HER OBSESSION FOR THE MAFIA LORD He’s the sin she could die for

7:30 a.m. I was already counting. Ninety-one… ninety-two. The elevator digit glowed like a pulse I was denied to feel. Nineteen months and six days of this exact minute. Same floor. Same cup waiting on the console like a sacrifice. I stood three feet from the console, tablet pressed so hard against my ribs I could feel the edge bruising skin. Plain skirt. Ugly glasses. Hair twisted until my scalp stung. Invisible. That had always been the plan. Doors slide open. Dante Valerio stepped out and the temperature in the hall changed, like someone had opened a furnace He stepped out and the air changed temperature. He didn’t walk; he claimed the ground. Black suit cut sharp enough to draw blood, shirt open at the throat, fresh red-brown flecks on his cuff that definitely hadn’t been there when he left last night. Gun oil, cedar, and something darker rolled off him and slammed straight into my lungs. I kept my eyes on the marble. His fingers closed around the cup without looking. He used to hesitate half a heartbeat, no more nineteen months ago when I first started leaving it. Now he took it like it had always been his. But today his stride slowed. Just enough that I felt it. One second. Two. Then he had left, his office door closing with that click. I breathed out. I sensed his presence, in the atmosphere I wasn’t supposed to desire. My phone vibrated once. Unknown number: Leave before he breaks you. Daniel Sanchez, Dante's friend and right hand man. His third warning this month. I deleted it and walked to my desk on legs that learned not to shake the night I was seventeen and watched this same man put four bullets in four chests to save my brother. He never saw me that night. I never forgot his face. I carried fresh coffee because the first one was cold. Knocked once. Pushed the door open. He was on the phone, speaking Italian, low and lethal that sounded like a death threat. Didn’t glance up. I swapped the cups, careful, the way you approach a wolf that’s decided not to bite yet. Our fingers didn’t touch. They never did. I was at the door when I sensed it: the burden of being observed. I took a chance. Glanced behind me. He had the phone at his ear but his storm-gray eyes, unreadable, were on me. Not my face. My throat. The frantic beat under the skin. He hung up the phone without bidding farewell to the person on the other end. “Stephanie.” My name. First time in nineteen months it had ever left his mouth. I turned slowly. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Same time. Don’t be late.” As if I’d ever been anything else. I nodded. Left. Closed the door and stood in the hallway counting my heartbeats instead of seconds. While I was in the supply closet sorting pens according to their colours Daniel burst through the door with a force that made the shelves shake. “He mentioned your name, " he whispered.“I heard it on the feed. I didn’t look up. “He says a lot of names.” “Not like that.” Daniel’s voice cracked with worry. “Not yours.” I kept lining the pens. Black. Blue. Black. Blue. “He’s noticing you,” Daniel said. “You know what that means.” I snapped the lid shut. “Then I’ll make sure he keeps noticing.” Daniel stared like I’d lost my mind. “You think this is some fairy tale,“You’re playing with fire, Mija.” “No,” I said quietly. “I’m playing with the man who burns cities down. There’s a difference.” He walked out, muttering Spanish curses under his breath. Everyone else had gone home. I stayed up late “finishing reports.” Lie. I was watching the little red dot on the security feed that meant he was still in his office. Then the dot moved. Elevator. I closed the laptop fast. Stood. Doors opened. He walked out holding his coat draped over one arm, his tie removed and sleeves pushed up enough to reveal the border of a faded scar, on his forearm. He saw me. But pretended like I never existed, he walked straight into the elevator. After like close to an hour the elevator dinged, I glanced up there he was standing like a daredevil. He stepped out slowly , like a man who had just changed his mind about mercy. His coat is gone. Tie gone. The top three buttons of his shirt undone, exposing the edge of a scar that disappeared beneath black cotton. There were bloodstains on his cuff that looked wetter now, darker. He looked like violence that had learned how to wear a suit. He walked straight to me. Not fast. Not slow. Just inevitable. No sound except the soft thud of his shoes and my own heartbeat trying to break my ribs. He paused so close that the warmth radiating from him brushed against my skin before he even made contact. I had to crane my neck to hold his stare. His cold gray eyes were looking furious. He looked at my mouth like it had personally offended him. Then his gaze dragged down to the frantic pulse in my throat. His hand came up. He stared at my mouth as if it had insulted him directly. Then his eyes shifted downward to the beat, in my neck. It came to a halt half an inch away. His knuckles grazed my jaw lightly enough to sting. He bent closer so his lips were a whisper away, from mine his voice low and nearly trembling. “Stephanie.” My name again. this time it resembled both capitulation and menace simultaneously. His thumb glided along the edge of my lips slowly and purposefully as though committing the contour of transgression into his memory. “Whatever game you’re playing''...his eyes locked onto mine, darkened “End it.” A pause. Another pause, heavier. I’m not the kind of fire you survive.” His hand dropped. He stepped back into the elevator. The doors shut with the sight of his shirt unbuttoned at the neck, blood staining his cuff, his gaze fixed on me as if I were the target worth annihilating in the whole building. I slid down the wall until the cold marble bit my spine, knees to my chest, my fingers pressed to my lips that still carried the ghost of his thumb. Let him be fire. Let him be the end of me. I would rather burn beautifully in D ante Valerio’s arms than live one more day without knowing what it feels like to be consumed by him. Sixteen hours until tomorrow. I was already counting down.