Chapter 2

Elena was pressed beneath me.

Her silk robe had parted completely down the front, held together only by the sash at her waist. Beneath it, she wore nothing. The moonlight caught the curve of her waist, the creamy swell of her breast rising and falling with ragged, terrified breaths. Her hand was flattened against my chest, right over the heavy ceramic plate of my body armor, feeling the thundering violence of my heart.

For three seconds, neither of us breathed.

My knee was wedged between her thighs. My left hand was braced against the leather cushion beside her ear, fingers sinking deep into the hide. My right hand was still locked around her wrist, pinning it gently above her head. Every muscle in my body was coiled tight enough to snap, screaming at me to bury my face in the curve of her neck, to taste the skin I had worshipped from the shadows since the day she turned eighteen.

"Dante," she whispered. Her voice was no longer mocking. It was raw. Desperate.

"You're insane," I ground out, my face inches from hers, my chest heaving against her soft ribs. "You are completely out of your goddamn mind. You almost got us both gassed."

"He wouldn't kill me," she breathed, her lips parting, shimmering in the silver light. Her free hand crept up the rough fabric of my sleeve, her fingertips tracing the thick vein along my forearm until she reached the collar of my shirt. "He needs me. I'm the bloodline. But you... he treats you like a dog. And you let him."

"I took an oath."

"To a monster who hides behind a steel door?" Her fingers tightened on my collar, pulling me down half an inch. The scent of lilies washed over me, thick and intoxicating, drowning out the lingering memory of the gas outside. "Look at me, Dante. Look at what you're protecting."

I looked. God forgive me, I looked.

Elena Bellandi was not a woman meant for survival in a mafia dynasty. She was too sharp, too reckless, carrying a fire inside her that threatened to incinerate every rule her father had ever carved into stone. She had grown up behind the high stone walls of this fortress in the Hudson Valley, surrounded by guards with submachine guns and cameras in every corner, watching the world through bulletproof glass.

Her mother had died when she was a child. Her father had become a phantom after the bombing. She had spent the last three years trapped in a gilded cage with an invisible warden and a mute executioner.

And I was the executioner.

"I took an oath to your father when I was sixteen years old," I said, my voice shaking despite my best efforts to keep it steady. "He pulled me out of the holding cells in Brooklyn. He gave me a name, a gun, and a purpose. I swore on the burning picture of Saint Michael that I would serve this family until my blood ran cold."

"Then serve me," she whispered fiercely.

She arched her back slightly, lifting her chest against my armored vest. The contact was purely agonizing. Through the ceramic plate and the layers of Kevlar, I could feel the frantic heat of her.

"I am the family, Dante," she urged, her eyes glittering with unshed tears and dark, dangerous intent. "He isn't a father. He's a voice in the walls. He's a machine that eats people and spits out blood. Touch me. Touch me and tell me you belong to him."

Every nerve ending in my body felt like exposed wire. My vision blurred around the edges.

The Don's primary rule had not been about turf, or money, or rival cartels. The rule, hammered into my skull the day I became his personal enforcer, had been simple, absolute, and carved into my soul:

*Elena is off-limits. If you look at her with desire, I will take your eyes. If you touch her with lust, I will peel your skin from your bones while she watches. She is meant for a king, Dante. You are only the dog that guards the throne.*

I had lived by that rule. I had broken the legs of men who stared at her too long at syndicate weddings. I had executed a capo in an alley behind a Manhattan nightclub because he had tried to slip his business card into her coat pocket. I had punched concrete walls in the estate gym until my knuckles were bloody pulp, just to bleed off the fever that consumed me every time she walked past me in the hallway.

And now, she was beneath me, offering herself like a poison chalice.

"Elena," I groaned, my voice breaking. "Please."

"Kiss me," she demanded. It wasn't a request. It was an execution order. "Kiss me, Dante. Let the cameras see it. Let him watch."

Her hand moved from my collar to the back of my neck. Her fingers slid into my short-cropped hair, pulling me down with a strength born of pure hysteria.

I could have pulled away. I was twice her weight, trained to disarm assassins with bare hands. I could have broken her grip with a flick of my wrist.

Instead, my resolve shattered like thin ice over dark water.

I didn't kiss her lips. I didn't dare cross that final, fatal line. But I lowered my head until my forehead rested against the soft skin of her collarbone. I drew in a ragged, trembling breath, inhaling the scent of her, letting my cheek rest against the bare swell of her breast. My body shook with the violent effort of restraining myself, my fingers digging into the leather cushions until the seams began to tear.

"I can't," I choked out against her skin. "I can't let him kill you."

Elena froze beneath me.

Her fingers stayed tangled in my hair, but the frantic pull stopped. For a long, silent moment, the only sound in the dark library was the heavy cadence of our breathing. Her hand softened, her nails gently scratching against my scalp in a slow, almost tender rhythm that broke something deep inside my ribcage.

"You really think he'd kill me?" she murmured softly, her voice dropping into a register I had never heard before. It sounded older. Colder. Calculating.

"He kills anyone who breaks his law," I said, keeping my face buried in her warmth, hating myself for how much comfort I took from it. "He has no heart left, Elena. The bombing took whatever soul he had. You know what he did to the Marcone brothers. You know what he made me do."

She was quiet for a beat. Her thumb stroked the curve of my ear, sending a shiver straight down my spine.

"Yes," she whispered, her voice devoid of emotion. "I know exactly what he made you do."

Before I could process the strange tone in her voice, a harsh, metallic screech tore through the quiet room.

Above the grand fireplace, hidden behind the oil painting of the Bellandi patriarchs, the brass intercom grille roared to life.

"Dante."

The synthesized voice cut through the dark like a butcher’s cleaver.

I recoiled from Elena as if I had been struck by lightning. I rolled off the sofa, coming to my feet in a single, fluid motion, drawing my Kimber from its holster before my boots had even settled on the floorboards. The barrel was pointed at the dark corners of the room, my training taking over even as my heart threatened to explode out of my throat.

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