Chapter 4 Dangerous Games

• The silence in Luca's study was suffocating, heavy as a bridal bouquet. Isabella was pinned to the carpet, eyes saucer wide, gulping choppy little breaths of air. Her wrist pulsed in his vice-like grip, the bruising pressure spreading to her knees. He pulled her closer, eyes blazing with anger.
• “Were you listening outside my door?” he demanded, voice stern and lethal.
• “I-I swear I wasn’t!” she sobbed, speaking so low that she could barely be heard. “I… I got lost—please… I-I didn’t mean...”
• He shook her violently, hard enough that the teeth clashed together. Her whimper was a slash of sound through the silence, her fear naked and vulnerable. His thumb on the tender skin of her wrist, he wanted for an instant to snap the fragile bones. The fantasy repelled and excited him simultaneously.
• She doubled up under his glare, crying quietly, pinching her eyes shut. He could not help but turn away from the tremble of her lips or the catch of her breath with every ragged gasp. His anger battled with a strange, new pain.
• And abruptly, something within him broke. His hand eased. His fingers rose, as though in defiance of his will, to brush a tangle of hair from her tears. His thumb smoothed her cheek, gentle where he had been brutal a moment before.
• "Never," he snarled. "Enter my study again. Uninvited," his voice harsh with a feeling he could not tolerate.
• She bobbed unchecked, still crying, but gratitude struggling there too, wild as sunlight. He despised it. He needed it.
• The door burst open, dissolving the table. Luca's second-in-command stood in the doorway, panting, eyes crazed. "Boss, Russo's making his move. He's bought two of ours. They're selling him intel. It's only a matter of time before he comes directly at us."
• Luca's face closed off in an instant. Isabella blanched, as though a chilly breeze had blown through the room. The heat of his eyes turned cold, turned arctic to something hard and unforgiving. He tightened his lips into a line. "Deal with it," he snarled without ripping his gaze off hers.
• He nodded and took off.
• Isabella's breast rose and fell in short, nervous breaths. She looked at him and watched him change from the man who'd just touched her with such gentleness to one carved of stone and shadow.
• "Go," he said. His voice was low, even flat, but she could hear the steel. "Before I change my mind.".
• She staggered from the room, skirts hindering her as she hurried. She did not pause until she had reached her tiny maid's bedroom. She closed the door behind her with shaking hands, collapsed onto her thin bed, and wrapped her arms around her knees.
• She was overwhelmed by tears. She rocked back and forth in a gruesome parody of comfort, tears dropping onto her pillow as she wondered what hell of a planet she'd dropped onto and why the memory of Luca's brief, tender touch tormented her as much as his threats.
• Later That Night
• Lightning illuminated the charred corridors of the penthouse. Thunder roared across the city. Isabella tossed on her bed, the tempest outside mirroring that which was within.
• A faint crash resounded down the corridor. She stiffened taut, a drop of fear creeping down her spine. Clutching by a foot, she glided silently down the corridor, close to the walls. The double doors to the great hall creaked ajar, and light spilled into the darkness.
• She peeked in, and her breath was choked in her throat.
• Luca had a man pinned against the marble wall by the throat, nose an inch from his. The man's nose was bleeding, nd his eyes were frozen in fear. "You thought you could betray me?" Luca's voice was a death whisper, every word a knife. "You thought you'd live long enough to spend Russo's money?
• With a vicious blow, he knocked the man's head against the wall. The traitor doubled over, blood streaming down his face.
• Isabella's hand shot up to her mouth to muffle her cry. But the small gasp was too silent to hide.
• Luca's eyes darted up. Black, shining eyes scoured the darkness. He did not move, every muscle tense. "Who's there?
• Isabella's gasp was stifled. Thunder crackled outside again, lightning illuminating her pale face above the pillar.
• His gaze pinned the darkness where she was, anger and something else, something hungry, burning in his eyes.
• Silence was a blanket.
• Then his voice cut through it, cold and unyielding:
• "Come out. Now."