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I key the mic with my free hand, never taking my eyes off the grand staircase. “Because they do want me inside. This was never about the compound. It was about getting me here. Alone.”

“Then get out. Now. Before?—”

I switch off the radio.

Because it’s too late for escape. Too late for regrets. Too late for anything except the truth.

Marco let me build an army so he could watch me fall.

He let me plan this assault so he could prove it was pointless.

He let me walk into his house so he could remind me where I belong.

And God help me, part of me is impressed by the elegance of it.

This is what it means to be married to Marco Bianchi.

This is what I’ve been fighting against.

And this is what I’ve secretly been craving all along.

I put down my rifle and wait.

Because ready or not, this war is about to become very, very personal.

38

MARCO

Istep out of the shadows like death itself.

She doesn’t hear me coming. The pistol clatters against the marble as she sets it down, and I almost smile at the poetry of it.

Aria DeLuca, in person at last, finally laying down her arms in my house.

I move with silence, closing the distance between us. She senses me at the last second—her spine stiffens, her head starts to turn—but it’s too late.

My arm wraps around her waist gently from behind, pulling her back against my chest. My other hand covers her mouth before she can scream into that walkie-talkie.

“Shh,” I whisper against her ear, my lips brushing the shell of it. “No need for dramatics,dolcezza. We both know how this ends.”

She struggles against me, her body bucking and twisting, but I have fifty pounds and eight inches on her. Plus the advantage of not being pregnant.

I drag her backward through the foyer, her shoulders scraping against marble as she fights. Into my den. Toward the steel table I use for… less pleasant business meetings.

The kind where blood needs to be easily cleaned away.

“You really thought you could beat me?” I murmur as I spin her around, forcing her back against the cold metal surface. The impact knocks the air from her lungs in a rush. “With your little army? Your weeks of planning?”

Her hazel eyes blaze with fury and humiliation. The recognition that she’s been played. That every move she made, I saw coming from miles away.

“Fuck you,” she gasps, her hands coming up to push against my chest.

I catch her wrists, pinning them above her head with one hand. The position arches her back, pressing her body against mine. Even now—especially now—my blood sings with the ache of her.

“Now, now, wife,” I chide, leaning closer, my hips pressing into hers. “That’s no way to greet your lover.”

“You’re not my lover.” The words come out breathless, defiant. “Not anymore.”