Page 79 of Savage Union
"Yes," I answer honestly. "Not the outcome, perhaps, but the path to it."
She's quiet for a long moment, her fingers tracing idle patterns on my skin. "I didn't plan this. Any of it."
"Nor did I." The admission comes easily in this moment of unusual vulnerability. "You have a talent for disrupting my carefully laid plans, Caterina Gallo."
A small smile touches her lips. "Good."
I laugh softly, surprising both of us. "Still defiant, even now."
"Always." She raises her head to meet my gaze, something unreadable in her eyes. "This doesn't change anything, you know. Between us."
But we both know it's a lie. Everything has changed, irrevocably. The knowledge hangs between us, unacknowledged but undeniable.
"Of course not," I agree, playing along with the fiction. "Just a moment of mutual madness."
"Exactly." She sits up, wincing slightly at the movement. "Nothing more."
I help her down from the table, steadying her when her legs prove unsteady. The sight of her—hair tousled, skin marked by my mouth, wearing nothing but the flush of recent pleasure—stirs something possessive in me again.
"Nothing more," I echo, though we both hear the lie in it. "Except perhaps a reminder."
"Of what?" She begins gathering her scattered clothing, avoiding my gaze.
"That some fires can't be extinguished." I reach down, picking up the silver bracelet from where it fell. "No matter how hard you try."
I hold it out to her, an offering rather than a demand.
CHAPTER 25
Rina
The silver braceletcatches the light as Vito clasps it around my wrist, the cool metal warming quickly against my skin. I trace the intricate pattern with my fingertips, momentarily transfixed by its beauty.
"It's beautiful," I admit, surprised by my own honesty. "Thank you."
"You're welcome."
I'm acutely aware of my body in a way I've never been before—the unfamiliar tenderness between my thighs, the pleasant ache in muscles I didn't know I had, the lingering sensation of Vito's hands, his mouth, the weight of him against me. Physical evidence of a line crossed that can never be uncrossed.
"I should go clean up," I say, needing space to process what just happened. "And you should... do whatever it is you need to do."
He nods, understanding the unspoken request. "Dinner will keep."
"I'm not hungry anymore." I take a step toward the hallway, then pause, a question I shouldn't ask rising to my lips. "Vito?"
"Yes?"
"The shooter. What he told you. Was any of it about me?"
I hold my breath, watching his face for any sign that he knows—about Liam, about our arrangement, about any of it.
"Why would it be?" he counters, studying me with unsettling intensity.
I shrug, aiming for casual and missing by a mile. "I don't know. Just a feeling."
He hesitates, then admits, "He mentioned you, yes. In passing."
My heart stutters. "What did he say?"
