Lorenzo
It’smid-morning.Thesun’salready spilling heat and light through the windshield.I’m in the back seat, sprawled out with one arm across the seat, the other resting on my thigh, fingers tapping slowly against my leg.Vito is up front, eyes on the road, mouth closed, just how I like him.
I left Isabella in my bed, sheets tangled, her hair a mess, skin flushed from the night before.She’s probably curled on her side with that pissed-off princess expression she wears so well.I almost stayed.Almost waited to see how she’d react when she woke up and found I hadn’t run.Would she have glared at me like I kicked her puppy?Or crawled into my lap and tried to bite me again, ready for round two?My money is on both.It always is with her.
She’s chaos incarnate, and fuck me, I’ve never felt more alive.Fighting with her excites me more than anything ever has.That mouth.That fire.She doesn’t just fuck me...she ruins me.No woman has ever done that to me before.I don’t think I could ever go back to fucking the way I used to.Fast.Hidden.Dark corners of clubs where no one asked questions.Where masks were easier than names, and I could fuck the ache out of my system without ever looking anyone in the eye.One hand around a throat while they moaned my name like it was a fucking prayer.
I needed it back then.
The power, the control, and that rush of dominance to remind myself I still existed.
But with her?
It’s not the control I desire.It’s complete chaos.Her chaos.
The kind that tears through my system and leaves nothing intact.The kind that tastes like blood, salt, and satisfaction.She doesn’t beg.She bites.Doesn’t submit.She fucking dares.And I can’t get enough.
She makes me forget everything except her.The heat of her breath against my jaw, the feral noise she makes just before she climaxes, the scrape of her nails as she pulls me deeper, and her damned teeth sinking into my shoulder mid-orgasm as if claiming me.Laughing while she does it.
I think that’s what destroys me the most—the way she laughs while I lose my fucking mind over her.
She shouldn’t be my distraction right now.I have other things on my mind, more important things to get what I want.
This entire empire I was born into once felt like a chain.A crown forged from rusted iron and old blood.Matteo and Alessandro once turned it into a graveyard of loyalty, and now I’m the last one standing with the guts to pull it back from the dirt.
I don’t want the throne.I want the kingdom.I want to crush whatever’s left of them beneath my boots, rebuild it from bone and fire, and rule it on my fucking terms.Matteo ran.Alessandro hid.And I’m done waiting.I’ll drag them out myself.Piece by piece if I have to.Burn down every safehouse, interrogate every rat, bleed every loyalist until I get a scent.
Because this time, I’m prepared to claim the kingdom and crown myself in their ashes.
We had gone in the middle of the night to chase a whisper.A sighting.Another desperate fucking thread I told myself might finally pull everything together.
Some street rat with nicotine-stained fingers and desperation in his eyes swore he saw Matteo near the docks in Saint George.Said he wasn’t alone either.A woman with long black hair.
Emery Moretti.
I remember her from before her father betrayed my uncle.Emery was the only softness Matteo ever showed.She meant everything to him.You didn’t need to know them to see it.You just had to watch the way his eyes locked on hers like she was the only thing keeping him tethered.
I wanted to believe I’d found them.That I’d finally uncovered a truth in this maze of lies.I needed something real to power this plan, something solid I could latch onto.A fucking glimpse of their ghost trail.
But all I got was static and shadows.
I searched every damn corner.Every alley.Every warehouse with busted locks and smashed windows.My men questioned dockworkers.Bribed guards.Paid off a vendor who swore he saw a man matching Matteo’s description boarding onto a ship that left two nights ago.
But there’s no footage.No paper trail.Not even a name on the manifest.
Just a few ghost prints on wet pavement.
Another dead end.
Next time I hear Matteo’s name, someone better be bleeding for it.
I lean my head back against the seat, tension bleeding down my spine.For a second, I let my eyes slip shut.The hum of the engine fills the silence, as the warm leather presses into my shoulders.My mind drifts back to the way Bella’s fingers scraped across my chest last night, to the sound she made when she came, to the fucking bite she left near my collarbone.
My phone vibrates against my thigh.
I pull it out, already sensing that something’s wrong.
The screen lights up.