I kiss her. Right there in the middle of the Bellanti-fronted gallery, six feet from the man whose phone we came here to clone. My lips press hers, slow and deliberate at first—selling the cover—and then she gasps against my mouth and the calculation evaporates. Her lips part. Her hand fists in the lapel of my jacket. The kiss stops being a performance somewhere between her second breath and her third. The scent of mint and sweet basil floods my senses. The taste of champagne. The press of her tongue against mine. The soft, helpless sound she makes when I bite her lower lip. Everything else—the gallery, Romano, Rourke's associates, the entire Bellanti operation—narrows to background data I am no longer prioritizing.
I pull back a fraction. Her pupils are blown wide. Her lips are wet. The fingers fisted in my lapel haven't released.
"Cover," I rasp against her mouth, mostly to remind myself.
"Cover," she agrees, breathless. The word is a lie. We both know it.
I straighten my shoulders. I turn toward Romano with my arm still locked around her waist, her body still pressed flush against mine.
Romano is staring. His eyes flick from me to her and back. The slow assessing drag is gone. In its place: the careful wariness of a man who just watched the Costa fixer set the terms of an engagement he was not invited to negotiate.
"Romano," I say. My voice is perfectly even. The kiss was the prologue. The actual operation begins now.
5
Natalia
The oak doorof Enzo's bedroom slams shut, sealing us inside the fortress of the Costa compound. The metallic snick of the deadbolt echoes like a gunshot in the suffocating silence. By the time Enzo’s bedroom door slams shut behind us, Romano’s phone has been cloned, the network keys are on the war-room server, and three hours of Bellanti-fronted smiles are finally over. The operation hit its objectives. We survived the slow, strategic circling through the gallery, the champagne, the modern art, and every Bellanti-adjacent smile aimed our way. We survived the kiss he pressed onto my mouth in front of Romano, the one that quit being a cover story the second his hand slid to the base of my neck and stayed there. We did not survive with his legendary composure intact.
Enzo stands rigid against the wood of the door. His ribs heave with every ragged intake of oxygen. The top two buttons of his tailored black dress shirt are torn open, the silk ruined when I fisted his lapel in the gallery and refused to let go after the kiss broke. His hair is a mess. My fingers destroyed his immaculate styling somewhere between the gallery exit and the compound gates. He stares at the opposite wall, refusing to look at me. He drags the heel of his hand along his salt-and-pepper beardwith jerky, uncoordinated movements. The great Enzo Costa, the untouchable mafia fixer who calculates every variable on a spreadsheet, is glitching.
He wants to retreat behind the ledger in his head, into the side of him that runs the room with terms and contingencies. He wants to lock away the man who just kissed me senseless in front of Romano and then drove the entire way home with his thumb tracing slow, dangerous circles against the inside of my wrist. Please. I spend my days in glass boardrooms, cleaning up the catastrophic messes made by arrogant, wealthy men. I negotiate with sociopaths for a living. I am absolutely not letting this specific monster retreat behind his walls.
"The performance is over, Natalia." His voice is gravel and sandpaper, scraping raw against the quiet room.
I kick off the designer stilettos, my arches screaming after three hours of dancing on marble. The heels hit the plush Persian rug with a soft, dismissive thud. I walk directly toward him. I do not stop when his shoulders tense. I do not stop when his calculating eyes finally snap to mine, burning with a fury that instantly annihilates my corporate-lawyer cynicism.
"Is it?" I ask. My voice remains deceptively steady, betraying the chaotic hurricane tearing through my ribs. "Because nobody is watching us right now, Enzo. There are no Bellanti spies hiding under your king-sized bed. There is no cover story to maintain in this room."
He swallows hard. His throat bobs. "Natalia. Stop walking."
I take another deliberate step. I stop mere inches from his chest. The intoxicating scent of sandalwood and whiskey crashes into my senses, overriding my logic. This man treats the entire city of Chicago like a violent chessboard. He treats people like disposable pieces on a board. But right now, his long fingers are shaking. He wants me so badly he is physically vibrating with the excruciating effort to hold back.
I place my palms flat against his chest. The searing heat of his skin burns through the fine silk of his ruined shirt. Beneath my fingers, the skin of his chest is hot to the touch.
"You gave me strict orders to play a role tonight." I lift my chin to meet his furious, starving stare. "You told me to convince the entire Bellanti network you are completely obsessed with me. You did a really good job selling the lie in that alcove. But we are home now. So tell me to step back, Enzo. Use that precise, contractual voice of yours and tell me this fake engagement is still just a clause we signed off on."
A low, dangerous noise erupts from deep within him. His legendary composure cracks, giving way to something far more lethal.
His hands slam onto my hips, gripping the curve of my waist with a punishing, desperate strength. He lifts me off the floor. My back hits the solid oak of the bedroom door with a thud. His mouth crashes down on mine.
There is zero calculation in this kiss. There is only raw possession. His lips part mine brutally. His tongue sweeps inside my mouth, tasting, claiming, demanding absolute surrender. I open for him immediately, offering no resistance. My arms wrap tightly around his neck. I tangle my fingers deep into his salt-and-pepper waves, pulling his face closer, demanding more pressure.
He devours my mouth with the starving desperation of a man who has denied himself sustenance for a decade. I taste the expensive whiskey from the gala. I taste the sharp, metallic tang of his aggressive restraint finally shattering into a million jagged pieces. The cynical woman who never trusts a man's word is on her knees somewhere in the back of my skull, screaming. The mafia fixer is rewriting every clause she lived by.
He walks us backward toward the mahogany king bed in the center of the room. He never breaks the devastating kiss.His strides are long, predatory, and impatient. My legs wrap instinctively around his waist, locking my ankles tightly behind his back. The friction of his hard body grinding aggressively against my arousal sends a sharp, agonizing ache straight to my pussy. The diamond on my left hand—his mother’s engagement ring—scrapes against the muscles of his neck. The stone is a constant reminder of the lethal world I just willingly surrendered to.
He tosses me onto the center of the mattress. The plush, dark duvet swallows my back. Enzo stands over me, a towering monument of violence and raw masculine need. He rips his silk shirt off his body. The expensive buttons snap and scatter across the hardwood floor like hail.
His chest is all lethal, controlled muscle, marked in places by a life that has never allowed softness to survive. The lean muscle stretches tightly over his rapidly heaving ribs. The salt-and-pepper at his jaw and along the dusting on his chest makes him look untamed in a way the suits usually hide. He is a terrifying, beautiful monster, and he is focused on me.
He crawls over my body. His knees bracket my thighs, pinning me to the mattress. "You push." His voice is a dark, rough command, vibrating with primal anger and lust. "You push and push until my logic shatters. You are an absolute menace, Natalia."
"And you are a coward if you stop now," I throw back at him. My sassy edge is a lifelong defense mechanism, but right now, it only throws premium gasoline on his raging fire.
"Signed." The single word erupts from him. It is not a question. It is not a negotiation. It is a clause closing around me. "You are on the books, Natalia. My woman."
His large, heavily calloused hands glide over my ribs, mapping the dramatic flare of my hips. He worships my curves like they are the only religion that makes sense to his fixer'smind. He traces the swell of my breasts, his eyes burning with reverence.
