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To my surprise, Scarfone’s smirk faltered for a split second and something like recognition flared in his eyes. For a moment, we stared at each other, and my mother’s voice grated in the back of my head, screamingrun, you dumb bitch—and another voice wondered how anyone that hot could actually exist.
“I pay for it,” I said. I marveled at my even tone, especially as nerves squeezed in my chest. “Computer shit tends to be lucrative.”
Scarfone moved closer to me. I immediately moved to my left and cursed my folly. I'd put the couch between us out of instinct, but now I didn't have a clear exit. He noticed and moved in closer, while I forced myself to remain still. He stepped forward, then leaned over and gripped the back of my couch with both hands. Close enough for me to smell his expensive cologne and see the thick sweep of his eyelashes, the scar by his lip.
“You know why I’m here,” Scarfone said. “Why didn’t you run?”
“I assumed you wanted to talk,” I said in a breezy tone as I gripped my knife harder in an increasingly slippery grip. “Otherwise, there’d be a bullet in my head.”
This close, the clash of honey-hued tones in his eyes were impossible to look away from. “Oh, Elena. Your Daddy shouldn’t have let you fly so close to the sun.”
At that, I scoffed and lifted my chin. “No onetells me what to do.”
I realized I'd made a fatal mistake when Scarfone's lips twisted to the side. He'd been toying with me up until now, seeing how I'd react, and now it was all gone. A shiver ran through me, and he noticed it. His gaze had been following my every move.
Now, I fully understood how out of my depth I was.
This man was dangerous and brutal, yes, but it was that wicked and calculating intelligence that set him apart in the underworld of shadows and blood. Every word I’d spoken, every move I’d made, hell, my verybreathhad Scarfone reassessing and moving pieces on a chessboard in his mind.
Something twisted in my chest, because I saw that this man was someone who could keep up with me. In some other life, if we hadn’t been born enemies, we would’ve been a perfect match…
But in this life, Scarfone used his intelligence to win, destroy, and conquer. With one glance, he could figure out how to take the average person apart in the most devastating way possible. How to hit them the hardest.
As for his enemies? Stealing from my father had not been a reckless, hungry move of a desperate man, as Erik had insinuated. It had been long planned, one step in a much larger game.
And I was the one who’d fucked Scarfone’s plan up.
Oh shit.
“Exactly,cara mia,” Scarfone said with a soft snarl that made heat curl in my belly even as ice gripped my spine. “No one, and I meanno one, dies a quick and easy death when they piss me off.”
He moved and I slashed out wildly, only to realize that he’d straightened and moved away from the couch, watching me. The air throbbed between us, and my ears pulsed as I watched his humor fall away, his gaze now too sharp, like that of a wolf wondering if they should bother with its trapped prey.
My mouth dried up. I knew I had no choice but to make a break for it. We were both moving at the same time. I threw the knife at him and watched him dodge it with a curse, spinning out of the way by a hairbreadth, then I was running for my bedroom—almost there when Scarfone caught me by the back of my shirt and threw me out the window.
Breath exploded out of me, and I winced in pain, then he was on me, blocking me in with his body and his hands slammed onto the glass on either side of my face.
“There’s nothing quick or easy about what I’m going to do with you,Koritsa.”
