The scent of her sweat, her musk, and our combined sex is the only thing keeping me conscious. The cross pendant at my throat swings down and rests in the hollow between her breasts. I press my palm flat between her breasts, feeling her heart slam against it—claiming the territory of her breath.
Imani's arms wrap tightly around my back. She holds me with fierce, unyielding strength. Her hands smooth over my sweat-slicked skin, tracing the dark lines of my tattoos. Her fingers thread into the short hair at the nape of my neck.
I hold still, staying buried deep inside her, my softening cock still seated in her heat. I refuse to break the connection.
The low, steady hum of the servers bleeds back into my awareness. The blue light of the monitors casts long shadows across the walls. On the screens surrounding us, the reality of the Costa-Bellanti war continues to unfold in endless streams of data.
The perimeter feeds show my brothers moving in the yard. The intel channels chatter with intercepted threats. The fragments we pulled from the vault—the access logs I can’t yet bring myself to finish tracing—sit encrypted on the drive three feet away.
The world outside this steel door is a nightmare of violence and treason. It will require blood. It will require the monster I have kept caged.
But right now, in this sealed War Room, surrounded by the glow of the monitors, none of that matters. I lift my head. I look down at the woman lying underneath me. Her skin is flushed. Her lips are bruised. The proof of me is still warm inside her.
She reaches up. Her thumb traces the gold chain at my throat, resting against the cross pendant. Her dark, depthless eyes are clear, holding no regret, no fear.
I pull out slowly. The wet, slipping sound echoes loudly. A thick trail of my release mixed with her slick slides down her thigh. I catch it with a clean cloth from the side drawer before it can reach the tactical table. It is a messy, beautiful display of my ownership.
Then I reach down for the discarded flannel and settle it over her shoulders, covering her bare skin, covering her bare skin, cocooning her in the scent of my ozone and linen. I lift her off the table, cradling her against my chest. Her legs wrap naturally around my waist. She tucks her head beneath my chin.
I cross the War Room to the steel gear locker bolted against the far wall. I pull out a pair of soft black leggings and a folded pair of wool socks from the spare-kit drawer—generic compound stock, close enough to her size to get her covered. I press them into her hands.
"For when we go back up," I murmur against her temple. "My family meets you covered. Only I see you bare."
Her mouth curves against my throat. She slides off my chest just long enough to step into the leggings and pull the socks over her bare feet. The fabric hugs her thighs under the heavy hem of the flannel. The shirt still pools over the rest of her—warm with my scent—but the bare skin is gone. When I lift her back againstme, my cross pendant brushes her sternum, cold against warm skin.
I lift her back into my arms.
I carry her to the leather chair in front of the main server console, keeping her covered in my flannel before I sit with her on my lap.
I tap a key and the primary tactical screen wakes. The glowing grid of the city of Chicago reflects in the black glass of the dormant monitors.
The breach sits like a loaded gun in the data stream. The Bellanti forces are massing on the South Side. The war is moving toward our gates. I will have to face Matteo. I will have to face Dante. And someday I will have to look the source of this rot in the eyes and make him answer for it.
I tighten my grip on Imani's waist. She shifts against me, her soft warmth radiating into my chest, her breath steadying against my ribs in a slow, even pull.
I am no longer the boy who went silent in that hallway the night they died. I am a lethal weapon, fully online, anchored to the signal sitting in my lap. I will hunt down the rot inside our walls and tear it out piece by piece.
Anyone who reaches for her will lose the hand and everything attached to it.
The data is damning. Now I need the proof that makes it undeniable.
Epilogue
IMANI
The steel doorof the War Room seals shut behind us with a definitive, echoing metallic thud.
The shockwave travels up through the thick wool of the socks Vincenzo pulled over my feet ten minutes ago, grounding me in the reality of where I am. I stand in the subterranean belly of the Costa compound, wrapped in his flannel, the collar still warm against my skin, everything smelling of clean linen, ozone, and the faint, lingering metallic tang of copper.
The soft black leggings he pulled from general stock for me hug my thighs under the flannel. The shirt hangs heavy over the rest of me, the soft cotton carrying the full imprint of the man who put it on me.
Vincenzo's hand rests immovable on the lowest curve of my spine. The heat of his palm seeps through the thick cotton, a steady radiating warmth that settles into my skin. He doesn't guide me. He anchors me. His fingers flex, a subtle, possessive tightening that tells me where I stand in his violent, chaotic universe. I belong to him. Right here. Right now. For as long as the war lets me.
We walk down the long, illuminated corridor of the basement. The walls are solid poured concrete, painted astark, clinical white, broken only by the black domes of encrypted security cameras at thirty-foot intervals. I count them automatically. My brain tracks the wiring conduits, the blind spots, the overlapping fields of vision. Old habits die screaming. I am a tech specialist. I read the world in vulnerabilities and firewalls, and this place is a digital fortress.
Vincenzo tracks my gaze. His thumb strokes a slow, rhythmic line against my spine.
"Closed circuit," he says, his voice low in the quiet hall. "Analog backups. Nothing touches the external web."
