
Use your head, goddammit.
His voice echoed in a memory:
If someone pins you from behind, don’t fight their strength. Shift your weight. Drop your centre. Break the balance. And flip them before they know what hit them.
I inhaled, then moved. I slammed my elbow back hard into his ribs. He grunted with a sharp intake of breath. I twisted my hips, dropped my weight and hooked my leg behind his.
He didn’t expect that.
I pivoted, grabbed his wrist, and flipped. He hit the floor. Hard. But he didn’t go alone. He took me with him.
I landed straddling his hips, palms braced on his chest. His body was heat and muscle and something devastatingly familiar. His back hit the floor with a solid thud, and a groan escaped him—low and involuntary, vibrating through me.
For one split second, we were frozen like that. The loose strands of my braid falling forward. His hands hovering but not touching. The hard muscles of his chest rising beneath my palms. Warm and solid.
He looked up at me—amused. Impressed.
“Well,” he said, breath warm against my chin. “Someone’s been practising.”
“Imagining your face,” I snapped.
I tried to push off him, but my sock slipped.
“Shit—”
My balance tipped. I pitched forward, my mouth hitting the side of his neck—the side still bleeding. Warm blood smeared across the corner of my mouth. Metallic. Salted. Intimate in a way that made my stomach drop.
My tongue darted instinctively before I could stop it. To anyone else, it would look like a lover’s embrace. But I was trying to get off him.
“Now,” he murmured, voice dropping lower, darker, rougher, “that’s more like the welcome I expected.”
Lightning cracked across the sky outside, white light flooding the kitchen for a split second. It illuminated a rawness behind his eyes I’d never seen before. The arrogance slipped, and beneath it I glimpsed a fracture he hadn’t meant to expose.
Then he moved. In one brutal, fluid motion, he flipped us.
My back hit the floor. Air punched from my lungs.
His body followed, caging mine beneath it.
One thigh forced mine apart. His weight pinned my hips, locking me in place.
My wrists caught and forced above my head in one hand.
He loomed over me. Close enough that I could smell rain, smoke and sweat and him.
And that’s when I felt it. The hard, unyielding press of his arousal against my thigh. At first I thought I imagined it, then it twitched. My eyes went wide. He didn’t even try to hide it.
His free hand lifted to my mouth, thumb dragged blood across my lips, smearing it like a mark. Then he lifted the pad of his thumb to his own mouth and licked it clean, slowly, eyes never leaving mine.
My traitorous body sent a new wave of shivers down my spine, which made me clench my thighs harder. My chest rose and fell against his weight, body reacting before my mind could process the danger.
Before permission was granted. Before thought. Before pride.
“Still reckless, Volpi,” he said, rubbing his nose against mine.
My stomach twisted violently.
“Don’t call me that,” I snapped. “Let me go.”
I twisted against his grip, but his hold only tightened, bruising me with restraint.
He cocked his head slightly, studying me.
“So you can attempt to kill me again?”
“Get out of my house,” I demanded, voice thinner than I wanted.
“My house.”
My heart stuttered. He didn’t blink. There was a devilish amusement in his voice.
“Marcello wouldn’t put me somewhere you could touch.” I shot back. “He’d know.”
A faint smirk ghosted his mouth. “Marcello doesn’t know everything.”
Lightning flashed again. Thunder rolled closer now.
“And if you hadn’t noticed,” he continued, voice lowering, “there’s a storm outside.”
“Like I give a fuck,” I spat. “Get struck by lightning for all I care.”
He leaned closer, nose grazing my cheek.
“Then who would you use as a pincushion, hm? Who would you stab when you’re angry?”
I bucked beneath him.
“Let. Me. Go.”
I drove my knee up, aiming for his groin, but he trapped my legs instantly. He shifted his hips, pressing harder into my core.
“Careful,” he said, voice low. “Keep moving like that, and I’ll think you want to fuck me.”
“In your dreams.”
I hated how breathless I sounded. I hated that my nipples were hard. Hated that my pulse was erratic, heat crawling up my neck, turning me crimson with shame. Wetness pooled embarrassingly between my thighs, soaking into my shorts, and I hated myself for it.
Hated my body for choosing sensation over loyalty. Over logic. Over everything I built my life on.
He smiled slowly. That same infuriating, knowing smile. Like he could feel it all.
His cock twitched again, and my pulse jumped.
His thumb brushed the inside of my wrist once. Twice. Right over the pulse. Slow, steady circles. Where his fingers had already left red marks.
Then he loosened his grip, just enough.
I shoved him off and scrambled back. Got to my feet, chest heaving.
“Disappear,” I said, voice shaking despite my effort. “Disappear before I wake up.”
He watched me for a long second. Amusement flickered in his expression.
“I tried that once,” he said.
Then silence.
The storm outside shook the windows. We stood locked in silence. Neither of us moved. Neither surrendered. Lighting illuminated the sky once again, casting haunting shadows across the floor, while we stood there locked in the same stalemate we’d been trapped in for years.
I stormed back to my room and slammed the door so hard the frame rattled. I paced the room back and forth, folding already folded clothes, rearranging the room frantically at fucking 2 a.m. My body buzzed with leftover adrenaline.
Why’d he come back?
I collapsed into bed, sheets twisting around my legs, breath uneven. When I closed my eyes, memory dragged me under.
Two years ago. Sicily.
Romano was at my hip while I was passing the terrace. I heard voices.
“I have to go,” Santino was saying.
I froze in the hallway, unseen.
“Ronnie’s takeover is being challenged,” he continued.
“He needs reinforcement. It’s the least we can do after he helped us with Lorenzo.”
Dread settled heavily in my chest. I stepped onto the terrace.
“You’re leaving?”
Marcello looked at me. But my eyes were locked on Santino.
Marcello sighed. “I’ll leave you two to it.”
Santino smirked. “You want me to deal with fire alone?”
Marcello shot back without missing a beat. “You’re the one lighting it.”
He kissed my temple, taking Romano inside with him. I stood there, arms crossed, furious and not even sure why.
“It’s just for a couple of months,” Santino said.
“Why can’t Martin go?” I snapped. “He’s seen more war than you have.”
Santino exhaled slowly. “Ronnie doesn’t need muscle. He needs the brains.”
I rolled my eyes, but I knew that was true.
I hated that answer. I hated that it made sense. Martin was war, but Santino was information. And information won wars before they started.
I stepped forward and hugged him anyway because anger felt easier than admitting I didn’t want him to go.
“I’ll miss you.”
His arms came around me slower.
“Yeah,” he murmured after a beat. “Me too.”
“Leave your bike,” I muttered into his shirt.
He huffed. “And risk you riding it and killing yourself? No chance.”
I smacked his chest.
We sat side by side, watching the sun slowly disappear into the sea.
“Will you be in touch?” I asked.
“I promise.”
“And if you don’t?”
He smiled sideways. “You can kill me.”