Chapter 5
PRIYA
The phone vibrates against the vinyl of the therapy table.
The sound is a harsh, mechanical buzz that cuts through the heavy air of the clinic.
Five seconds ago, Nico's hand was between my thighs.
I was melting into a puddle of raw, mindless desperation under the calloused slide of his fingers.
Now, the atmosphere in the room snaps like a dry twig under a combat boot.
His posture changes instantly. The hungry man who just brought me to a violent climax vanishes. He snatches the encrypted phone from the table. The screen casts a blue glow over the angles of his face. His eyes scan the text.
The muscle ticks in his cheek.
He shoves the phone into his pocket and grabs his tactical rig from the chair. He moves with a terrifying economy of motion. No wasted steps. No hesitation. He is a chambered round.
He throws his jacket over his shoulders, ignoring the untreated bullet graze I was supposed to be examining. He steps into my space and grips my upper arm. His fingers are tight, bordering on painful, but completely steady.
"We’re leaving.”
The command leaves no room for debate. He doesn't ask. He dictates.
I blink away the haze of my orgasm. My brain struggles to catch up to the sudden shift in reality.
I slide off the table on shaking legs. My slacks drop the rest of the way to the linoleum.
I kick free of them in a panicked daze, leaving them and my boots on the floor.
My legs are trembling beneath the hem of his bloodstained tactical shirt.
I’m wearing nothing but torn lace and a mafia enforcer’s bloodstained tactical shirt.
"My clinic," I start to say, my professional instincts warring with the primal panic radiating from his grip. "I have to lock the doors. The alarm—"
"The alarm doesn’t matter.” He drags me toward the back exit. "Walk fast, Priya. Don’t stop. Don’t look out the front windows."
The tone of his voice is a bucket of ice water down my spine. This is not the heat he used while mapping the sensitivity of my body. This is terrifying authority.
We move down the narrow hallway toward the alley exit. My bare feet slap against the cold linoleum. His scent surrounds me, heavy and dominant in the sterile air of my clinic. He keeps his body positioned slightly behind mine, a human shield made of muscle and violence.
He kicks the heavy steel security door open. The cold Chicago morning hits my bare legs like a physical slap.
"Get in the car." He shoves me toward my sedan idling in the alley.
I scramble into the leather seat. The engine is already purring. He must have remote-started my car the second he read that text. He stalks around the front of the hood, his eyes scanning the shadows, his right hand resting casually over the heavy lump tucked beneath his jacket.
He slides into the driver's seat. The doors lock with a sharp thud.
Tires screech from the main street. The sound of engines roaring to a sudden halt echoes through the brick canyon of the alleyway. Doors slam. Boots hit the pavement.
My clinic. They are at the front of my clinic.
The phantom smell of smoke coats my tongue.
Ash and burning drywall. The memory of the Bellanti firebombing claws up my throat.
I rebuilt from the ashes. I spent years constructing a rigid, predictable life to ensure I would never be collateral damage again.
Now, armed men are swarming my front door.
My hands grip the edge of the leather seat. A harsh tremor works its way up my arms.
Nico slams my sedan into reverse. We shoot backward down the narrow alley at a terrifying speed. The compact car frame whines, but he guides the wheel effortlessly, relying entirely on the mirrors and his own lethal instincts.
"Who is it?" My voice sounds thin, foreign to my own ears.
"Bellanti strike force." He spins the steering wheel. The sedan whips around the corner, tires protesting against the frozen asphalt. "Vincenzo intercepted their comms." A beat too long. "They moved on the building."
"To my clinic." Anger cuts through the rising panic. Good. Anger is useful. Anger is a shield. "You brought a mafia war to my physical therapy clinic."
"The war was already at your door before I got there.
" He accelerates down a side street, weaving flawlessly through the thin morning traffic.
"The Bellantis own the building next to yours.
I didn't put them there. Let them hunt me.
But your clinic is sitting against their operation, and that makes you exposed. "
"I don't do crossfire." My fingernails dig into my palms. "I survived a Bellanti firebombing once. I'm not doing it again because some stubborn mafia goon decided to play bodyguard."
He cuts a sharp glance toward me. The streetlights flash across his face, illuminating the harsh stubble along his jaw and the geometric ink wrapping his throat. He doesn't apologize. He doesn't offer empty reassurances.
"You are not collateral, Priya." His voice is low and lethal. "You’re mine. They will burn before they touch you."
The certainty in his declaration leaves me speechless. He states it like a law of physics. Gravity pulls down. Water is wet. Priya belongs to Nico.
He thinks one growled order is enough to make me obey.
Please. I spend my days forcing stubborn, overgrown athletes to do their mobility stretches.
I'm immune to meatheads. Except this meathead just made me scream on a therapy table, and he currently looks perfectly capable of dismantling a tank with his bare hands.
We tear through the South Side of the city.
He takes a labyrinth of side streets, doubling back twice to ensure we are not followed.
The bleeding graze on his shoulder has soaked through the rough bandage he must have slapped on himself, staining the collar of his jacket, but he moves the steering wheel with zero hesitation.
As a physical therapist, I can see the subtle compensation in his left deltoid. He is in pain. He is ignoring it.
He pulls into the alley behind my apartment building.
My sanctuary. The one place I thought was safe until I found him lurking in the abandoned second-floor unit this morning.
"We're stopping here?" I stare at the brick exterior. "If they know who you are, won't they come here next?"
"The phone is currently in a garbage truck heading south." He cuts the engine. "My secondary comms are ghosted. The perimeter here is secure. Move."
He is out of the vehicle in a flash. He opens my door and hauls me out into the biting wind. His shirt flaps around my thighs. I wrap my arms around myself to ward off the cold.
He escorts me swiftly through the rear entrance, rushing up the internal concrete stairwell.
We bypass the ground-floor landing, stopping one flight up at the reinforced steel vault door he installed in the second-floor unit.
His new fortress. My own apartment sits directly above it, on the third floor.
He punches a code into a keypad. The deadbolts retract with a series of loud, mechanical clacks. He shoves the door open and pushes me inside, stepping in right behind me and slamming the door shut. He throws three separate manual locks.
The space is a sensory shock.
What was supposed to be a vacant, dusty apartment is a high-tech war room.
He must have had a crew working it since before dawn— six monitors already cover the far living room wall.
The street, the alley, the stairwell, the roof, the hallway outside my third-floor door.
He has eyes on every inch of my existence.
A metal desk in the center, littered with keyboards, hard drives, and tactical gear. An assault rifle rests against the wall. The air smells of hot electronics, gun oil, and him.
He drops his sidearm onto the desk. He sheds his jacket, wincing imperceptibly as the fabric pulls against his torn shoulder. The bloody bandage is a stark white contrast against the tribal ink covering his arms.
He walks to the far window. He shifts the blinds a fraction of an inch, peering out into the street. He stands there in silence. A lethal gargoyle guarding his newly claimed territory.
He is waiting for me to break.
He is waiting for the tears. For the hysterical accusations. For the demands to be let go. He expects me to scream at him for invading my life, for hacking my building, for dragging me into the middle of a twenty-year blood feud between criminal empires.
He expects me to act like a victim.
I refuse.
I take a slow, deliberate breath. The scent of my own arousal mixes with the metallic tang of his blood in the air. I force my shoulders to drop. I lock my knees. I rebuild broken bodies. I thrive on structure. I thrive on control.
This man is a walking incarnation of chaos. He is the violence I have spent my entire adult life trying to avoid.
Staring at his broad, scarred back, I don’t feel fear.
I feel an overwhelming, terrifying pull.
He didn’t abandon me at the clinic. He didn’t use me as a shield. He put himself between me and the bullets. He brought me to his fortress. He built a surveillance network exclusively to watch my door. It is obsessive. It is unhinged.
It is the most fiercely protected I have ever been in my life.
I cross the dark room. The floorboards are cold against my bare feet.
"You’re bleeding," I say. My voice is steady. Calm. Clinical.
He doesn't turn around. His hands rest on the windowsill. "It’s a scratch.”
"It’s a gunshot wound that you keep aggravating because you refuse to stabilize the joint." I stop two feet behind him. "Sit down."
He finally turns. The pale glow from the security monitors catches the sharp angles of his face. His eyes are unreadable. He assesses me, searching for the panic he assumes is hiding just beneath the surface.
"You should be terrified, Priya." His voice is a low gravel rasp. "Those men at the clinic were not there to rob the place. They were an execution squad. My family is at war. My world is composed of blood and collateral damage."
"I know."