CHAPTER NINE #2
When skin finally met skin, the heat between them was staggering.
Sandro hovered over her, his broad, muscular chest heaving, his eyes burning with a dark, consuming fire as he looked down at her naked body.
He traced the line of her jaw, his touch incredibly reverent, before his mouth trailed down her throat, pressing hot, wet kisses over her collarbone, the swell of her breasts, down to the flat plane of her stomach.
Zina arched off the mattress, her fingers digging into his broad shoulders, a soft, ragged gasp escaping her lips.
"Zina," Sandro breathed, his voice thick and rough with desire, positioning himself between her thighs. He looked deep into her eyes, stripped of his formidable armor, his restraint hanging by a thread.
"Please," she whispered, her eyes shining with unshed tears, pulling him down by the back of his neck. "Sandro, please."
He entered her with a slow, agonizing slide that made them both cry out softly into the quiet room.
The physical connection was so profound, it felt like a collision of souls.
Zina held onto him with everything she had, her nails biting into his back, matching his deep, powerful thrusts with a desperate rhythm of her own.
She wanted to meld into him, to erase the world outside this room, to burn away the lies and the impending goodbyes until there was nothing left but the two of them.
The lovemaking was raw, and devouring. The sound of their breathing and their soft, breathless words of adoration filled the dark suite.
Sweat slicked their skin as Sandro drove into her, his control shattered by the overwhelming emotion she pulled from him.
Zina wrapped her arms and legs around him, anchoring herself to his solid frame, riding the crest of the intense, blinding pleasure until it broke over her in a shattering wave, pulling Sandro over the edge with her.
He collapsed against her, burying his face in her hair, holding her so tightly she could feel the frantic, beating of his heart against her own.
As they lay tangled in the silk sheets, the quiet settling over the room, Zina closed her eyes, a single tear slipping down her cheek into the darkness. She held him, committing the perfection of this moment to memory, bracing herself for the heartbreak to come.
***
Three hours later, the illusion of peace was violently incinerated.
The sharp, concussive blast of an explosion rocked the foundation of the Palazzo, rattling the tall windows of the suite. A second later, the shrieking wail of the estate’s alarms pierced the silence, followed by the rapid crackle of automatic gunfire echoing from the lower levels.
Sandro was out of bed before Zina even fully opened her eyes. The Don of Milan moved with practiced speed, pulling on a pair of dark trousers and grabbing a suppressed pistol from the biometric safe beside the nightstand.
Zina sat up, the blood draining from her face.
The smell of smoke and cordite drifted through the vents.
In a fraction of a second, Zina was no longer in Milan.
She was back in the grand hall of the Kazan estate.
She was smelling her father’s blood. She was hearing the Italian mercenary ordering his men to hunt her twelve-year-old brother.
The PTSD hit her like a physical blow, a cold, paralyzing spike of terror that froze the breath in her lungs.
"Stay here! Lock the door!" Sandro barked, racking the slide of his pistol, his eyes wild with adrenaline.
"No!" Zina shouted, scrambling out of bed.
She grabbed Sandro’s discarded white shirt from the floor, pulling it on and grabbed his shorts pulling them on, her bare legs flashing in the dim light. The paralyzing terror instantly transmuted into a kinetic energy. She could not hide in the dark while a family was slaughtered again.
Sandro didn't have time to argue. He threw open the doors, stepping out onto the expansive upper gallery that overlooked the grand foyer of the estate. Zina followed right behind him, her bare feet silent on the marble.
The scene below was chaos.
Moretti guards were scrambling, returning fire down the eastern corridors, but the true horror was unfolding directly in the center of the grand foyer. A highly coordinated strike team in unmarked tactical gear had bypassed the outer perimeter. They had cornered Lucia, Rosa, and Francesca.
The three Moretti women were forced to their knees on the marble floor. Five heavily armed mercenaries stood over them, the barrels of their submachine guns pressed directly against the backs of their heads.
Sandro froze at the railing, his weapon raised, his entire body rigid with suffocating helplessness.
Across the foyer, Matteo stepped out from the shadows of a marble pillar, his gun drawn.
But Matteo was equally paralyzed. They had the drop on them.
If Sandro or Matteo fired a single shot, the gunmen would instantly pull their triggers, executing Sandro’s mother, sister, or grandmother in a fraction of a second.
The radio on Sandro’s hip crackled with frantic chatter—Vittorio and Antonio were pinned down under suppressing fire in the west wing.
It was a perfect stalemate. And the Moretti women were going to die.
Zina stepped up to the railing beside Sandro, looking down at the executioners.
The conflict tore through her soul with agonizing force. If she acted, if she revealed what she truly was, the civilian facade would shatter permanently. Sandro would know she had lied. He would know she had deceived him. He might break things off.
But as she looked at Sandro’s face—at the devastation of a man watching his family seconds away from execution—she knew she had no choice. She could not stand by and let him lose his world the way she had lost hers. She could not survive another massacre.
Zina stepped directly in front of him, physically blocking his view of the guns pointed at his family.
"Sandro. Listen to me," Zina commanded, her voice shaking as every wall she had ever built crumbled away.
Sandro’s eyes darted to her, wide with frantic confusion.
Zina reached out, her hands gripping both sides of his face, anchoring his panicked gaze to hers.
"You brought me back to life," she whispered, her voice fracturing with the sheer weight of what she was about to sacrifice.
"You are the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me, and I love you. I love you with everything I have."
Sandro stared at her in utter shock. The world was ending, his family was about to be executed, and the woman he loved was delivering a raw, heartbreaking confession in the middle of a warzone.
Zina let go of his face, taking a slow step backward toward the edge of the balcony. The devastating vulnerability vanished from her eyes, replaced instantly by the ice-cold focus of an assassin.
"Whatever I do next," she breathed, the words catching in her throat, "please do not hate me."