Chapter 40 The Owner's Kiss

• (POV: Isabela)
• The heavy silence inside the limousine felt louder than the noise of the poker game we just left. It pressed down on me, thick and suffocating. Outside, the bright lights of Miami flashed by, reflecting off Mateo’s unreadable face in the tinted window, but inside this dark, moving box, the air crackled with something tight and dangerous. His anger. Or maybe something colder, possessive, simmering just beneath his usual calm control. I could feel it radiating from him, even though he sat perfectly still beside me, staring straight ahead, his jaw tight.
• My own skin still crawled with the feeling of Lorenzo Bellini’s appreciative gaze, the memory of forcing smiles and polite laughter while digging for information under Mateo’s watchful eye. The flicker of sick satisfaction I felt at actually getting the information was completely swallowed now by shame and the overwhelming feeling of being used, degraded. And now this. This heavy, simmering silence from Mateo felt like the prelude to a storm.