PRIYA
The metallic grindof a deadbolt locking echoes through the concrete walls. The sound sinks straight into my bones. My eyes snap open. The leather sofa is cold beneath my bare legs. The space beside me is empty.The heavy, suffocating warmth of the man who just wrecked me on a metal desk is gone.
My muscles protest as I push up into a seated position. A persistent ache throbs between my thighs. My skin hums with the phantom pressure of his hands. I am wrapped in the blanket he dragged over me. The fabric smells faintly of smoke, leather, and him. His scent. It clings to me like a brand.
The apartment is dead quiet. No footsteps. No breathing. The silence is not peaceful. It is the suffocating stillness of a tomb.
I swing my legs off the sofa and plant my bare feet on the cold hardwood floor. He locked me in. He actually locked me in. The audacity of this man is staggering. He thinks he can just confine me, unravel me on a surveillance desk, and then vanish into the Chicago night without a word? Please. I deal with stubborn, broken men all day long. A brooding mafia man is just a muscle spasm with a gun.
I walk out of the living area and down the short hallway. The ambient light shifts from streetlamp-orange to a harsh, synthetic blue. The glow bleeds out from the open doorway of the war room.
I step over the threshold. The room hums. Multiple server towers stack against the far wall, their cooling fans purring like mechanical beasts. Six monitors fill the wall above the metal desk. The same desk where he stripped away my rigid clinical control hours ago. The surface is cleared except for the keyboard and mouse. Only the glowing screens light the dark.
He left them on. He was in a rush. Or maybe he just didn't care if I looked.
I step closer to the desk. The cold air of the room bites at my bare skin, but the heat crawling up my neck has nothing to do with the temperature. The center monitor displays a high-resolution, live map of the city. The South Side is mapped out in glowing grid lines. The North Side glows with Costa territory. My eyes track downward. South Side. My neighborhood.
A red, pulsing hexagon sits directly on top of the address for my physical therapy clinic. The safehouse he commandeered sits one block from it, close enough to watch every angle.
The rigid emotional structure I use to survive every day snaps instantly into place. Panic is useless. Panic gets people killed. I lean over the desk, my hands resting on the cold metal edge, and study the screen.
The building immediately adjacent to my clinic is highlighted in a stark, blinding crimson. Text scrolls beneath the live camera feed of the brick facade.
TARGET: BELLANTI SYNDICATE ARMORY.STATUS: ACTIVE HEAVY WEAPONS CACHE.THREAT LEVEL: CRITICAL.
The words burn into my retinas. Bellanti. The name is a ghost story whispered in the corners of Chicago. A brutal crime family. They own the docks and the underground. And apparently, they own the vacant building right next door to my medical practice.
I reach for the mouse. The click echoes sharply in the quiet room. I open the next minimized window. An encrypted dossier expands across the screen. The header displays a crest. Two crossed weapons. The name beneath it hits me like a physical strike.
COSTA FAMILY OPERATIONS.
I read. I do not stop reading for twenty minutes. The lore of a twenty-year war unfolds before my eyes in sterile reports. Igor Costa. Murdered. Carlo Costa. Murdered. The same night. Two decades ago. The intel lists Carlo Costa's seven surviving sons. Matteo. Dante. Enzo. Vincenzo. Giovanni. Nico. Alessio.
Nico. Present status: Lethal Enforcer.
The files detail massive retaliatory strikes. The files detail shell companies, supply routes, old retaliatory strikes, and a financial network buried under layers of ghost signatures. The Costas are not a street gang. They are an old criminal empire with military-level discipline. They are a deeply rooted, heavily armed empire.
And Nico is their lethal end.
I click back to the live feed of the building next to my clinic. The timestamp in the corner ticks forward. 3:14 AM. The cameraangle is high, mounted on a streetlamp or a neighboring roof. The feed shows the steel doors of the adjacent building.
The doors are currently blown completely off their hinges.
Smoke billows out into the street. Bright, violent flashes of light erupt from deep inside the warehouse. Muzzle flashes. Gunfire.
The smell of burning drywall and chemical accelerant invades my memory. Two years ago. This same block. This same clinic. The Bellantis firebombed the building next door to settle a score with a rival bookie. The fire spread. The flames gutted everything I had built. I spent two years rebuilding it from the studs up, layering rigid routines over the trauma, swearing I would never be collateral damage again.
And now, I am standing in a mafia safehouse, watching the man who just touched me wage a one-man assault against a syndicate armory right next door to the clinic I rebuilt.
He told me the attack earlier was a random sector sweep. He told me it was a coincidence.
He lied.
The anger ignites. It doesn't burn hot and chaotic. It burns cold. It burns with the precise fury of a woman who has been stripped of her agency. He knew exactly how deep the Bellanti operation next door ran, and he chose to keep it from me. He moved his surveillance operation into my building to watch them. I was never a random civilian. I was proximity. And when the threat escalated, he chose to omit the truth to keep me compliant.
Oh, hell no.
He doesn't get to play the overbearing alpha while feeding me half-truths. He doesn't get to make my choices for me.
