I punch my master code into the encrypted panel, unlocking the heavy steel vault door, and shove it open with my boot. It swings wide with a dense metallic groan.
I carry her inside. The air in the sealed vault is colder than the rest of the apartment, insulated by reinforced concrete. It smells of gun solvent, machine oil, and cold iron. Fluorescent tubeshum overhead, casting harsh white glare over racks of matte-black AR-15s, stacks of olive-drab ammunition crates, and rows of tactical body armor hung like shed skins. This is my true home. The theater of my violence.
In the center of the room sits a massive, oak workbench. The wood is deeply scarred with knife marks, gouges from gunsmithing, and stains of spilled oil.
I set her down on the edge of the workbench.
She sits there surrounded by the implements of death. The bright, warm color of her skin is a shocking contrast against the cold, brutalist steel and shadow of the armory.She looks like a goddess dragged into a war zone. She looks like she is exactly where she belongs.
I step between her thighs. Her knees lock against my hips. I grip the edge of the wooden bench on either side of her, leaning in close. My face is inches from hers.
Her eyes stare up at me. They are fast and assessing, tracking the tension locking my jaw. She knows exactly how to read the human body. She knows every muscle in my back is coiled tight enough to snap bone.
"You took the card," I say. My voice is harsh and uneven. It bounces off the concrete walls.
"I took it," she confirms. Her chin tilts up. Stubborn. Fierce.
"You know what it means."
"It means I'm not collateral." Her palms flatten against the center of my bare chest. Heat sears into my skin. "It means I'm not a hostage you keep locked in a tower while you go out and bleed."
Mine. Forever.
"It means you're mine." The words tear out of my throat. "It means you belong to the Costa family now. It means every enemy I have is yours. You step out that door, you carry my name like a target. You're never walking away from this."
"I'm not trying to walk away, Nico."
Her thumbs trace the ridges of the scars carved across my bare chest. The simple, domestic gesture against the brutal map of my history short-circuits my brain.
I need her to understand. I need her to know the gravity of what she has just done to me.
"Twenty years," I tell her. My voice drops to a lethal, quiet register. "I was fifteen years old when my father Carlo was lured to a South Side warehouse and executed. They gave me silence like I was still a child. They kept the details from me. I spent the next twenty years making sure nobody ever treated me like a liability again. I turned myself into a weapon. Matteo gives an order, I execute it. Vincenzo finds a target, I eliminate it. I am the gun they point at the Bellantis."
I reach up and grip her wrists. I pull her hands off my chest and press her palms flat against my jaw. The warmth is agonizing.
"I haven't chosen a single fucking thing for myself in two decades," I confess. The truth bleeds out of me, raw and feral. "Not the family. Not the war. Not the job. I just did what was necessary to keep my brothers alive. I lived in the dark. I watched the perimeter."
I lean closer. My nose brushes hers.
"You." The word is a vow. A threat. A claim. "You're the first thing I chose. I saw you walk out of your clinic, and I stopped doing my job. I abandoned the mission. I built a fortress under your floorboards. You are the only thing in this godforsaken world that belongs to me."
A fierce fire flares in her eyes.
"Then claim me," she demands.
The command snaps the last remaining thread of my control.
I crush my mouth against hers. The kiss is brutal. Devastation. I force her lips apart with the aggression of my tongue. I taste the sweet, spicy warmth of her mouth. She tastes like ruin. She tastes like salvation. She kisses me back with exactly the same amount of violence, her hands tangling in my hair, gripping the strands tight enough to sting.
I tear my mouth away. I need skin.
My hands grip the hem of the shirt she is wearing. It is the shirt I gave her after the clinic. Bloodstained. Too large. Temporary. My fingers find the master keycard tucked against her chest in the breast pocket. I slide the heavy plastic free and set it on the scarred oak beside her hip.
Nothing of value gets destroyed in what I’m about to do to her. Then I grip the fabric in both fists and rip it upward. She raises her arms. I pull the shirt over her head and throw it blindly. It drapes over a rack of rifles with a soft rustle.
She is wearing nothing underneath.
The harsh fluorescent light of the armory spills over her bare breasts. They are heavy, full, and perfect. The peaks of her nipples are tight and pebble-hard in the cold air of the vault.
