The Secret from Columbia

The Taste of Danger

The cold glass of the terrace against Beatriz’s back was a violent contrast to the overwhelming heat radiating from Nicholas. The kiss wasn't an invitation or an introduction; it was a raw, desperate claim. Nicholas moved his lips over hers with an urgency that seemed fueled by weeks of traded insults and cutting glares. He held her by the waist with a strength that lifted her slightly off the floor, while Beatriz’s hands lost themselves in the dark hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer, wanting to consume every millimeter of that forbidden electricity.

When Nicholas moved his kisses down to the curve of her throat, his voice emerged as a low growl against her tanned skin, vibrating through her very bones:

"I should have kicked you out of that room on the first day, Beatriz. You’re a wildfire I can’t put out. And I’m starting to loathe how much I want to burn in you."

Beatriz tilted her head back, letting out a shaky sigh that vanished into the cold Manhattan wind. Rationality tried to scream in her mind that this man was the symbol of everything she had come to fight, but her body—traitorous and hungry—ignored every warning. She felt the rigid muscle of his thighs against hers, the pressure of his chest against her own, and a wave of desire that left her lightheaded.

"Then stop trying to put it out," she murmured, her voice husky, laced with a defiance that was now purely instinctive. "Accept that you’ve finally found someone who isn't afraid of your flames, Nicholas. Someone who can handle your hell."

Nicholas let out a low groan of frustration and lust, his hands sliding from her waist to the curves of her thighs, gripping the leather of her pants with a possessiveness that made her gasp. He pressed her harder against the glass, his lips finding hers again in a deeper, searching kiss that tasted of whiskey and surrender. For a moment, the world outside—the mob, the university, the secrets—ceased to exist. There was only the touch, the scent of sandalwood, and the mutual need to fill a void that neither of them knew they carried.

Nicholas’s hand slid up, his warm palm gliding beneath her silk blouse to find the soft skin of her ribs. The touch was electric, making Beatriz’s abdominal muscles contract. She felt every beat of his heart against her own—a frantic, wild rhythm. Suddenly, Nicholas stopped, their foreheads still pressed together, their breaths mingling in the freezing terrace air. His dark eyes were dilated, black with a lust he could barely contain.

There was a vulnerability in that split second that Beatriz would never forget. It was the look of a man who knew he was losing control of his most powerful weapon: his coldness. Then, as quickly as the fire had started, the Don mask snapped shut. He released her slowly, his hands sliding down her arms until he let go completely, as if the touch now burned him in an unbearable way.

"You need to go," he said, his voice now cold and controlled, though the slight tremor in his hands betrayed him. "The game changed tonight, Beatriz. And I can’t guarantee the rules will keep protecting you if you stay another minute under my roof."

Beatriz straightened her silk blouse and leather jacket, suddenly feeling exposed despite being fully dressed. The silence of the apartment now felt heavy with unspoken truths and a lingering s****l tension that still vibrated through the walls.

"Are you running, Nicholas? Is the great and dreaded Don Moretti scared of a kiss and what it made him feel?"

"I’m saving you from yourself," he shot back, walking to the oak door and swinging it open with a blunt gesture. "Starting tomorrow, we go back to what we are by right. Students on a campus. Enemies on a board of interests. Don’t mistake what happened here for a surrender. It was just a truce... and a weakness that will not be repeated."

Beatriz walked to the door, pausing for a second beside him. His scent was still etched into her skin. She said nothing, merely staring at him with those light-brown eyes that seemed to pierce through Nicholas’s defenses down to his bloody core. She left without looking back, the rhythmic click of her boots echoing in the marble hallway like a countdown.

In the days that followed, the atmosphere at Columbia University became suffocating. Nicholas and Beatriz avoided any direct interaction, yet each other’s presence felt like an irresistible magnetic field. Whenever she was in the library, he would appear at a table in the back—a dark, protective shadow. Whenever he was in the dining hall, she would pass by in her leather jacket, chin held high, never looking away but feeling every inch of skin he had touched burn under his gaze.

However, Nicholas wasn't the only predator watching Beatriz.

She began to notice a constant, unsettling presence on her commutes. A black sedan with tinted windows that seemed to trail her at a calculated distance whenever she went out on her Ducati. At first, her mind tried to convince her it was Nicholas trying to intimidate or protect her, but the driving style was different—more aggressive, less professional, like someone relishing in the prey’s discomfort.

"You seem distracted, Bea. You’re making rookie mistakes on these cases," Alice remarked as they walked across the university's central lawn. "Still thinking about the 'Prince of Darkness'?"

"I’m thinking about how thick the air in this city is getting, like it’s about to collapse at any moment," Beatriz replied, her eyes scanning the crowd for the sedan or a familiar pair of green eyes. "Alice, have you ever heard of a guy named Vincenzo? For real?"

Alice stopped in her tracks, her face turning pale and the coffee in her hand shaking slightly.

"Vincenzo Valenti? Bea, listen to me: stay away from him. Lorenzo told me in a moment of sobriety that the Valentis are... sociopaths. Nicholas has a code, a structure of family and twisted honor. Vincenzo is pure chaos. He uses people, breaks the best parts of them, and tosses them out like trash. He doesn't want to rule New York; he wants to see it burn so he can laugh at the ashes."

Beatriz nodded silently, her stomach twisting as she recalled Vincenzo’s silk-smooth smile. She felt herself being hemmed in by two kinds of danger: one that wanted to possess her and another that wanted to destroy her. And the only thing stopping them from colliding was the fact that Nicholas, despite all his threats, seemed to be the only shield between her and Vincenzo’s abyss.

That afternoon, Beatriz found a heavy, elegant paper envelope tucked into the handlebars of her Ducati. The gold-embossed crest wasn't the Morettis'. The paper exhaled a sweet, cloying scent of gardenia.

"Dear Beatriz, New York can be suffocating under the gaze of someone who wants to control you through fear. I’d like to offer you a different perspective, one without chains. Join me for a drink at 'The Velvet Room' tomorrow night. Let’s discuss how the Law can be much more flexible and lucrative when you have the right allies. Don’t let the dark wolf decide who you’re meant to be. — V."

Beatriz crumpled the paper, feeling anger and curiosity battle inside her. She knew it was an obvious trap. But she also knew that to understand the web of corruption entangling the city—and to find Nicholas’s true face—she had to know his enemy.

What she didn't know was that Nicholas was already two steps ahead, moving his pieces in the dark.

From the high window of Butler Library, Nicholas watched Beatriz through tactical binoculars. He saw her read the note and saw the exact moment her posture shifted. He gripped the wooden railing until his knuckles turned bone-white.

"He’s making a move, Don," Lorenzo whispered behind him, his voice thick with concern. "He’s going to try to use her."

"I know," Nicholas replied, his voice dangerously low, a promise of contained violence. "He thinks she’s a weak point he can exploit to get to me. Vincenzo has no idea that by touching a single hair on her head, he just turned this war into an extermination."

Nicholas grabbed his phone and dialed an encrypted number that signaled the start of field operations.

"Ready the cars for tomorrow night. Heavy hardware. And Lorenzo... make sure she doesn't walk into that bar alone. If you have to, pull her out by force before she sees what I’m capable of doing to keep her."

The war between the Morettis and the Valentis was about to leave the whispers of the docks to stain the streets of Manhattan. And Beatriz, torn between the desire for one monster and the hunt for another, was now the gravitational center of a conflict that would leave no survivors unscathed.