I look at the reflection in the dusty glass of the window. My own face stares back. Rugged messy beard. Dark eyes. The hard lines of a man who has lived his entire life in the shadows of a war.
Behind me, the reflection of the bed. Gemma is curled into a tight ball, wrapped in my shirt.
She is beautiful. Curvy, soft, vibrant. Everything I am not.
She is the only real thing in a world I’ve turned to ash.
And I am going to drag her down into the dark with me, because I refuse to let her go.
My jaw locks. Heat climbs the back of my neck. The possessive rage flares again, a sharp spike.
I turn away from the window and begin to pace the perimeter of the room. Checking the oak door. Checking the locked adjoining door to the next suite. Checking the air vents.
Hypervigilance. The tactical armor sliding back into place.
But it is cracked. The walls I’ve spent twenty years building have finally been breached.
The scent of sweet orange and warm cumin lingers in the air. A constant reminder of the woman sleeping on the bed. The woman who just shattered my control with a single kiss.
I rub the knotwork compass on my arm. The ink is cold.
I stop at the foot of the bed.
She is breathing evenly now. Asleep.
I reach out and carefully pull the rotting velvet drape off a nearby chair, shaking the dust from it. I drape it over her, a makeshift blanket against the freezing draft.
My knuckles graze her calf. The skin is warm. Soft.
Mine,I whisper into the darkness.
The city of Chicago slumbers outside. The Bellanti family plots their next move. The Costa brothers prepare for war.
But inside this sealed, forgotten fourteenth-floor suite, there is only the guard and his obsession.
And the agonizing wait for the dawn.
Time loses its rhythm in the silence of the suite. The moonlight shifts across the floorboards, illuminating the layers of dust. The silence is complete, broken only by the wind howling against the glass.
I sit on the floor by the door, my knees pulled up, my combat knife resting loosely in my palm. The metal is a comfort. A familiar weight.
I listen to her breathe. In. Out. A steady, rhythmic pulse that tethers me to reality.
My mind drifts. The shadows in the corners of the room seem to lengthen and writhe. The exhaustion of the day, the adrenaline crash, the agonizing sexual frustration — it all coalesces into a fog in my brain.
Phantom scents begin to creep in.
The smell of roasted beans and cinnamon. No, that's not right. That's a memory of a place I've never been, a dream of a normal life. I shake my head.
The sharp tang of gun oil drifting up from her hair — my scent, transferred to her skin during the chaos of the alley.
But underneath it…
Cordite.
The acrid, burning smell of fired rounds.
My nostrils flare. The walls of the penthouse blur. I grip the handle of the knife so tightly the metal bites into my calloused skin.
