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At the end of the hall stood a single elevator. Brushed brass frame.

No floor buttons. Just a fingerprint scanner that required executive-level biometric clearance.

The CEO's private express lift.

My heart slammed against my ribs.

Paris mornings. The kiss by the Seine. Isabella's voice last night, sharp as a blade.

I was done running.

Even if it was a cliff ahead. Even if he carried a past I couldn't imagine and blood ties too tangled to untangle—I was going to stand in front of him and tell him: I want to try.

I pressed my trembling thumb against the cold glass scanner.

Green light. The brass doors slid open.

He'd actually entered my biometrics into the system.

I breathed in the faint cedar scent, tightened my grip on the dark roses, and stepped inside. The doors closed. The elevator shot upward.

Chapter 18

Marcelo

The cigar ash had built up half an inch along the crystal rim. It cracked, tumbled into the ashen pile below.

The office was cold as a morgue. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, Manhattan's sullen sky pressed down under leaden clouds, the Hudson's surface glinting dull and turbid.

For the forty-eight hours since I'd gotten back from Paris, the air in front of me had stayed thick with a restless, bloody rage.

Rocco stood ramrod straight at my desk, sweat beading his temples, even his breathing deliberately light. Two legal audit reports I'd torn to shreds littered the floor. My Montblanc had gouged a dent clean through the mahogany surface.

I was in a shit mood.

I hadn't lost control like this since I was seventeen and my father forced me to take over the family books.

"The union boss at that Brooklyn dock—if he hasn't signed the transfer agreement by sunset tonight," I ground out the cigar, voice rough as bloodied sandpaper, looking up at Rocco, "send him to the bottom of the East River to look for his charter."

"Yes, Mr. Moretti." Rocco kept his eyes down, knuckles pressed against his pants.

The room went silent.

The bite mark on my right shoulder still throbbed. Through the crisp shirt fabric, that scabbed ring of flesh pulled with every movement of my arm, mocking the pathetic state I'd been in these past two days.

Two whole days. All I could see was her rolling off the bed wrapped in that sheet.

Those amber eyes that I'd lit up like honey along the Seine, in that bed—they'd frozen into pure revulsion the second she saw that text. She'd called me disgusting, shaken off my hand like I was diseased, spent seven hours on the plane with those goddamn noise-canceling headphones, face pressed to the frozen window, not sparing me even a sideways glance.

I was used to taking what I wanted with a gun barrel or a checkbook. But that girl from New Jersey had not only sunk her teeth into my shoulder without holding back—she'd locked me out with one cold shoulder.

What pissed me off even more was my own restraint in that moment. I could've locked her in that Le Meurice suite, made sure she couldn't go anywhere but into my arms. But I'd let her go. Let that cocktail of self-doubt and rage burn me alive from the inside.

The desk phone suddenly shrilled twice.

I scowled, hit the speaker. "I said no outside calls this morning—"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Moretti." Clara's voice trembled with barely concealed panic, dropping to a near-whisper. "It's... it's Ms. Caldwell. She came up on your private elevator. She's holding... a bouquet of red roses. She says she wants to see you."