Wolves' Don't Beg
1280 Words
Bianca woke up to the sound of raised voices.
For a moment, she thought she was dreaming — that the echoes of last night’s chaos were haunting her — but then she heard it clearly.
“I said she shouldn’t leave my sight,” Lorenzo’s voice thundered from his office, low and sharp like a knife sliding across glass.
“Lorenzo,” Matteo shot back, frustration thick in his tone, “you can’t keep her chained to you like some—”
“Watch me.”
The silence that followed was deafening.
Bianca sat up slowly on the couch, pulling the soft throw blanket tighter around her shoulders. Every muscle in her body ached, each bruise blooming darker than the last, ugly fingerprints scattered along her arms. Her head was pounding, but what kept her awake wasn’t the physical pain.
It was the memory.
The way Lorenzo’s eyes had burned into hers when he untied her last night.
The way his thumb had brushed her cheek — soft, unintentional, and yet so devastatingly intimate.
The way his expression had shattered the second he realized what he’d done, locking something away so deep she couldn’t reach it.
And now, apparently, he wanted to keep her caged.
The office door swung open, the sound sharp and final.
Lorenzo stepped out, dressed immaculately in a black suit, his crisp white shirt spotless despite the bloodshed of the night before. He looked untouched by chaos — carved from ice and control. Only the faint tension in his jaw betrayed him.
“Get up,” he said simply.
Bianca blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You’re coming with me.”
“And if I don’t?”
He stopped mid-step, tilting his head ever so slightly, and his gaze locked on hers. That lazy, lethal smile ghosted across his lips — the kind that promised danger more than reassurance.
“Then I’ll carry you,” he said softly. “Your choice, Dolcezza.”
Her stomach flipped traitorously. God, she hated the way her body betrayed her around him.
Lorenzo’s black Maserati purred like a predator on the hunt, weaving effortlessly through Naples’ narrow streets.
Bianca sat stiffly in the passenger seat, arms crossed tight, refusing to give him the satisfaction of looking at him.
“You can’t just decide where I go and when,” she finally snapped, her voice cutting through the low hum of the engine.
“I can,” he replied, not sparing her a glance, “and I just did.”
“You don’t own me.”
His grip on the steering wheel tightened, the tendons in his hand flexing, knuckles pale against the leather. But when he spoke, his voice was maddeningly calm.
“You’re under my protection,” he said evenly. “That makes you my responsibility.”
“Protection?” she scoffed. “You mean captivity.”
He glanced at her briefly, dark eyes unreadable, before murmuring, “Semantics. Either way, Dolcezza, you breathe because I allow it. Don’t mistake that for freedom.”
Her jaw clenched. There were a dozen things she wanted to scream at him, but none of them made it past her lips.
The silence stretched, heavy and charged.
At a red light, she risked a glance at him — only to catch him watching her reflection in the glass. His jaw was tight. There was something restless in him today. Something different.
They stopped at an upscale restaurant along the waterfront, the kind where white tablecloths met whispered threats behind closed doors.
Bianca assumed they were there to eat. She was wrong.
“Stay close,” Lorenzo ordered, his hand at the small of her back as they walked inside.
She wanted to shove it away but didn’t — mostly because the alternative was being jostled by his men, who were already scanning the area with sharp, predatory eyes.
Inside, Lorenzo greeted a tall man in a perfectly tailored suit, another mafia boss if she had to guess. They exchanged low, clipped words in Italian, too fast for her to catch.
Her attention wandered.
That’s when she noticed him — a man in a gray hoodie, sitting in the far corner, pretending to read a newspaper.
Something about him prickled at her instincts.
She blinked, and when she looked again, he was gone.
Bianca’s stomach tightened.
As they crossed the cobblestone street outside, sunlight spilling over the water, she felt it — that unmistakable weight of being watched.
She turned just in time to catch the glint of steel.
“Lorenzo!” she screamed.
The would-be assassin lunged.
Everything exploded at once.
Lorenzo spun, grabbing her by the waist and yanking her behind him as the blade slashed across his arm. He didn’t flinch. His gun was in his hand before the attacker hit the ground.
One shot.
Echoing across the waterfront.
The man collapsed.
“Get in the car,” Lorenzo barked, shoving her toward the Maserati without a second glance at the body bleeding into the street.
“You’re hurt—”
“Get in the car, Bianca.”
“Lorenzo, you’re—”
“Now.”
The tone left no room for argument.
Back at the safe house, Matteo stitched Lorenzo’s arm while Bianca paced like a caged animal, her arms crossed so tightly it hurt.
“That’s twice in two days,” Matteo muttered under his breath. “Whoever’s pulling the strings wants her bad.”
Lorenzo didn’t even flinch as the needle pierced his skin. “Then they’ll have to go through me.”
Bianca froze. There was a venom in his voice she hadn’t heard before, and it sent a shiver racing down her spine.
“This is insane,” she burst out finally. “People are trying to kill me because of you—”
“No,” Lorenzo cut her off sharply, his voice like steel. His gaze locked on hers, sharp and suffocating, until she forgot how to breathe.
“People are trying to kill you,” he said slowly, deliberately, “because someone thinks you’re mine.”
Her heart stuttered violently.
“I’m not yours,” she whispered, but the words sounded weak even to her own ears.
Lorenzo’s lips curved into a humorless smile.
“Tell that,” he said softly, “to the man I just killed for putting a knife to your throat.”
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating.
Then he leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping to a velvet murmur edged with danger.
“You keep telling yourself you’re not mine, Dolcezza,” he said, low and possessive. “I’ll keep proving you wrong.”
Later that night, Bianca couldn’t sleep.
The safehouse was quiet, the kind of silence that made every creak feel suspicious, every shadow heavier. She wandered through the dimly lit halls until she found him.
Lorenzo stood in the study, one hand braced against the desk, the other gripping a crystal tumbler of whiskey. A massive map was spread out before him, littered with red circles and scribbled notes.
“What is this?” she asked softly.
He didn’t look up.
“Every Mancini safe house. Every rival stronghold. Every shadow I haven’t burned down yet.”
“You can’t fight an entire city, Lorenzo.”
Finally, he raised his gaze to hers, and for the first time, she saw something she never expected in his eyes.
Fear.
“I don’t care about the city,” he said quietly, his voice like dark smoke curling through the air. “They came for you.”
His grip tightened around the glass until it cracked in his hand.
“That means none of them are safe.”
- Writer
