Chapter 25
POV: Amanda
I ran the scenario in my head a thousand times—was I insane? A cop risking everything for the man whose world had taken my father? For the organization I’d spent years trying to bring down? I’d only been inside their life for a week, and I was already mad as hell in love with him.
The casino doors swung open under my hand. I walked into the heat and noise wearing silver, like a shard of moonlight shoved into daylight. My hair was a little wrong. My mascara had bled at the edges. None of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was him.
Heads turned. Conversations slipped into silence like someone had cut the lights. I felt the eyes—curious, reverent, dangerous—trail me as I moved through the room. Whispers rolled like surf.
“La Volpe is here,” someone murmured.
The name landed between us like a thrown stone. He was walking beside Vittorio Mancini, shoulders precise under his suit, the picture of controlled menace—until those words hit him. Adrian stopped. The world around him narrowed to the single line of my approach.
He turned, slow, as if the movement hurt.
Seeing him in that moment I forgot everything I’d rehearsed.
He was perfect in a tailored suit, every line and shadow hard and beautiful.
His light-brown eyes found mine and—God—there was everything in them at once: pain, betrayal, hunger, disbelief, a raw kind of longing that made my knees go soft where I stood.
I should have hesitated. I should have stopped, taken one last breath and walked away like a professional who’d done her job and paid the price. Instead I kept walking toward him, the air between us charged. I could feel the warmth of his body before my fingers even reached his chest.
My hands landed on his jacket, flat, steady. He flinched—just once—like he hadn’t expected contact. I let my forehead hover near his ear and lowered my voice, every word deliberate.
“I need to talk to you.”
He inhaled, sharp and ragged. For a second he was a man about to explode—anger and something else making his jaw work.
“Why are you here?”
His voice wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It cut straight through me.
“Are you clipped? Bugged? Did you bring them with you?”
I shook my head, breath burning. “No. Search me. Strip me. Do whatever you need. But there’s something in my purse. Something you need to see.”
His eyes were merciless. “You don’t get to need anything from me anymore.”
The words hit like a slap.
I stepped closer anyway, reckless, heart in my throat. I rose on my toes and kissed him. Not soft. Not gentle. A desperate, claiming kiss that tasted like regret and hunger and everything I’d broken.
For a heartbeat, he didn’t respond.
Then his hand fisted in my hair, pain and desire tangled in the grip. He kissed me back like he wanted to erase me. Then he pulled away, breathing hard, eyes furious.
“Don’t use that,” he said hoarsely. “You lost the right to touch me when you lied.”
His eyes searched my face like he was hunting for a trick. I leaned closer until my lips almost brushed his ear, and the words came out, small and raw. “Please. For the love you had for me—let me show you. After this, I’ll leave. I swear. You’ll never have to see me again. Just—let me show you.”
The hesitation in him was a thing you could slice, but something in me—my pleading, the way my voice shook—hit whatever fragile corner of him still believed me. He looked at Vittorio for one hot second, then back to me. His jaw clenched, decision hardening.
Finally, he nodded once. “One minute. After that, you walk out and never come back.”
“Later.” He turned to Vittorio with the kind of cold civility that kept people in their lanes. “I’ll speak with you later.” The words were a promise and a threat all at once.
He took my hand. His fingers closed around mine—not possessive, not yet—but decisive. He led me to the small service door behind the private booths, away from the chandeliers and the cameras and the hungry eyes of the room. His hand on my back pushed me forward; the crowd’s murmur thinned behind us.
The door clicked shut. The noise of the casino sank to a distant throb.
Suddenly the room felt both enormous and unbearably small—two people and a hundred thousand unsaid things stuffed between us.
We were alone. It felt like the first clean air I’d breathed in days and like the tightest trap I’d ever crawled into.
He was staring at me. Staring like every piece of him wanted to believe me but didn’t know if he could. I saw it in his jaw, in the way his hands flexed at his sides. He was wondering if I was clipped. If I’d walked in here wired. If I was about to hand him to the wolves.
“Turn around,” he said.
The command was quiet. Unemotional.
I swallowed and did as he said.
I heard his footsteps before I felt him. Slow. Measured. Controlled. Every step deliberate.
His hands didn’t hesitate.
He took my purse first, emptied it onto the table with military precision. Phone. Lipstick. Papers. The files I’d brought for him. He flicked through everything, eyes sharp, searching.
Then he moved behind me.
His fingers brushed my hair aside, exposing my neck. The touch was clinical, detached—nothing like the man who used to kiss this skin like it was sacred.
He checked behind my ear. My collarbone. The line of my jaw.
“Lift your arms.”
I obeyed.
His hands skimmed my ribs, my sides, the small of my back. He pressed two fingers beneath the strap of my dress, searching for hidden wires, transmitters, anything that would prove I was still lying.
His touch was methodical. Professional. Cold.
But his breath betrayed him.
It brushed my skin. Uneven. Heavy.
He crouched, fingers sliding down my thighs, checking the hem of my dress, the holster strapped to my leg. He traced the lace of my panties, paused, then continued—controlled, but tight with tension.
When he stood again, his hand rested on my hip for a second too long.
Then he stepped away.
“No wire,” he said flatly.
I turned to face him.
He didn’t look relieved. He looked… furious that a part of him wanted to be.
“That doesn’t mean you’re not lying,” he added.
“I know.”
My fingers went to the straps of my dress.
He stilled. “You don’t have to—”
“I do.”
I pulled the straps down.
His gaze sharpened, but he didn’t stop me. He didn’t move.
The silk slid over my skin, pooling at my feet. Red lace clung to me now, nothing else. I stood there exposed, trembling—not from cold, not from shame, but from the weight of his eyes.
“I came alone,” I said quietly. “No handler. No team. No contingency plan. I burned every bridge to get here.”
His jaw clenched.
“If this is a trap,” I continued, “it’s the worst one the Bureau has ever built. Because I lose everything if you don’t believe me.”
Silence stretched between us.
He stepped forward and picked up the dress.
And then, with infuriating tenderness, he dressed me.
His hands brushed my thighs as he pulled the silk up, his fingers grazing my skin like he was memorizing it and hating himself for it. He slid the straps over my shoulders, adjusted the fabric, smoothing it against my waist.
It felt like being wrapped in restraint.
When he finished, he looked into my eyes.
“This is not forgiveness,” he said quietly.
“This is you getting one chance to prove you’re not still lying to me.”
My chest ached.
“If you are,” he added, voice low and lethal, “I will destroy you myself.”
Then he stepped back.
“Show me.”
I swallowed hard, the relief hitting me like a wave. My hands shook as I reached for the purse, pulled out the papers, the files I’d risked everything to bring him. I laid them on the table between us, my voice low and rough.
“And now,” I said, pushing them toward him, “you need to see what the Mancinis are doing to you.”