Chapter 5
"Make me."
She reached up, grabbing the lapels of my coat to pull my mouth toward hers.
I caught her wrists in mid-air, halting her momentum before her lips could brush mine. I stepped into her path, cutting off her advance and backing her toward the vanity. But rather than using force against her, I braced my hands flat against the mahogany edges of the dressing table on either side of her hips, pinning her in place with my frame without letting my weight touch her.
The silver hairbrush clattered off the edge to the floor.
I towered over her, breathing hard, my jaw clamped tight. Elena didn't flinch. Her head tilted back against the bevel of the mirror, her lips parted, her gaze dropping to my mouth, dark and ravenous.
"Touch me," she whispered, so low the directional microphone in the ceiling couldn't pick it up over the hum of the radiator. "Give him a reason to execute us right now. Ruin me for Castellano. If I'm not pure, the treaty is dead. Do it, Dante. Please."
She slid her hands over the cuffs of my sleeves, her fingers gripping the fabric of my forearms.
The scent of crushed lilies and warm skin was an open wound in my discipline. I leaned down, my temple inches from hers, every nerve ending screaming at the proximity. For one blinding second, the camera didn't exist. The oath didn't exist. There was only the woman I had wanted in silence for years, begging me to tear our world apart.
My breath stirred the dark hair at the hollow of her throat. A soft shiver ran through her, her fingers tightening on my sleeves.
*BZZZZT.*
The intercom beside her bed erupted with a screech of static.
"Dante."
I went rigid, freezing in place.
"Step into the center of the rug," the synthesized voice commanded. "Now."
Elena’s fingers dug deeper into my coat. *Don't,* her eyes pleaded, fierce and desperate. *Stay.*
If I stayed, the heavy steel shutters on the windows would drop, the vents would seal, and the Don would end us both without leaving his chair.
I stepped back, breaking the perimeter between us without grazing her skin. I moved into the center of the bedroom rug, standing directly beneath the camera dome, my chest heaving.
"She is hysterical," the machine rasped. "And you are failing to maintain distance. Open the bottom drawer of the nightstand."
I didn't move. "Boss—"
"Open it."
I walked to the mahogany nightstand and pulled the bottom drawer out. Inside, resting on black foam, was a heavy brass band wired with internal contact prongs—a syndicate control collar—and a glass carafe of ice water.
My stomach turned to lead.
"She claims her defiance burns," the Don’s robotic voice droned. "Cool her down. Or remember who failed his perimeter. Hound, put the band on your own neck."
Elena straightened up from the vanity, her face going stark white. "No! Papa, stop it! It was me, I stepped toward him!"
"Silence, Elena, or you will spend your remaining days until the ceremony locked in the cellar," the speaker snapped. "Dante. On your knees. Secure the band."
Dropping to my knees in front of her was bitter, but defiance here meant an immediate death sentence for both of us before dawn.
I reached into the drawer. My fingers closed around the cold metal band.
"Dante, don't," Elena breathed, stepping forward, her hands trembling violently. "Don't let him do this to you."
"Stay back, Elena," I said quietly.
I sank to my knees on the wool rug. I raised the heavy band and fastened the magnetic clasp around my throat. It was cold, tight, and smelled faintly of ozone and polished brass.
"Good," the machine grated. "Remember your place, Hound. Remember what happens when you imagine you have a will of your own."
A sudden, sharp surge flared through the contact points.
The shock hit with brutal intensity, knocking the breath clean out of my lungs. I caught myself on the rug with both palms, my teeth clamped shut, fighting the fierce burn searing the skin of my throat. I refused to let out a sound, refusing to give the hidden microphone the satisfaction of hearing the syndicate's top enforcer break.
"Stop!" Elena cried out, dropping to her knees beside me, reaching frantically for the metal clasp. "Stop it! I’ll marry him! I’ll go to the church, I won't fight anymore, just stop!"
The circuit clicked open, and the heat died.
I remained on my palms and knees, drawing in shallow, ragged breaths, the collar still warm against the raw scorch along my throat.
"Leave the band on until morning, Dante," the speaker clicked. "If you fail your perimeter again tonight, the consequence will not be brief."
The red light on the intercom winked out.
In the heavy silence that followed, Elena didn't step away. She stayed kneeling on the carpet, her hands coming up to frame my jaw, lifting my face toward hers. Her eyes were dark and feverish, tracking the faint scorch mark at the base of my neck.
"Kill him," she whispered against my ear, her voice barely a breath. There was no terror in the cadence—only a terrifying, razor-sharp intent that made the hair on my arms stand up. "Kill him for me, Dante. Break that door down and kill him, or we both die on Sunday."
I looked into those brilliant emerald eyes, the burn pulsing at my throat, and for the first time in ten years, the machine inside my head broke. I stopped looking for ways to obey. I began calculating the charges it would take to turn a four-ton vault door into scrap.
The brass band left an angry purple ring around my throat, raw and blistering where the current had scorched the skin. By midnight on Saturday—the eve of the wedding—the collar was back in the nightstand drawer, but the burn remained, pulsing with every beat of my heart like a live wire buried under my flesh.
The rain hit the Hudson Valley like gravel thrown against glass. Down in the courtyard, three black Town Cars sat idling, their headlights cutting through the freezing sleet, ready to form the bridal convoy at dawn. Enzo Castellano was already waiting in a penthouse suite at the St. Regis in Manhattan, surrounded by his cousins and crates of vintage champagne, counting down the hours until he claimed his blood prize.
I stood at the end of the east corridor on the second floor, my Kimber holstered, a ceramic trench knife strapped behind my belt, my soaked duster heavy on my shoulders.
Beneath the wet canvas of that coat, resting against my ribs in the reinforced utility pockets of my tactical rig, sat the contraband that had kept my pulse racing all afternoon: a fist-sized block of military-grade composition explosive with an integrated pressure-fuse, and a master cryptographic override transponder. As the Don’s chief enforcer, the electronic keycard had been issued to me years ago to clear emergency seals during facility lockdowns. The explosive had come from the tactical ordnance crate I brought back from the Brooklyn docks. When I cleaned the Kimber and restocked the armory at sunrise, my fingers had acted almost outside my conscious will, slipping the plastic charge and the remote detonator into my field vest instead of locking them in the safe.
