"You think you can just buy my life for a few months." I glare up at him.
"I am compensating you for your specialized skills."
"I don't even know you."
"You know my bank account. You know my family's history. That is sufficient for the parameters of the operation."
"Stop using that word." I snap, jabbing a finger toward his chest. I stop just short of touching the open skin of his collar. "I am a woman, not one of your controlled variables. If we do this—if I actually agree to this absolute insanity—we do it my way. No treating me like a soldier. No barking orders at me in public. If we are supposed to be in love, you have to actually look like you enjoy my presence, which right now seems mathematically impossible for you."
Enzo stares down at my pointed finger. Then he looks at my face.
His eyes narrow. The calculation shifts. It deepens, turning into something sharper that I fail to understand.
"Put the ring on," Enzo commands.
"We are still negotiating."
"The negotiation is over. You either have the nerve to step into my world, or you don't." He gestures to the small black box. "Put the ring on, Natalia. Prove your file is accurate."
He is daring me.
He knows how my brain works. He knows I cannot resist a challenge. He knows the defensive walls I built againstarrogant men demand that I prove I am stronger than them. He calculated my pride.
My pulse hammers against my throat. A wild, reckless energy floods my veins. The cautious part of me screams to walk away, to call a cab, to go back to the safe, miserable world I came from.
But I look at the man standing in front of me. The fixer. The mafia prince who treats everything like a balanced equation.
I want to ruin his math.
I want to be the variable he cannot control.
I reach out. My fingers brush the soft velvet of the box. I flip the lid open.
The diamond catches the sparse overhead light, throwing fractured rainbows across the dark wood of the table. It is massive, antique, and steeped in blood and history.
Enzo does not move. He does not breathe. The perfect stillness of his body is deafening.
I pull the ring from the velvet slit. The platinum is cold against my skin.
I slide it onto my left ring finger. It fits. Of course it does. Of course he knew that, too.
I hold my hand up, the diamond flashing between us.
"Fine, Enzo," I say, a reckless smile curving my lips. "Let's go steal some ledgers."
2
Enzo
Cold metal slidesover soft skin. The diamond catches the low, amber light of Il Corvo’s back room. She put it on. My mother’s engagement ring. The platinum settles at the base of her slender finger. The calculation in my head snaps. A catastrophic failure of logic. My entire operational matrix shatters into dust on the floor between us.
Mint and sweet basil.
The scent hits the back of my throat. It slices straight through the heavy stagnation of stale espresso, rich leather, and my own whiskey. Crisp. Bright. Utterly out of place in my structured world. The scent wraps around my neck like a collar. I am leashed to it in a matter of seconds.
She wears my ring. She sits in my territory. She glares at me with a cynical fire that could burn this entire city to the ground.
Mine.
