Page 28 of Accidental Alliance

I have wanted women before. Wanted bodies, mouths, a few hours of relief from the constant pressure of the life I was born into because desire is simple. Desire is cheap. It burns hot, then dies quickly.

This is not that.

This is waking up with rage tightening its grip around my heart with each beat, suffocating me slowly because the side of the bed where she slept one night is cold now and has been for days.

On the third night, I break.

I leave another meeting before it is properly over, ignoring the look Alessio sends me from the far end of the table when I rise and turn for the door. He says my name once, the tone a warning edged with concern, but I keep walking. I drive through the city with no destination at first, just the sick pulse of need driving me harder on every block.

Rain has started falling, glossing the streets until every light in the city looks smeared with fractured lighting.

My tires hiss over the pavement as music from the radio murmurs low through the speakers, some old blues track soaked in regret that I shut off because I cannot stand one more voice in the car with me.

I end up outside of one of the many penthouses the Russo family owns, only realizing it when I recognize the building number on the side of the brick exterior.

I sit across the street with the engine still idling, one hand wrapped tight around the steering wheel, and watch the lobby doors like a man waiting for absolution to come walking out under the fluorescent street lighting.

After two hours, I finally drive away.

I tell myself to leave it there. That if she wanted me to know where she is, she would have found a way to tell me.

Yet despite the logic of those thoughts rattling inside my head, the other ones—louder and far more desirable to listen to—urge me to keep moving.

So instead, I drive through the city until my gas gauge dings, slowly hunted by its own thoughts.

By midnight, I am back at my apartment.

I remember almost nothing of the drive there.

At some point, I park. At some point, I kill the engine and I get out and drag myself over to the elevator. But the details do not matter.

By now, my body has gone completely cold. I move through the garage on instinct alone, every motion stripped down to habit.

The mirrored walls of the elevator throw my reflection back at me and for a second, I barely recognize the man staring out of them.

Dark stubble shadows my jaw.

Exhaustion has carved hard lines into my face, sharpening me into something harsher… meaner. My eyes look empty.

I drag a hand over my mouth and close my eyes for half a second, just enough to let the steel box carry me upward while the city drops away beneath my feet.

I should be thinking about tomorrow and the men who will be waiting for orders, and the fracture spreading through both our families like rot beneath the foundation of old floorboards.

Instead, all I can think about is her.

When the elevator slows at my floor and the old familiar mechanical groan settles into place, I feel it before I understand it, my body already knowing before my mind can catch up.

Every instinct I possess hardens at once, exhaustion burning off in one hot, violent sweep.

The doors open with infuriating slowness, revealing the dimly lit entryway beyond.

I step out of the elevator, my eyes lifting automatically toward the windows facing the city.

And then I freeze at a figure standing in front of them.

For one second, my mind refuses to make sense of what I am seeing. The room is lit only by the scattered glow of the city lights beyond the glass, leaving her mostly in shadow.

She stands motionless, framed against the skyline like some ghost haunting me.