Chapter 4
By the time they returned to the city, the sun had set, plunging the penthouse into moody, shadow-drenched stillness.
Tessa stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room, staring out at the grid of city lights.
The reflection in the glass showed a stranger—tired, small, entirely out of her depth.
Gemma’s words echoed relentlessly.
He obsesses. He claims things. Can you handle the life?
She heard the soft clink of a glass behind her.
She didn’t turn around.
“You’ve been quiet since Long Island,” Dominic said.
His reflection joined hers in the glass. He stood a few feet behind her, having stripped off his suit jacket and tie. The white shirt—the one with the stained cuff—was gone, replaced by a dark, simple t-shirt.
“Gemma thinks I’m an idiot.”
“Gemma thinks about herself. It’s a survival mechanism she developed when my father was alive.”
Dominic stepped closer. The proximity made the hairs on Tessa’s arm stand up.
“What do you think, Tessa?”
“I think I’m standing in a sixty-million-dollar apartment because a cartel wants to use me as bait.”
She finally turned around, facing him.
The cynical armor was fully strapped on—a desperate attempt to protect the vulnerable core he’d exposed the night before.
“I think you bought my employer to control my movements. I think I saw blood on your sleeve today.”
Dominic didn’t deny it. He took a sip of his bourbon, dark eyes unreadable.
“Arthur Moretti sent a scout to the perimeter of the estate. The scout was dealt with.”
“Dealt with?” Tessa repeated, the euphemism tasting like ash. “Did you kill him?”
“No. I broke his collarbone and sent him back to Arthur with a message.”
Dominic set his glass down on a side table.
He closed the distance between them, stopping mere inches away.
“This is who I am. I do not hide the violence from you because the violence is what keeps the monsters at the door. I will not apologize for protecting what is mine.”
“I am not yours,” Tessa shot back, voice shaking with sudden fierce emotion. “I’m twenty-three years old. I’ve spent my entire life making sure nobody owned me. I don’t owe you anything just because you decided to play knight in bloody armor.”
She expected him to get angry. She wanted him to get angry.
Anger was easy to fight.
Instead, Dominic looked at her with profound, terrifying tenderness.
He raised his hands, palms open—a gesture of complete surrender.
“You don’t owe me anything. You never will.”
He lowered his hands, letting them rest gently on her hips.
The contact sent a violent jolt of electricity straight to her core.
Tessa gasped, hands instinctively coming up to rest against his chest.
Beneath the thin cotton of his shirt, she could feel the steady, heavy beat of his heart.
“I promised you we would go slow,” Dominic murmured, voice dropping to a rough whisper.
He leaned in, forehead resting against hers.
“But you need to understand, Tessa. The walls you built kept the wrong men out. They won’t keep me out because I don’t want to break them down. I want to stand guard outside them so you never have to be afraid again.”
Tessa closed her eyes, ragged breath tearing through her lungs.
The fight drained out of her, replaced by heavy, aching vulnerability.
She was so tired of fighting.
She was so tired of being alone.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she confessed again—the same terrified admission from the night before, but this time it felt heavier, more real.
“I don’t know the rules.”
“There are no rules,” Dominic said.
He slid one hand from her hip, tangling his fingers in the hair at the nape of her neck. He tilted her head up.
“You dictate the pace. You tell me to stop, I stop. You tell me to walk away, I will tear my own heart out and leave it at your feet, but I will walk away.”
He was giving her all the power.
The dangerous, lethal boss of the Costa family was laying his entire hand on the table, offering her the one thing she prized above all else: control.
Tessa opened her eyes.
She looked at the brutal, beautiful lines of his face.
She thought about her mother—ruined by weak men who took and took.
Dominic wasn’t taking.
He was offering.
She made her choice.
Slowly, deliberately, Tessa slid her hands up his chest, wrapping her arms around his neck.
She didn’t look away.
“Don’t walk away.”
A low groan vibrated in Dominic’s chest—a sound of absolute reverence and suppressed hunger.
He didn’t hesitate anymore.
He closed the remaining fraction of an inch between them, capturing her lips with his.
Tessa’s entire world narrowed to a pinpoint of heat and sensation.
She had expected the kiss to be demanding, a violent claiming fitting for a man of his world.
But it wasn’t.
It was painfully gentle.
He kissed her as if she were made of spun glass, his lips moving against hers with slow, deliberate worship.
The hesitation that had gripped her spine evaporated.
Tessa melted against him, mouth parting, inviting him in.
The taste of bourbon and mint flooded her senses.
The sheer size of him, the hard muscles beneath her hands, should have terrified her.
Instead, it felt like dropping anchor in the middle of a hurricane.
Dominic’s hands tightened on her waist, pulling her flush against him.
He deepened the kiss, a slow escalation of heat that sent a flush rising across her chest.
Tessa’s fingers dug into the hair at the back of his head, a soft, involuntary sigh escaping her lips.
He broke the kiss slowly, resting his forehead against hers.
They were both breathing heavily, the silence of the penthouse amplifying the sound of their ragged breaths.
“You’re shaking,” Dominic whispered, thumb brushing across her flushed cheek.
“I’m not scared,” Tessa replied immediately—and realized with a shock that it was the absolute truth.
“I know.”
He pressed a soft kiss to her temple.
He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly against his chest, tucking her head under his chin.
“I know, mia.”
Tessa closed her eyes, resting her cheek against his chest, listening to the steady thud of his heart.
She had let the monster in.
She had lowered the drawbridge and invited the darkness inside.
But as his arms held her tight against the terrifying reality of his world, Tessa realized the most dangerous thing wasn’t the Moretti family or the blood on his cuff.
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The most dangerous thing was that she was falling—completely, hopelessly—in love with him.
And in a world built on leverage, a heart was the easiest thing to break.
