Chapter 10
NICO
She steps into my arms. The impact hits harder than any bullet I have taken. Her hands slide up my back, fingertips digging into the bare, sweat-slicked skin of my shoulders. She is not trembling. She is solid. Real. Mine.
The Costa keycard is heavy in her pocket.
The plastic rectangle is dangerous to anyone outside the family, a target painted directly on her back, but she took it.
She didn’t throw it back in my face. She didn’t run for the door.
She stood her ground in the wreckage of my violent life and chose to walk straight into the center of it.
Her scent hits me first.Jasmine. Warm cardamom.
It obliterates the metallic tang of fresh blood and the bitter sting of soot clinging to my skin.
I bury my face in her neck. Her skin is scorching hot against my cold, dirt-streaked jaw.
I drag my nose along the curve of her throat, inhaling the perfection of her.
My arms wrap around her waist. I crush her against me.
There is no space left between us. Every line of my body molds against the soft, rich curves of hers.
The decades of ice coating my veins shatter.
The cold, mechanical thing I built to survive the slaughter of my family dies right here in the hallway of my safehouse.
I lift her. She doesn't hesitate. Her legs wrap tightly around my hips. Her thighs lock me in.
Mine. Finally.
I carry her away from the war room. The surveillance monitors are still blinking with the live feeds of the ruined Bellanti armory.
The street outside is crawling with cops and rival hitmen.
The Chicago underworld is detonating, and the Costa compound is still bleeding from tonight's breach. I don’t care.
The world can burn to ash. Let it burn. I only care about the woman whose legs are locked around my waist.
I walk down the narrow, dimly lit corridor of the safehouse. My boots hit the concrete floor with heavy, measured thuds. I bypass the kitchen. I bypass the bedroom. A bed is too soft for what I need to do to her. A bed is for sleeping. I'm not going to let her sleep.
I reach the heavy steel door disguised at the very back of the unit.
This vacant building had been nothing more than dead space until I turned it into a fortress overnight, fortifying every weak point between her and the street.
This inner vault is the one room where I store my contingency assets, and it holds the pure, unadulterated truth of what I am.
I punch my master code into the encrypted panel, unlocking the heavy steel vault door, and shove it open with my boot. It swings wide with a dense metallic groan.
I carry her inside. The air in the sealed vault is colder than the rest of the apartment, insulated by reinforced concrete.
It smells of gun solvent, machine oil, and cold iron.
Fluorescent tubes hum overhead, casting harsh white glare over racks of matte-black AR-15s, stacks of olive-drab ammunition crates, and rows of tactical body armor hung like shed skins.
This is my true home. The theater of my violence.
In the center of the room sits a massive, oak workbench. The wood is deeply scarred with knife marks, gouges from gunsmithing, and stains of spilled oil.
I set her down on the edge of the workbench.
She sits there surrounded by the implements of death. The bright, warm color of her skin is a shocking contrast against the cold, brutalist steel and shadow of the armory.She looks like a goddess dragged into a war zone. She looks like she is exactly where she belongs.
I step between her thighs. Her knees lock against my hips. I grip the edge of the wooden bench on either side of her, leaning in close. My face is inches from hers.
Her eyes stare up at me. They are fast and assessing, tracking the tension locking my jaw. She knows exactly how to read the human body. She knows every muscle in my back is coiled tight enough to snap bone.
"You took the card," I say. My voice is harsh and uneven. It bounces off the concrete walls.
"I took it," she confirms. Her chin tilts up. Stubborn. Fierce.
"You know what it means."
"It means I'm not collateral." Her palms flatten against the center of my bare chest. Heat sears into my skin. "It means I'm not a hostage you keep locked in a tower while you go out and bleed."
Mine. Forever.
"It means you're mine." The words tear out of my throat. "It means you belong to the Costa family now. It means every enemy I have is yours. You step out that door, you carry my name like a target. You're never walking away from this."
"I'm not trying to walk away, Nico."
Her thumbs trace the ridges of the scars carved across my bare chest. The simple, domestic gesture against the brutal map of my history short-circuits my brain.
I need her to understand. I need her to know the gravity of what she has just done to me.
"Twenty years," I tell her. My voice drops to a lethal, quiet register.
"I was fifteen years old when my father Carlo was lured to a South Side warehouse and executed.
They gave me silence like I was still a child.
They kept the details from me. I spent the next twenty years making sure nobody ever treated me like a liability again.
I turned myself into a weapon. Matteo gives an order, I execute it.
Vincenzo finds a target, I eliminate it.
I am the gun they point at the Bellantis. "
I reach up and grip her wrists. I pull her hands off my chest and press her palms flat against my jaw. The warmth is agonizing.
"I haven't chosen a single fucking thing for myself in two decades," I confess. The truth bleeds out of me, raw and feral. "Not the family. Not the war. Not the job. I just did what was necessary to keep my brothers alive. I lived in the dark. I watched the perimeter."
I lean closer. My nose brushes hers.
"You." The word is a vow. A threat. A claim. "You're the first thing I chose. I saw you walk out of your clinic, and I stopped doing my job. I abandoned the mission. I built a fortress under your floorboards. You are the only thing in this godforsaken world that belongs to me."
A fierce fire flares in her eyes.
"Then claim me," she demands.
The command snaps the last remaining thread of my control.
I crush my mouth against hers. The kiss is brutal.
Devastation. I force her lips apart with the aggression of my tongue.
I taste the sweet, spicy warmth of her mouth.
She tastes like ruin. She tastes like salvation.
She kisses me back with exactly the same amount of violence, her hands tangling in my hair, gripping the strands tight enough to sting.
I tear my mouth away. I need skin.
My hands grip the hem of the shirt she is wearing. It is the shirt I gave her after the clinic. Bloodstained. Too large. Temporary. My fingers find the master keycard tucked against her chest in the breast pocket. I slide the heavy plastic free and set it on the scarred oak beside her hip.
Nothing of value gets destroyed in what I’m about to do to her. Then I grip the fabric in both fists and rip it upward. She raises her arms. I pull the shirt over her head and throw it blindly. It drapes over a rack of rifles with a soft rustle.
She is wearing nothing underneath.
The harsh fluorescent light of the armory spills over her bare breasts. They are heavy, full, and perfect. The peaks of her nipples are tight and pebble-hard in the cold air of the vault.
A ragged groan tears out of my throat. I drop to my knees on the cold concrete floor.
My hands grip her hips, pulling her forward to the very edge of the scarred workbench.
Her thighs fall open. I bury my face between her breasts.
My mouth opens over her left nipple. I suck it into my mouth, rolling the tight bud across my tongue.
She arches her back. A sharp, high moan escapes her lips.
The sound echoes off the steel walls, driving the madness deeper into my brain.
I move to the right breast. I bite down gently on the swell. My teeth drag against her skin, leaving a damp red mark. Claiming her. Marking her. Every inch of her skin has to carry the evidence of my mouth.
My hands slide down her waist, clamping onto the bare skin of her thighs. I grip the backs of her knees, ruthlessly pushing her legs as wide apart as her anatomy allows.
Her drenched, swollen pussy is completely exposed to my gaze.
She is slick. The heavy, sweet scent of her arousal cuts right through the chemical smell of the armory. The pink folds of her sex are glistening with her wetness. She is leaking for me. Ready for me.
I look up at her. Her eyes are entirely glazed with raw lust, her breathing coming in rapid, ragged gasps.
"Mine," I growl against her skin, leaving no room for doubt.
I lean forward, slamming my open mouth directly against her wet pussy.
She screams my name, her hands crashing down onto my shoulders as her nails dig deep into the bare, scarred muscle of my back.
My tongue lashes out, dragging the rough muscle aggressively straight up her soaking-wet pussy slit. She tastes like pure, concentrated sex. I lap up her overflowing fluids, my fingers digging deep into the soft flesh of her ass cheeks, locking her lower body completely immobile against my face.
I lock my lips directly onto the hard, swollen clit at the top of her pussy. I pull a hard vacuum, trapping the hypersensitive cluster of nerves between my lips and sucking brutally.
Her hips buck violently off the wooden workbench. "Nico. God, Nico."
I do not stop. I flick my tongue rapidly back and forth across her clit. The friction is relentless. She thrashes against my grip, her thighs clamping down around my ears, trying to crush my skull in her desperation. I welcome the pressure. I want her to break me.
I slide two fingers from my right hand down to the slick opening of her pussy. I push them inside her.