Page 17 of Phantom Mine

She’s being dishonest about her reasons for wanting employment atFirenze. I’m usually excellent at reading people, but she’s an enigma.

The reason for her lies could be as simple as her running away from an abusive boyfriend. From what I’ve heard, we’ve had that happen quite a few times with other strippers. She was clear about wanting money and didn’t seem interested in anything else, so the theory holds up.

But she could also be a plant, a spy, an assassin, or any number of other things, each with the end objective of destroying theFamiglia.

I know this and yet all I can focus on is my desperation to not have her on stage shaking her delectable ass for others.

Enzo is right to be concerned. I’m fully compromised. She was even more intoxicating than I imagined, and fuck knows I’ve imagined it a lot. All that skin wrapped in a lethal costume. Miles of long legs on display. A face that’s haunted my dreams, with plump, pouty lips that I’ve stroked my cock to, imagining watching them part around my thick length.

And herhair.

There’s an obstruction in my throat just thinking about the mass of thick brown locks tumbling loosely down her back. Wrapping it around my fist fulfilled half of a fantasy that had been thumping inside me since the moment I saw her.

She’s even more beautiful than I remember.

“You ready?” Enzo asks. I nod and he pushes the door open.

Emiliano Marchesani is standing at the rooftop’s edge, his hands in his pockets and his back turned to me as he stares out at the view of the city. The sun is setting, offering a beautiful glimpse of London against a sky of pinks and oranges. It’s my favorite time of day.

“Emiliano,” I call and he turns. He nods at the security he’s brought with him and they disperse, moving further away but keeping a watchful eye on him.

“Matteo. You’re late.”

“Apologies. I had business to attend to.”

His gaze moves over my shoulder to Enzo who follows closely behind me. “Let’s speak alone.”

“No,” I say, reaching him. I extend a hand out between us. “Enzo stays.”

He glances down at my hand, then back at me.

“You made me come alone.”

I grin easily, flashing him my most disarming smile. “That’s because I don’t trust any of your men. Enzo, I trust with my lifeandyours.”

The older man stares at me for a moment longer, disrespectfully stretching the amount of time I stay with my hand extended. It’s a show of power, one I’m only too happy to indulge if that’s what it’ll take. Finally, he nods and slips his hand in mine, shaking it forcefully.

“What’s with all of the cloak and dagger of this meeting?” he asks, shrewd eyes picking apart my face. “I assume your father wouldn’t be thrilled if he found out about this. Nor would your brother.”

My jaw sets at the mention of those two.

“They would not.” My lip curls. “And you haven’t told them, which means that you’re at the very least intrigued by what I have to offer.”

Emiliano’s eyebrow twitches, the first slip in his mask. He’s a brutal, emotionless man, one I’d be a fool to cross.

“I’m listening.”

Growing up, life was always about survival. My father was an abusive asshole, and my brother learned how to be a sociopathic sadist from him. He learned by watching and he trained. On me.

For years, I was his training dummy. He used me, used my body, to develop and hone his favorite torture methods. I kept hoping, expecting,praying, for help. To be rescued. For an adult to intervene and save me.

But the help never came.

Encouraged by the seeminglycarte blanchehe was given, Rocco grew more vicious and barbaric. He had everything you could want. Power. Influence. The ability to wield fear like a weapon. He was the heir and I was the spare. I should have gone unnoticed to him growing up, forgotten like I often was by our parents, but he was obsessed with what I had. He wanted it all for himself, no matter what it was.

As we grew up, his tactics changed. By the time I was seventeen, I was bigger and stronger than he was, makingphysical assaults impossible. So he resorted to more imaginative ways to torture me.

When I was eighteen, I had a girlfriend, Susanna. We’d been together less than a week when I came home on the last day of school and found her dead in my bed, her throat slit and blood everywhere. The memory of Rocco fucking her dead body, his white hips furiously slapping against her flesh is forever seared into my brain.

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