Page 6 of Taken By the Enforcer

Donatello Romano.

I’ve heard the name for years in the same tones people use for storms. Papà calls him useful. Soldiers call him Il Cacciatore—The Hunter—when they think no one is listening. The stories are equal parts awe and warning. None of those stories prepared me for the way his gaze sits steady on a point in the room and makes everything else blur.

Cara’s whisper vibrates against my skin. “I’d climb that man like a tree.”

Heat pricks under my collarbone. “You can’t say that in a room full of monache.”

“They’re donors’ wives, not nuns,” she says, wicked grin flashing. “Besides, they’re thinking it too.”

The two men with him—Marcello Lucchese and Faustino Romano, if I read the angle of shoulders and the careful deference right—speak without moving their mouths much. Donatello listens. Doesn’t fidget. Doesn’t scan for exits. Keeps his hands loose at his sides as if they already know exactly what to do if anything happens.

He turns his head a fraction.

Our gazes collide.

Everything inside me stills, then rushes forward as if that look is a current and I’m too light to anchor. It doesn’t feel like being seen as much as being measured and found—not wanting, not excessive—exact. Breath slides shallow into my lungs. Nipples tighten traitorously against satin, the sudden sting hidden beneath my bodice. Thighs press together on instinct, an attempt to quiet the pulse that taps insistently low in my belly.

Cara’s voice dims, then returns in a gasp. “He’s looking this way.”

“I know.” The words scrape, dry. “Don’t stare.”

“I’m not staring.” She absolutely stares. “You’re staring. And blushing.”

“Because you’re saying outrageous things,” I hiss, even as heat climbs to my cheeks. “Stop.”

Donatello’s mouth doesn’t smile. The line of it softens a degree, which somehow feels louder than a grin. A single nod acknowledges me without claiming, like he just confirmed an answer to a question he’d already asked himself.

Papà moves, drawing a ring of greetings with him. We shift to follow, polite shadowing drilled into me since childhood. One soldier at the edge of our orbit leans in to murmur something into Papà’s ear. His gaze flicks—first to Marcello, then to Donatello. The smallest tension threads his jaw.

“Eyes to the floor when the Lucchese boys are near,” Papà says to me without moving his lips, tone silk over wire. “You’re not on the market tonight.”

“I didn’t say I was,” I whisper back.

“You don’t have to say it,” he replies, a father who knows where attention lands at a hundred paces. “Men like that don’t share.”

The music swells. Applause rises around the room as the quartet finishes the piece, giving me a moment to breathe. Cara fans her face with the program as if she could cool both of us. “All right,” she says. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re always wrong.” Denial tastes like sweet wine andgoes to my head just as quickly. My gaze refuses to behave. It returns to Donatello like a compulsion.

He speaks to Marcello, head bent enough to show the clean line of his neck above the starched collar. My mind wanders where it shouldn’t, picturing the rasp of his jaw sliding against the heel of my hand, the heat of that throat under my mouth, the weight of his palm spanning my waist. Nineteen feels too young to think these things and too old to pretend I don’t.

Aldo appears at my elbow like a summons. “Paolina.” He offers his arm with rehearsed gallantry. “Your father said you were ready to make the rounds.”

My spine stiffens at the expectation tucked inside the words. “Of course.”

We circle tables draped in white, with names engraved on placards, glasses polished within an inch of their lives. Aldo shakes hands and claims minor victories in low tones, every exchange a feather he tucks into a cap I’m not sure he earned. I smile and nod and do the thing I’m supposed to do—be decorative, be agreeable, be the quiet that keeps peace.

Every few steps, the crowd parts enough to align me with the colonnade again. Donatello remains where he was, conversation shifting partners around him like a dance. He doesn’t hunt around the room with his gaze. He waits for it to come to him, and of course it does. No one can teach that kind of gravity.

At the edge of a toast, our gazes snag a second time.

The surrounding sounds thin to threads. Aldo’s voice keeps going, talking up someone’s new car—something about cavalli and velocità—but it reaches me as if through water. Donatello’sattention slides over my face like a palm not yet touching, then drops, pauses at my throat where my pulse beats, returns to my eyes. Not crude. Not even hungry. Assessed. Approved.

Claimed without claim.

Heat pools lower. A ribbon of want winds tight, shocking enough I shift my weight to hide it. Aldo notices the movement and mistakes it for discomfort in my shoes. “Sit for a minute,” he tells me, concerned for optics rather than me. “You’ll crease your dress if you faint.”

“I won’t faint.” The words leave on a breath that trembles anyway.