Chapter 1
#1
Six months ago. The night before the pier.
Marcia’s P.O.V.
I stood alone in the garden of Theo’s estate, the midnight air crisp against my skin. Above me, the sky was a clear, sprawling canvas scattered with constellations. I never could quite see the shapes people claimed were up there; to me, they were just cold, white data points burning in the dark.
I forced my mind back to earth, mentally rehearsing tomorrow’s sequence. Step by step. Move by move. Perfection was the only acceptable outcome—not just for me, but for Olivia. Yet, despite my calculations, a cold knot of reality tightened in my chest. There was still a margin for error. A single misstep, and the pier would become a slaughterhouse. If the guns came out, chaos would reign, and chaos is notoriously difficult to map. But I silenced the doubt. I am excellent with variables.
Tomorrow, the board would be set: Olivia and I on one side, besides us Antonio, Marcus, Gino and him.
Dante Tressardi.
Dante was less of a man and more a force of nature, a predatory animal pacing behind thin iron bars. I didn’t know what would happen the day those bars finally snapped. Even now, the memory of our encounter in his office made my skin prickle. I had pushed him right to the edge, deliberate and merciless. I needed the upper hand; I needed him to submit to my frequency. So, I became Hellfire. I systematically dismantled every defensive thought in his head, breaking him down just so I could be the one to piece him back together. It was a calculated risk to ensure he wouldn’t overthrow me, but if I was being entirely honest with myself? I enjoyed the thrill of it far more than I ever should have.
In my mind’s eye, he was a flawless, terrifying vision. He towered over me at six-foot-two, all sharp bone structure, dark features, and a shadow of a beard. He was built like a classical Greek masterpiece, carved from pure muscle, his unblemished skin free of any tattoos. But it was his hands that haunted me, strong, heavy, and undeniably masculine. The kind of hands that could utterly unravel a woman.
I caught myself holding my breath, my chest tightening as the phantom sensation of those hands flashed through my mind. The sudden heat made my skin flush against the cool night air.
I had called myself Hellfire to his face, masquerading as the one holding the match. But standing out here in the isolation of the dark, the lie tasted like ash. I didn’t just want to be the architect of his mind. I wanted to know what it felt like to be the thing he tore apart. I wanted those black eyes to burn holes through me—not with defiance, and not with rage, but with the raw, unbridled hunger of the animal he kept locked away.
My pulse spiked, a rapid, erratic rhythm that completely defied every logic sequence I owned. I tried to calm myself, wrapping my arms tightly around my own ribs as if I could physically force my nervous system to reset. It was useless. I was burning from the inside out, ignited by the mere thought of him. My knees buckled, giving out completely under the weight of my own sudden weakness. I sank onto the damp grass, kneeling in the dark before a ghost of my own making. I closed my eyes, my breath hitching in my throat.
And then, a deep, gravelly voice cut through the silence of the garden.
“Marcia.”
My eyes flew open. He wasn’t a phantom. Dante was stepping off the gravel path, his dark silhouette looming over me.
“What happened? You’re trembling, and your pulse is skyrocketing,” he said, his voice low and commanding, yet laced with a strange grounding presence. He dropped to his knees in front of me, leveling our fields of vision. “Focus on my voice, Marcia. Look at me. Tell me five things you can see.”
“I can see you,” I choked out, my voice pitching higher than I wanted it to, completely stripped of its usual calculation. “The grass. The roses. The sunbed... your eyes.”
“Good. Now tell me four things you can touch.”
My hands moved instinctively, defying my brain’s warning signals. “I can touch your hand,” I whispered, pressing my palms against his skin. “Your cheeks. Your lips. Your hair.”
My gaze locked onto his, piercing through the darkness, searching for the crack in his armor.
“Perfect,” Dante murmured, his voice softening just a fraction, though his hold on me remained iron-clad. “Now tell me three things you can hear, Marcia.”
“I can hear your voice, Dante,” I said, my heart hammering against my ribs. “I can hear the owls hooting. I can hear the water running by the fountain.”
I could feel my hands engulfed in his. He wasn’t letting go of my wrists, and he certainly wasn’t letting go of my gaze. He was anchoring me, pulling me out of my own head.
“You’re doing splendid, cara,” he said, his breath warm against my face. “Tell me two things you can smell.”
I breathed him in, the scent filling my lungs and scrambling the last of my logic sequences. “I can smell your cologne. Something... orange blossom? Earthy. And cinnamon. I can smell cinnamon.”
“Of course you do,” he whispered, his gaze dropping to my lips. “Now, tell me one thing you can taste.”
“You,” I breathed.
Before the word could even fully leave my lips, I gripped the fabric of his shirt, fisting it in my hands, and pulled him down to me. I initiated the kiss, bracing for rejection, but it never came. Dante didn’t discourage me. He didn’t pull away.
Instead, he took total possession. He claimed my mouth as if it were his own private territory, an area of expertise he intended to map completely. His mouth slammed against mine with a devastating, demanding hunger that stole the breath straight from my lungs. It was filthy, desperate, and entirely possessive. He bit at my bottom lip, a sharp spark of pain that instantly melted into an absolute, blinding rush of adrenaline. One of his large hands slid to the back of my neck, his fingers tangling in my hair to hold me steady, while his other hand traveled down the curve of my body, possessive, heavy, and searching, as if I were the rarest gold he had finally unearthed in the dark..
The air between us dissolved, consumed by a sudden, violent shift in the atmosphere. The grounding exercise was gone, shattered by the word still lingering on my lips. Dante didn’t just accept the invitation—he eradicated the distance between us with a ferocity that made the world tilt on its axis.
A low, primal growl tore from the depths of his chest, a sound that was pure animal, entirely stripped of civilized restraint. His hand locked into the hair at the base of my skull with bruising force, tilting my head back at an unforgiving angle.. He pulled back just a fraction, his chest heaving, his dark eyes searching mine through the shadows. The sheer, predatory intensity of his gaze demanded a choice. There was no coercion here, only an unmasking of the truth. He needed to know I was all in.
“Marcia,” he whispered, his voice a rough, gravelly friction against my lips. “Tell me. Do you want this? Look at me and tell me you’re mine tonight.”
Every logic sequence I owned collapsed into absolute clarity. I locked my eyes onto his, giving up the last shred of my defenses, completely sure of my answer.
“Yes,” I breathed, my voice steady, ringing with absolute certainty. “Take me. I’m yours, Dante. Break me apart.”
A dark, possessive satisfaction flared in his eyes, the animal unleashed with total, unbridled permission.
Before my hyperanalytical brain could even attempt to process the sudden heat, his other hand fisted into the fabric of my clothes. The sound of tearing fabric echoed sharply in the quiet garden. He didn’t care about finesse. He didn’t care about patience. He wanted skin-on-skin contact, and he wanted it immediately.
He drove me backward, pinning me flat against the damp earth. The cold grass against my bare back was a shocking contrast to the lethal, suffocating heat of his body hovering over mine. He was massive, a mountain of pure muscle crushing me into the dirt, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to escape. I wanted to be crushed.
His hands were everywhere, rough, heavy, and frantic, tracing the line of my ribs, gripping my hips with enough force to leave permanent marks. He mapped my body like a conqueror claiming stolen territory, pinning my wrists above my head with a single, iron-clad grip. I was entirely at his mercy, completely immobilized beneath his weight.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his breath hot and ragged against my neck as his teeth scraped over my pulse point.
I forced my eyes open, my vision swimming. In the moonlight, his black eyes were completely blown out, twin voids of unadulterated, predatory intent. There was no logic left in him. No mafia prince, no strategist. Just raw, unbridled dominance.
When he took me, it wasn’t a gentle transition; it was an earth-shattering collision. A ragged gasp tore from my throat as he drove into me, a hard, deep, uncompromising thrust that shattered every remaining logic sequence in my mind. The impact resonated through my entire being, a seismic shockwave that made the garden around us blur into absolute nothingness.
The pace he set was merciless, frantic, and entirely unyielding. He moved with a filthy, animalistic rhythm, each strike heavy and possessive, demanding every single ounce of my surrender.
Suddenly, he stalled his weight deep inside me, pinning my hips hard against the damp earth. The sudden stillness was agonizing, a vibrating suspension of pure tension. He was breathing like a wounded beast, his chest heaving heavily against mine. He leaned down, his face inches from mine, his black eyes burning into my soul with a terrifying, raw intensity.
“Tell me, Marcia,” he growled, his voice a dark, gravelly friction that scraped against my nerves. His fingers dug into my hips, bruising and unyielding. “Do you want this? Do you want me to keep ruining you?”
My body was screaming for the rhythm to return, every nerve ending on fire, begging for the impact. I fisted my hands into his shirt, pulling him down with a desperate, feral strength.
“Don’t stop,” I gasped out, my voice raw and entirely stripped of pride. “Don’t stop now.”
A dark, dangerous smirk flashed across his face, the look of a predator given absolute permission.
“Good,” he muttered.
And then he destroyed me. He slammed back into motion with a newfound, earth-shattering violence that stole the air right out of my lungs. I wrapped my legs around his waist, my fingers clawing helplessly at the solid muscle of his back, digging my nails into his skin just to hold onto something stable in the middle of the chaos. He let out a harsh, guttural sound at the sting, his movements turning even more aggressive, even more demanding. He was tearing me apart, cell by cell, exactly as I had fantasized, dismantling my carefully constructed defenses until there was nothing left of Marcia the mastermind.
The world narrowed down to the taste of his mouth, the bruising grip of his hands, and the rhythmic, earth-shattering force of his body crashing into mine. It was a beautiful, chaotic ruin. I was burning up, melting into the dirt, entirely consumed by the magnificent, terrifying animal I had finally unleashed.
