Chapter 4 Untitled Chapter

I can't move.

My body freezes as Lorenzo's lips touch my neck, not a bite, but a deep and warm kiss. His hand that held a pistol a second ago now moves to my waist, pulling me closer until my back presses against his broad chest.

This is not in the plan.

The FBI never mentioned this. The Director never warned me about this possibility. I was trained to go undercover, to lie, to kill if necessary. But no training session taught what to do when the enemy wants your body.

"Lorenzo," I say.

"Quiet," he whispers in my ear. "You're my wife. This is our wedding night. Isn't this how it should be?"

I swallow. Inside my head, a thousand voices scream. Resist, push him away, pull out your knife and run. But my body remains still, because my trained agent brain is calculating rapidly.

If I refuse, he will become suspicious. A newlywed wife does not refuse her husband on the first night, especially in a mafia family where marriage is a business contract.

The real Evelyn Russo might laugh at him, but Evelyn Russo is also an Italian woman raised with tradition.

If I run away, this mission ends. All the sacrifices, two years of investigation, the deaths of my colleagues, the false identity I built, all of it wasted.

If I kill him now, thirty armed men upstairs will shoot me before I reach the door.

There is only one choice.

I pretend.

My stiff hand slowly rises, touching his chest. I close my eyes, imagining that this is part of the mission.

Lorenzo lifts me easily, my feet swinging in the air as he carries me out of the training arena. I don't open my eyes, I don't want to see where he is taking me. I only hear a door open, his footsteps on the stairs, and then, the softness of a mattress beneath my back.

Even in the dark, I feel his gaze. His deep black eyes trace every inch of my face, as if searching for something. A lie? Fear? Or maybe he's just enjoying his victory.

"You're trembling," he says.

"I'm nervous," I answer, and that is not a lie.

He smiles, then he bends down, and his lips find mine.

I close my eyes tightly.

This is for the mission. This is for the victims. This is for my colleagues who died.

I repeat that mantra in my head, again and again, as his body presses against mine, as his hands tear my sweater, as his breathing becomes heavy and ragged in my ear.

But when he enters me, when the pain stabs like a dagger, the mantra shatters.

Tears flow without permission at the corners of my eyes. Not because of the physical pain, I was trained to endure far worse pain. But because for the first time in ten years as an agent, I feel completely out of control.

Lorenzo stops. His fingers touch my cheek, wiping away tears I didn't realize I had shed.

"You were still a virgin," he says.

I don't answer.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asks.

"You didn't ask."

He is silent for a moment and continues his activity.

A few moments later, with movements that are gentle, too gentle for a mafia Don, he covers me with the sheet, pulls my body to his side, and holds me in a warm embrace.

He really has taken my dignity. Damn it. I need to ask the director for more pay after this.

"Sleep, Evelyn," he whispers into my hair. "Tomorrow will be a long day."

I don't sleep. I lie beside him, eyes wide open in the darkness, listening to his heartbeat slowly calm down. Within minutes, his breathing turns into a deep and steady rhythm. He has fallen asleep. Next to an FBI agent who carries a folding knife under her pillow.

I could kill him now. The knife is only an arm's length away. One slash across his neck, and this mission is over, but my hand doesn't move.

Slowly, with the smallest possible movement, I turn my head. Moonlight from the window illuminates half of his face. In the darkness, I can see the fine lines on his face, and then my eyes travel down to his body.

The sheet has slipped to his waist, revealing his broad and muscular chest. But what steals my breath is not those muscles. It is the scars.

Dozens of them.

From his left shoulder, a long gash stretches down to his chest, a knife wound, according to my field experience. On his stomach, three small round scars line up neatly. Gunshot wounds. On his right arm, an irregular patch of scar tissue, like bite marks or scratches.

I study each wound, counting them in silence. Twelve, thirteen, maybe more. Some are old, faded to thin white lines. Some are still pink, as if healed only a few months ago.

This man is not just mafia. He is a soldier. Someone who has gambled his life many times and won, at least so far.

But there is something strange.

I have seen many bodies in my career. I have seen wound patterns from various weapons, and I know that the scars on his left wrist, two neat parallel lines, are not from battle. Those are intentionally made scars.

Scars of someone who once tried to commit suicide.

I hold my breath. An Italian mafia Don, heir to the largest criminal empire in Europe, has attempted suicide scars on his wrist?

What happened to you, Lorenzo?

I almost reach out to touch them, but at the last moment, I pull my hand back. This is not the time for empathy. He is a target and an enemy, and I am an undercover FBI agent.

This is where I am now. Lying next to a mafia Don whose body is covered in scars, with my virginity as the price I had to pay for a mission that becomes more complicated by the minute.

Lorenzo moves in his sleep, his arm pulling me closer. His breath is warm in my hair, his heartbeat a slow rhythm against my back. For a moment, I let myself feel it, the warmth, the security, the illusion that I am not an enemy agent in an enemy's bed, but just a wife next to her husband, and then I open my eyes.

On the nightstand beside the bed, there is a small photo in a silver frame. I have to tilt my head to see it. A little girl, maybe ten years old, with curly hair and a wide smile.

"Why are you staring at your own photo?" Lorenzo asks suddenly, startling me.