I shut Chiara’s apartment door quietly, the latch clicking into place behind me, but I know it won’t hold. The hinges are half off. I stay still in the hallway for a moment, hand resting on the doorknob like I’m not ready to let go just yet. How can I, when the heat of her is still on my skin—when the night we shared is still bleeding through me? I don’t move. I’m not sure I can.
Walking away should’ve been easy. I’ve done it a hundred times—left a warm bed, a spent body, no second thoughts. But this? This feels like leaving something that’s mine. Like I didn’t just fuck her—I branded her. And somehow, I left a piece of myself behind with her.
That doesn’t sit right with me. That room, her scent, the way she looked at me when I made her come on my tongue—it’s under my skin now. I should be done. I should be cold. But every step away feels wrong, like I’m putting distance between me and something I’m not finished with.
And I don’t leave things unfinished.
I can still hear those soft little whimpers she made when I filled her to her core, still see that gorgeous naked body wreathing beneath me as I caressed all those generous curves, still remember how tight her waist fit between my hands when we fucked.
But it’s not lust that’s keeping me standing here. Okay, maybe just a little. But more than that, it’s caution.
Those men didn’t come knocking for a warning—they came to hurt her. Maybe worse. And they won’t be the last. The stench of blood’s already seeping into the floorboards of her living room—a silent reminder of how close it got. She’s still in there, sleeping, probably thinking I’m still beside her. I should’ve stayed. Should’ve told her what’s coming. But if I had, I would’ve lost focus.
If I stayed, I would have touched her again. Kissed the sleep from her lips, let my hands roam those gorgeous breasts, pulled her beneath me and forgotten the rest of the world. Again. And again. And I can’t afford to forget right now. Not with what I’ve done. Not with what’s still coming.
I curse myself and consider ringing the bell—telling her to head to the café until her door can be fixed, maybe to call someone she trusts. But I’ve got a feeling there’s no one else she can call.
I check my watch. Just past six. My men will be up. And I need a ride—my car’s still parked at the café, and I’m not walking back to get it.
I make the call.
“Boss?” Nicolo, my right hand, picks up on the first ring.
“Nicolo, I need someone to fix a busted door. Quiet, fast. I’m sending the address. I also need a pickup from the same spot.”
“We’ll be there in ten,” he says, no hesitation.
“One more thing,” I add. “There’s someone inside. Still asleep. She doesn’t get disturbed.”
There’s a pause—brief, but telling. He knows this isn’t standard. Still, he doesn’t question it.
“Understood.”
I pocket my phone and give her door one last look before turning away—before I get dragged back into something I can’t walk away from.
As I wait in front of the building for Nicolo to arrive, I lean against the cold brick wall, trying to distract myself by watching the world pass at this hour. The street is quiet except for a distant garbage truck and the occasional early commuter. I take a deep breath of city air, trying to clear my head of her scent—vanilla and sex that clung to her skin when I buried my face in it as I came.
Where the hell is Nicolo? I check my watch—ten minutes have already passed. I give it another five, and just as I’m about to call him back, a black SUV with tinted windows pulls up to the curb and rolls to a smooth stop in front of me.
One man steps out from the passenger side, carrying a toolkit. He gives me a nod. “Where’s the job?”
I gesture toward the building and rattle off the directions.
He nods again and heads inside without another word.
The driver steps out, circles the front, and opens the rear door for me. I slide into the back seat, the leather cool against my back as I turn to face Nicolo.
“You’re up early,” I say as he passes me a coffee.
Nicolo’s face tightens with something more than the usual morning grimness.
“Talk,” I say, my voice hard—sharp like a blade honed for business. Nothing like the rough murmur I used on her skin last night—low, slow, the kind you use when you’ve got something in your hands you don’t want the world touching.
“We got hit. Hard.”
His voice is flat, but the tightness in his jaw gives him away. He hands me a tablet, and I know before I even look that it’s bad. The screen lights up with grainy security footage—night vision, timestamped from just a few hours ago. One of our trucks was parked on a desolate road, its sides riddled with bullet holes like someone had emptied an entire magazine into it without hesitation.
The camera angle shifts, flickering, and I see it—movement in the corner. The driver stumbles out from our truck, already bleeding, already too late. Then he drops. Limp.
Lifeless.
“Driver’s dead. Shot twice in the chest. Didn’t even get a chance to radio it in.”
“Fuck,” I snap, fury and dread cutting through me. My men bust their asses for us. I don’t take it lightly when one goes down.
Even though it happens more often than one thinks.
The next frame shows an empty cargo hold.
“What was stolen?” I ask, through gritted teeth.
“Shipment out of Naples. We lost everything,” he says, quietly now. “The whole damn load’s gone.”
That shipment consisted of contraband worth two million dollars.
“Who the hell was behind this?” I ask, handing Nicolo back the tablet. I clench my fists, feel my knuckles turn white as they seek revenge, but I need someone to deliver it on.
“It was D’Angelo, but that’s not all.” Nicolo hesitates, which isn’t like him. He’s been my right hand since we were teenagers, back when my father first started grooming me to take over. He doesn’t hesitate, not with me.
“I’m listening.”
“The Costas are backing him now.”
My jaw tightens. The Costas. They’re old blood and old money. They came to power and kept it by staying neutral for generations, always content to manage their legitimate businesses and keep their hands clean while families like mine and D’Angelo’s fought for control of everything else.
“Confirmed?” I ask, though I can see the answer in the hard line of his mouth.
“Aldo Costa was seen meeting with D’Angelo last night. Our guy inside says they’ve formed an alliance.”
The car weaves through morning traffic, heading toward the outskirts of the city where our compound sits. I stare out the window, not seeing the streets passing by, seeing instead the shifting pieces on the board. The Costas have resources we don’t—political connections, legitimate business fronts, generations of respectability. D’Angelo has the hunger, the ruthlessness. Together, they’re a threat I can’t ignore.
“Your father wants to meet,” Nicolo adds, looking up from his phone. “He’s on his way over to yours.”
I nod and turn back to the window, but all I see is her—Chiara. The way she looked at me last night, wide-eyed and aching, like I was the only thing in her world. The way her body arched for me—mine, all mine. She didn’t fake it like the others. No rehearsed moans or pretty lies. Just raw, breathless sounds pulled straight from her soul. Sounds I dragged out of her. Sounds that branded themselves into me.
I close my eyes, forcing the image away. One night. That’s all it was supposed to be. All it can be.
Now, I’ve got to get my head back in the game. We have to figure out this business with the attack.
When we pull through the gates of the compound, my father’s car is already in the driveway.
“Does he know what happened?” I ask as we pull up.
“Your father was the first to know.”
“And have we contacted the driver’s family?”
Nicolo’s face darkens. “Tommaso. Been with us five years. Has a kid on the way.”
I nod once. “Make sure his wife gets double the usual payment. And set up a trust for the child. Education, everything.”
“Already done.”
Of course it is. Nicolo knows what I’ll want before I say it half the time. It’s why he’s irreplaceable.
The main house looms ahead—a sprawling stone structure that looks like old money but was built barely thirty years ago, when my father’s business first boomed. I can feel myself changing as I approach it, shedding the man who spent the night losing himself in a stranger’s bed. With each step up the marble stairs, I become more fully what I am—heir to the Bianchi empire, my father’s son, a man who makes decisions that end lives.
My father waits in my office, sitting in my chair like it’s still his. In some ways, it always will be.
Aldo Bianchi built something from nothing, turned a small-time loan operation into one of the largest criminal enterprises in the country. Now seventy but strong as an oak, with silver-streaked black hair and eyes that can freeze a man’s blood at twenty paces.
“Marco.” He doesn’t stand when I enter, just gestures to the chair across from the desk. My chair, in my office, but I sit where he indicates. Some battles aren’t worth fighting.
“You heard,” I say.
“That we lost a man and nearly a shipment worth more than most people make in a lifetime? Yes, I heard.” His accent thickens when he’s angry, the Italian of his youth breaking through the polished English of his business persona. “This was a message. D’Angelo is letting us know the rules have changed.”
“I heard they’re with the Costas now.”
He nods, lips pressed into a grim line. “They’ve been looking for an excuse to move against us since that business with their shipping container last year. D’Angelo gave them one.”
I lean back in the chair, jaw tight, keeping what I know to myself—for now.
D’Angelo wouldn’t have waited a year to avenge the shipping container we blew up last year. He’s angry about the message I sent yesterday. I claimed a girl who owes him, and he’s showing teeth.
I said she was mine, and he’s showing he’s willing to take it all. If I tell my father this, that there’s a woman behind this mess, I know what he’d do. He’d clean up the mess—he’d hand her over. No woman’s worth fighting over, that’s what he’s always said.
So I stay quiet about the real reason, holding my father’s stare without flinching. “We’ll hit back. Harder. Send our own message.”
“Always so quick to violence.” He shakes his head. “This isn’t the time for displays of force. The Costas have the mayor in their pocket, half the city council. We start a war now, we’ll find ourselves fighting the law as well as them.”
“So what do you suggest?”
My father stands, moving to the window that overlooks the compound. Outside, men move purposefully between buildings, cars come and go. Our small kingdom, built on blood and fear.
“An alliance of our own.”
“With who? The Russians? The Colombians?”
He turns, fixing me with a stare that’s lost none of its power to make me feel like a boy again.
“Not with another family. A marriage.”
The word lands between us like a grenade with the pin pulled. I keep my face carefully blank.
“Who?”
“Valentina Costa.”
I remember her from a charity gala two years ago. Tall, model-thin, with a practiced smile that never reached her eyes. She’d flirted with me, brushing her hand against mine as she took the champagne I offered. Later, I’d overheard her telling a friend she could “fix” me, turn the crude gangster’s son into someone worthy of her family name.
“No.” The word comes out harder than I intended.
My father’s eyebrows rise. “No? You’d rather we go to war? Watch our men die, our business crumble, because you’re too proud to make a strategic alliance? If Costa is backing D’Angelo, he’ll stop the minute his daughter is married to you. Don’t you see that?”
“It’s not pride.” I stand too, refusing to let him loom over me. Even at thirty-eight, these conversations with my father make me feel like I’m fighting for solid ground. “Valentina Costa is manipulative, calculating, and has made it clear she thinks we’re beneath her family. You want to put someone like that in our home? Give her access to our operations, our finances?”
“She’d be your wife, not your business partner.”
“In this life, they’re the same thing. Besides, you won’t even realize it, but through her, Aldo Costa will be the one calling the shots on what we do. That man gives nothing for free.”
He studies me, head tilted slightly. Then understanding dawns in his eyes, followed by disbelief. “You have someone else in mind.”
It’s not a question, but I answer anyway. “Yes.”
The lie comes easily, unexpectedly. I hadn’t planned it—wasn’t thinking beyond my refusal of Valentina—but as soon as the word leaves my mouth, I see Chiara’s face again. Her sleepy smile this morning when I slipped out of bed. The catch in her breath when I first touched her.
I have to keep her safe. And now that D’Angelo knows I stepped in—knows I staked a claim—he won’t let it go.
If she stays where she is, she’s a target. Exposed. Vulnerable.
But if she’s with me—publicly with me—he won’t touch her.
A marriage… the thought hits like a punch to the chest, sudden but solid. It gives me control. Access. Protection. Legitimacy.
She becomes untouchable.
And if I drop it now, maybe it’ll shut my father up. He’s too obsessed with bloodlines and power plays to see what this really is—strategy, not sentiment.
I didn’t plan this. But the second the idea forms, it feels inevitable. She’ll be mine in name. In law. In every damn way that matters.
“Who the hell is she?” he snaps. “What family? What does she bring to the table besides a pretty face?”
I move behind the desk, taking my rightful place, forcing him to be the one standing before me. “She’s not connected. Not powerful.”
“Then what use is she to us?”
I meet his gaze steadily. “She’s who I’ve chosen.”
My father’s laugh is sharp, disbelieving. “Since when do you make decisions with your heart and not your head? This isn’t like you, Marco. This kind of emotional thinking will get you killed. Get us all killed.”
“It’s not emotional,” I lie again. “It’s practical. Valentina Costa would be a viper in our nest. This woman… she’s loyal. Straightforward. No hidden agendas.”
“You sound like a lovesick boy, not the man I raised to lead.”
I say nothing, letting his words bounce off the armor I’ve built over decades of his disappointment. He paces the office now, agitated in a way I rarely see him.
“Who is she? Where did you even find her? And why the hell haven’t you mentioned her until now?”
“It’s recent,” I say, each lie building on the last, creating a structure I’m now committed to. “And she’s not part of our world.”
My father stops pacing. Stares at me like I’ve gone mad. “A civilian? You want to marry a civilian? Someone with no understanding of what we do?”
“She’ll learn.”
“If she doesn’t run screaming first.” He shakes his head, dropping heavily into the chair I’d vacated. “Marco, think about what you’re saying. The Costas are moving against us. D’Angelo is growing stronger by the day. We need allies, not liabilities.”
“I’ve made my decision.”
We stare at each other, two predators marking territory. Finally, he sighs, the sound of a man conserving his energy for battles he can win.
“Fine. Marry your nobody if you must. But when she can’t handle this life—when she breaks under the weight of who we are, what we do—don’t come to me for sympathy.” He stands, straightening his suit jacket with a sharp tug. “Just make sure she gives you sons. Even a child from an unwise match is better than no heir at all.”
He leaves without another word, the door closing firmly behind him.
I sink into my chair, the weight of the decision I’ve just made settling around my shoulders. Marriage. To Chiara. A woman I met yesterday, took to bed last night, and left sleeping in her sheets this morning.
I close my eyes, and there she is—soft, warm, wrapped around me. No games in her eyes. No agenda. Just raw, unfiltered need. For a few hours, I wasn’t a Bianchi. Wasn’t heir to an empire. I was just a man—wanted for himself.
The decision hardens in my chest, solid and final. Chiara is mine now. Mine to protect. Mine to own. Mine to bring into my world and keep, whether she’s ready or not. She’ll understand soon enough. She’ll come willingly—or she’ll be convinced.
I pick up my phone and call Nicolo. There’s work to do. Arrangements to make. A future to take.
