Page 54 of Revenge on the Mafia

When he put it like that…

He took in my expression. “That’s what I thought.”

“Wait.” He stared at his wrist, where I clutched it. Instantly, it started to burn, and I snatched my hand away. “I’ll tell them.”

He frowned in annoyance. It took me a second to realize I was rubbing my hand. I stopped immediately. After a beat, he asked in a tone threaded with suspicion, “Why?”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“You’re not going to tell them.” It wasn’t a question.

I wasn’t, but since he’d caught up to my lie, I insisted on it. “I’ll tell them.”

He took a step toward me. Oxygen snuck out of the hallway. Suddenly, the fifteen-foot space felt like a foot-by-foot boxed container. “When?”

“In a few days,” I mumbled. I couldn’t think when he was this close to me.

“How many?”

“¿Que?” I croaked.

“You said a few days. I’m a numbers guy, Anna. How many fucking days do you need to tell them you’re mine?”

“Woooo…” My heart lurched. He was scaring me. Panic crawled at my throat. “This loco deal of yours is for one month. And I’ll never be yours.”

He ignored me like I’d not spoken. I wondered if I had. I was losing my senses. Sweat dripped down my back.

“How many?” he repeated.

I swallowed the thick lump choking me, down my throat. “One week.”

“Two.”

Even better. I nodded. “Two weeks.”

“Two fucking days, Anna. Forty-eight hours.”

Oh, I don’t think so. He smothered my defiance when he leaned right into me. His height, his build, his look. All of them overwhelmed me. The power within him vibrated like a warning, and something else I couldn’t place. Nevertheless, it pressed me against the wall. His darkened eyes rested on my lips, and they trembled underneath his heated regard. He’s going to kiss me. My hand clenched. He dragged his tongue across his teeth. I felt the heated lick on my clit. Wrong. This is all wrong. I willed the heat climbing up my body to calm down. When he spoke, his words were a whisper, and even though it was nothing but a threat, it landed like a promise. “Because if you don’t tell them, I will.”

I gulped. My lips tingled. He leaned forward but pulled himself up short. With an annoyed sigh, he shifted and turned. I exhaled. Took a slow, deep breath. Waited until he’d moved five feet away.

“Thirty days.”

He paused. “Seven hundred and thirty hours.”

“I’ll be plotting to kill you in every one of them,” I told him bitterly.

He shook his head. A soft laugh escaped him. “Go ahead. As long as you fuck me while doing it, mia piccola assassina.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

NICO

Across from my desk, the idiot rambled on. Our lawyer, Ludano, was a sleazy asshole none of us cared for but put up with because he was usually good at his job. Usually. Trying to find holes in my pipeline on how we were going to minimize tax exposure and coming up with none was making him look desperate. It was a ‘my dick is bigger than yours’ kind of situation. Rather than admitting he’d found none, he bored us with non-existent shit. He was so involved in the sound of his own voice that he didn’t notice the lack of reaction. Stefano was typing on his phone, and I could tell by his smirk that he was pissing someone off and enjoying it.

I’d caught the gist of Ludano’s intent, nulled it, and muted everything else. I didn’t need to focus. Moving money through complex corporate structures was a sixty-minute task for me. At the most.

My attention was on my screen. But instead of numbers, it filled with images of my little assassin moving from one room to another. I watched her walk from the storeroom to the kitchen. That strut alone was enough to make my dick swell in my pants. She was a criminal, alright. She should be behind bars for robbing men of IQ points. I hid my smirk behind my hand as she paused in the doorway for a second before scattering to the other side of the room to empty the dishwasher. Given how she squirmed under the attention of Magda, I knew she hadn’t told her yet. She probably hadn’t told the other girl either. She was a fool, or was set on testing my patience. Either way, the deadline ticked. She had twenty hours to redeem herself or… I leaned back in my chair, bent one leg over my knee, and let myself indulge. I quite liked this feeling. This fuzzy brain and hazy vision. Except for the hard-on. That was a nuisance. Just the thought of her was enough to get me hot and itchy. It tested my control, and I lost every single time. I’d lost count of the times I’d locked myself in the bathroom and jerked off to images of her. But I was done with that. Delayed gratification was a bitch. But it would be worth it. I was sure of it.