Chapter 2: Veins of Ice and Fire

The gunshot cracks through the room. I freeze beneath Matteo, his cock still buried deep inside me, our bodies slick with sweat from what we'd just done. His weight pins me down, and for one stupid second I feel grateful he's shielding me.

Another shot splinters the doorframe. Plaster dust coats my tongue. My heart hammers so hard my ribs ache.

"Stay under me." His voice stays low, lethal. He rolls us sideways without pulling out, his thickness dragging a choked sound from my throat as he grabs the gun from the nightstand.

Luca's shout echoes from the hallway, thick with that Chicago snarl. "Three down! More on the east stairs, boss!"

Matteo fires twice through the shattered doorway. The recoil slams his body into mine. I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste blood, hating how my walls clench around him anyway.

This is fucking insane. Bullets are flying and I'm still dripping for the man who killed my father. My nails dig into his scarred shoulders, unsure if I'm pushing him off or holding on.

He thrusts once, deep and deliberate, like he's marking me even while death kicks down our door. I hate the moan that slips out. I hate myself more.

The fight spills into the hall. Shouts. Wet impacts. Luca's answering shots. I press my back to the headboard later, knees to my chest, trying to disappear while Matteo finishes it.

When the silence finally hits, it rings worse than the gunfire. My arm burns where a wood splinter caught me. Blood trickles down my skin, warm and sticky.

Matteo reappears in the ruined doorway, enemy blood spattered across his bare chest. His ice-blue-grey eyes lock on me immediately, scanning for injury. They linger on the cut on my arm.

"It's done," he says. But violence still clings to his voice. He crosses the room in three strides and scoops me up like I weigh nothing. The sheet falls away. I don't fight him. My body still hums from the interrupted fuck, from the terror, from the sick fear I felt for him.

He carries me into the bathroom and sets me on the cold marble counter. The lights burn too bright, showing every bruise and bite mark he left on me earlier. I look like something conquered.

"Let me see." His hands are gentler than they have any right to be as he tilts my arm toward the light. He wets a cloth and dabs at the graze with focused care that feels more dangerous than his rage.

I watch his sharp cheekbones, the faint scar through his eyebrow. This is the man who ended my father. The man who's watched me for years. Now he's cleaning my blood with hands that have done worse.

"Why do you care if I get hurt?" The words come out raw. "You killed my father. One less Calloway should solve your problems."

His eyes flick up. Something dark crosses his face and vanishes. "You're not a Calloway anymore. You're mine. No one touches what's mine."

The cloth presses harder for a second. I hiss. He reaches for the medical kit, applying ointment with those scarred knuckles. The tenderness unsettles me more than the bullets did.

I trace the old scar on my wrist without thinking. He notices. His thumb brushes over it as he wraps the bandage. The touch shoots straight up my spine.

His breathing is steady but I know he's not relaxed. Men like him never are. I slip from under his arm when his grip loosens, padding naked to where his jacket lies crumpled on the floor.

Something in the inner pocket feels wrong. I pull out a small leather sheath before I can stop myself. The antique knife inside is beautiful, deadly. My fingers shake as I turn it over.

The handle has my initials carved into it. S.C. The sight hits like a slap. I don't understand why it's here or what it means, but it feels like another chain around my throat.

"Find something interesting?" Matteo's voice comes from the bed, low and too calm. I spin, clutching the knife like it can protect me.

He sits up slowly. The sheets pool at his waist. The look on his face isn't anger. It's hunger. Possession. Like I've just handed him the key to a door he's been waiting to open for years.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand before I can demand answers. My mother's name lights up the screen. After everything tonight, this can't be good.

I answer, turning my back on him though I feel his stare burning into my spine. "Mom? Is Tommy okay?"

Her voice is thin, fragile, that familiar gin edge underneath. "He's safe, sweetheart. But we need to talk. Not over the phone. The east wing sitting room. Alone."

She hangs up. I dress quickly in the first black silk thing I find, the fabric clinging to my still-damp skin. Matteo watches every move, expression unreadable.

"This conversation isn't over," I tell him, holding up the knife. My voice only wavers a little.

He smiles, slow and dangerous. "No, Simone. It's only beginning."

---

The estate halls feel endless. Blood has been wiped from the marble but the copper smell lingers. I find my mother in the sitting room, nursing a glass that is definitely not tea. Her hands tremble around the crystal.

"What is it?" I sink into the chair opposite her. The bandage on my arm pulls tight. "After an attack on the house, you drag me down here for what—more warnings about surviving him?"

She won't meet my eyes at first. When she does, the guilt there lands like a fist. "Your father... he wasn't the man you remember. The things he did to the Castellanos, to others... it demanded blood, Simone."

My stomach drops. I want to scream at her but the words stick. Instead I press my thumb into the scar on my wrist until it hurts. "So he deserved it? Is that what you're saying?"

"I'm saying none of us are innocent." She takes a long swallow, winces. "And Matteo... he's had his eyes on you longer than tonight. That art scholarship that disappeared at the last second? That was him. Keeping you close."

The words punch through me. My hidden sketchbook flashes in my mind—the violent beautiful drawings no one should ever see. Did he know about those too? The thought makes my skin crawl with violation and something hotter I refuse to name.

I should be crying. I should be raging over old family photos like I do when no one's watching. Instead I just feel hollow. Like everything I thought I knew is cracking open and I'm too tired to stop it.

"Why tell me this now?" My voice cracks despite myself. Self-loathing burns in my throat. What kind of daughter hears her father might have earned his death and still aches between her legs from the man who pulled the trigger?

Elena leans forward. Her perfectly styled hair slips across one eye. "Because if you keep hunting for ways to destroy him, you might learn the real monster was under our roof all along. And then what will you do?"

I leave her with her gin and her half-truths. The walk back to the master suite feels like moving through water. Every step drags. My mind keeps circling back to Tommy locked away somewhere as leverage, to my mother who knew more than she ever let on.

Matteo waits by the window in nothing but black pants, an unlit cigarette between his fingers. The post-kill ritual. He never actually smokes it. I cross to his dresser and yank open the top drawer before he can stop me.

My fingers close around a photograph tucked beneath his watches. Me at eighteen, smiling in a summer dress at that birthday party where I felt eyes on me the whole night. On the back, in his precise handwriting: Mine since the first night I saw her.

The photo slips from my fingers and flutters to the floor. My knees nearly follow. I stare at it, at the proof that his obsession started long before my father crossed the line.

He doesn't move to pick it up. When I look at him, his ice-blue-grey eyes are raw for once. No shield. Just fire that says he's been waiting years for this exact moment.

"How long?" I whisper. The question scrapes my throat raw. My body still aches from him, still wants him, and the shame of that burns hotter than anything else.

He steps closer, backing me against the wall. His hand cups my face, thumb brushing my lower lip with a gentleness that terrifies me more than violence ever could.

"Long enough to know you'll never escape me, Simone. Not in this life. Not in any other."

His mouth claims mine. This time I kiss him back, angry and desperate, because fighting feels pointless when my own blood might be tainted too. The photo lies between our feet like a live grenade.

As his hands slide down my body, waking fresh heat, one thought cuts through the haze sharper than that antique blade ever could.

If my father wasn't innocent... if Matteo has been pulling my strings for years... then who the hell am I anymore?

And why does part of me already feel like I'm losing the fight to hate him?