CHAPTER 21 #2
"He sold the Palermo docks for ten percent," I say, explaining the code. "That’s our family’s blood on those pages. He didn't just kill my family, Fiorella. He's killing yours, too."
She’s looking at her whole life unraveling under a tiny beam of light.
Her finger trembles as she reaches out and traces Alessio’s arrogant signature at the bottom of a shipping manifest. The cold paper.
Her ragged breath. The lie she grew up believing about Silvestri honor is dead and buried.
I lean in close. The heat coming off our bodies in this cramped space is electric. My breath hits her ear.
"We’re going to light a fire they can't put out," I tell her. I wipe the fog off the inside of the windshield with my hand and use my finger to trace a crude map of the Palermo port right on the damp glass. It squeaks under my skin. "I’m leaking this ledger to the Messina Don. It’ll start a civil war. While they’re shooting each other, we hit the main munitions warehouse.
Burn it down from the inside. I need you to tell me the gate codes.
We die together, or we walk away as ghosts. "
I wait for the tears. The panic. The defense of her bloodline. It doesn't come. She just stares at the smudge on the glass. She reaches up, wipes a streak of dirt off her own cheek with a hard, violent swipe of her hand, and points at my map.
"The main gate is a trap," she says. Her voice is ice.
Cold, sharp, and entirely devoid of the little rich girl I threw over my shoulder two nights ago.
"Use the service tunnel under the pier. He changes the codes every Tuesday.
I know the sequence." She looks at me, the moonlight carving her cheekbones into weapons.
"If we’re going to do this, we do it right. "
I just stare at her. She’s completely defected.
She’s handing me the keys to her brother's kingdom and telling me to burn it. The hatred I’ve carried for ten years gets swallowed whole by a sudden, violent obsession with the woman sitting next to me.
I don't just want her body anymore. I want her fucking soul.
Rain starts hitting the roof of the car.
Heavy drops sounding like bullets. The air crackles.
I reach out and grab her chin in a vice grip, forcing her to hold my gaze.
"You’re a dangerous woman, Fiorella Silvestri," I say, my voice dropping an octave. "I should have killed you the night of the ball. Now I don't think I can ever let you go."
The string snaps. I toss the ledger onto the dashboard, shove the console lid down, and grab her by the hips.
I drag her right over the plastic and gear shift, pulling her into my lap.
I don't give a fuck about the cramped cabin or the syndicate men a mile down the mountain.
Her knees crack against the steering wheel, and the horn lets out a short, muffled chirp.
"Come here," I command. "You’re mine. Do you understand? Don't you dare look away."
The silk of her dress tears as she straddles me.
Her burning skin presses against the cold, wet denim of my jeans.
Our breathing is a frantic, chaotic mess.
I crash my mouth down on hers. A brutal, punishing kiss.
My teeth catch her bottom lip, biting down until the metallic taste of blood coats my tongue.
She doesn't shrink back. She matches me, feral and starving, her hands ripping through my hair, pulling me closer.
The car rocks slightly on its suspension.
"Open for me," I growl against her mouth. "That’s it. Fight me. You taste like fire."
My hands roam over her, leaving dark, muddy fingerprints all over the pale, ruined silk on her back.
Sex and death, bleeding into one violent need to just feel alive.
I pull back. It takes every ounce of willpower I possess to tear my mouth away.
I’m panting like a fucking dog. I look out the window.
The searchlights are fading. Moving south.
Our window is opening. I drag the back of my hand across my mouth, smearing her blood and lipstick over my knuckles.
I push her off my lap, back into the passenger seat, my hands lingering heavy on her waist for a long second.
The cold air from the cracked window hits my sweat-drenched neck.
"Not here. Not yet," I tell her, shoving the SUV back into gear. "Fix your dress. We’re moving. I’m not finished with you."
I maneuver us out of the thicket and back onto the mountain road, keeping the headlights off until we clear the ridge.
As the tires grip the asphalt and the SUV resumes its steep, winding climb, I don't let the distance settle back in. My right hand leaves the shifter and goes straight back to her bare thigh. But it’s different this time.
Predatory. I slide my calloused palm upward, letting the rough skin snag on the delicate, torn silk of her slip.
I push higher, hitting the sensitive skin of her inner thigh.
My thumb hooks the lace edge of her panties, tracing the line with a slow, agonizing rhythm that makes her breath hitch in the dark.
I keep my left hand locked steady on the wheel, knuckles white as I take a blind hairpin turn.
"You’re still shaking, Fiorella," I murmur over the hum of the engine. "Let me give you something else to think about. Don't you dare close your eyes."
I hook two fingers under the elastic of her lace and pull it aside.
The second I touch her, I realize she is completely drenched.
Wet and slick. I let out a low, guttural groan that vibrates right through my chest. The adrenaline, the kill, the betrayal—it all funneled straight into this primal, desperate arousal.
I sink two fingers deep inside her, slicking them in her heat.
My eyes never leave the black road ahead.
I watch the empty asphalt while I fuck her with my hand.
Her head falls back against the headrest, her throat arched and exposed.
"Look at how wet you are for a killer," I taunt, my voice a rasp. "Is this what you wanted when you pulled that trigger? Tell me how it feels."
I pick up the pace, mimicking the straining, driving rhythm of the engine pushing us up the mountain.
My fingers plunge in and out of her relentlessly.
My thumb finds her clit, circling it with a hard, bruising pressure that forces a jagged moan out of her throat.
My jaw is locked so tight my teeth ache.
I’m fighting the wheel with one hand, steering us inches away from a sheer drop-off, while dismantling her with the other.
She reaches out blindly, grabbing my bicep.
Her nails dig deep into the leather of my jacket.
"That's it. Take it," I order, staring at the headlights cutting through the fog. "You’re going to come for me while I drive you into the mountains. Scream if you want. No one can hear you out here."
She shatters. She hits her peak with a violent, shuddering force that jolts her entire body against the seat.
Her core clamps down hard on my fingers, milking them in a desperate, greedy rhythm.
She tries to bite down on her lip to stop it, but a broken, high-pitched scream rips out of her anyway.
The cabin stinks of her release, heavy and sweet over the ozone.
I don't let up. I cruelly ride out the aftershocks, keeping my fingers deep and moving until she is completely spent, shaking like a leaf.
My grip on the steering wheel is so tight the leather actually creaks.
"Yes. Give it all to me," I say, my chest heaving. "You belong to the Ferraros now. Every scream, every drop. Don't move. Stay just like that."
I pull my fingers out slow. They glisten wet in the dim green glow of the dashboard.
Without saying a fucking word, I bring my hand up to my mouth.
I lick the slickness off my fingers, tasting the salt and sex, keeping my eyes deadlocked on the road.
A final claim. I drop my hand back to the steering wheel at ten and two.
The air in the cabin cools. Dawn starts bleeding a faint, sickly grey light over the peaks ahead.
Fiorella is slumped down in the leather, her eyes closed, her chest heaving as she tries to put her lungs back together.
"Sweet," I say, my voice finally leveling out. "We’re almost there. Sleep if you can. The real war starts at dawn."