Forbidden Never Felt This Good

~ 20

0020

~ Aria ~

"What is happening?" I asked, pushing back from the dark wood table.

Luca was already moving. His stride was fast, heavy, and silent.

"Men with guns," Luca said, his voice flat and hard. "Multiple teams approaching the front and rear of the building."

His large hand locked around my right wrist like an iron band. He didn't ask. He yanked me out of the leather chair, pulling me straight toward the double doors.

"Wait… my files," I said, reaching back. "The contract papers…"

"Leave them," he barked.

Jean-Paul jumped up from his chair. His face went white, his eyes darting between Luca and the large glass windows overlooking the blue water. "What breach? What is going on? Should I call my security?"

"Stay where you are," Luca commanded without turning his head. "Get away from the glass. Sit on the floor. My men will extract you in two minutes."

My father and Luca never panicked. That was the rule of the Santoro family. Before a problem even started, they had three plans ready to go. Safe routes. Hidden rooms. Armed men waiting in the wings.

This was not a mess. This was an evacuation drill they had run a hundred times.

And that made it ten times more terrifying.

Luca didn't slow down to let me fix my balance. He held my wrist tight, dragging me out of the conference room and into the wide hallway. We didn't run. Running caused panic. We walked with long, fast strides that made my five-inch heels click rapidly against the marble floor.

Before we turned a corner, I turned back and saw two of our security personnel flanking someone in an expensive suit. Jean-Paul. They were taking him out through a different route.

He looked back over his shoulder, and something in his expression made my stomach tighten.

Something that looked almost like... satisfaction?

Or was I imagining it? Projecting suspicion because I was already on edge?

I filed it away, something to examine later when my heart wasn't hammering quite so violently against my ribs.

The hallway was already being cleared.

Men in dark suits were moving hotel guests away from the main windows and into the back rooms. It was quiet, fast, and organized.

"Who are they?" I asked, my chest working hard to keep up with his pace. "Is it the French police? Or my father's enemies?"

"Doesn't matter," Luca said, his gray eyes cutting left and right, checking every doorway and corner. "Keep your mouth shut and keep your feet moving."

We reached the main elevators, but Luca walked right past them. He pulled a black plastic key card from his jacket and slapped it against an unmarked metal door that said Staff Only.

The lock clicked. He shoved the heavy door open and pulled me through.

The air in the stairwell was cold and smelled of gray concrete. The heavy metal door slammed shut behind us, locking with a loud, final thud.

"Down," Luca ordered.

We went down the stairs fast. One flight. Two flights. Three flights.

My heels hit the concrete steps with loud, sharp snaps. My calves started to burn under the gray suit pants, but I didn't dare slow down. Luca was half a step ahead of me, his large body ready to take any hit coming from below.

At the very bottom, in the dark basement, he used another card on a heavy steel door.

We stepped into a narrow maintenance tunnel. Long pipes ran across the ceiling, dripping water into small puddles on the floor. The air smelled of motor oil and dust.

"Where does this go?" I asked, breathless.

"The safe room," Luca said. He still hadn't let go of my wrist. His grip was tight enough to leave a red mark. "Under the second building. Your father built it five years ago. Steel-plated walls. Air supply for three days. No one gets in without my code."

"A bunker."

"A fortress."

We turned a sharp corner under the yellow utility lights.

Ahead of us, two of our armed guards were escorting a man in a blue suit through a side door. Jean-Paul.

As we passed the intersecting hallway, Jean-Paul looked back over his shoulder.

Our eyes met for one second.

There was no fear on his face. No panic. His jaw was set, and the look in his dark eyes wasn't confusion.

It looked like satisfaction.

Like everything was going according to a plan he already knew about.

A chill ran down my spine. Did Jean-Paul set this up? Was the fuel mistake a distraction?

Before I could think, Luca pulled me around the final bend, cutting off my view.

The safe room door was solid steel, six inches thick. Luca pressed his right thumb against a small glass pad on the wall, then punched a long code into the dark keypad with fast, practiced fingers.

The heavy bolts pulled back with a loud clank.

The door swung open, and Luca pushed me inside.

The room was large—twenty feet wide, with gray walls, soft recessed lights in the ceiling, a leather couch, a small kitchen counter, and a wall of black computer screens.

Luca stepped in behind me and grabbed the heavy wheel on the inside of the door. He turned it hard until the steel bolts slammed into the frame.

Clank. Clank.

Then, dead silence.

The outside world vanished. No noise from the hotel. No sound of cars. No sound of guns. Nothing. Just the low hum of the air vents and the sound of our own breathing.

Luca walked over to the bank of black screens. He hit a button, and eight different camera feeds popped up. Outside the hotel. The main lobby. The back alley. The harbor.

I stood by the leather sofa, watching his broad back.

His suit jacket was pulled tight across his wide shoulders. His hands were resting on the edge of the metal desk, knuckles white, his neck stiff as iron.

The silence in the small room was heavy. It was full of everything from last night on the dark road, and everything from the dance floor an hour ago.

I couldn't stand the quiet.

I walked over to the leather couch and sat down with a hard sigh. I reached down, grabbed the heels of my shoes, and pulled them off my feet, tossing them onto the floor.

"Well," I said, leaning back. "This is nice."

Luca didn't turn around. "Nice."

"Sure. Concrete walls, zero sunlight, and men with guns trying to kill us upstairs. It's like a dream vacation." I rubbed my sore arch, letting out a small breath. "How long do we have to sit in this box?"

"Until my men clear the building," he said, his eyes scanning the camera feeds. "Could be an hour. Could be all night."

"Is there cell service?"

"No. Jammed on purpose so no one can trace the signal to this room."

"Of course," I muttered, pulling my bare feet up onto the leather cushions and curling my legs under me. "My father thinks of every single detail."

"He keeps you alive."

The room went quiet again. Luca didn't move. He stood there like a wall of dark wool and bad temper, staring at the screens like he wanted to punch through the glass.

I tilted my head, looking at his hard profile.

"You're not going to look at me?" I asked.

"I am working, Miss Santoro."

"Miss Santoro," I repeated, letting out a short laugh. "Back to that again. You know, you act like you know everything about me. You know how I like my coffee. You know how to make me scream in bed. You know what makes me mad."

Luca's shoulders got even tighter. "Aria, do not start."

"I'm bored," I said. "We have hours to kill. Do you know anything real about me? What I wanted to be when I was a little girl in Boston before my mother died?"

"Psychology," he said quietly.

He didn't turn around, but his voice cut through the hum of the vents.

"You wanted to study human behavior. You wanted to be a therapist because you wanted to fix broken people. Then your mother got sick, your father took you to France, and you switched to business so you could build your own money and never owe him a dime."

I sat frozen on the sofa, my mouth opening slightly. "How do you know that?"

Luca turned around slowly.

His gray eyes were dark as charcoal. The cold mask was completely gone, burned away by the raw fire underneath.

"Because I watch you," he said, his voice dropping low and rough. "I have watched you for four years, Aria. Even when you were in America. Even when I had no right to look. I know every single thing about you."

My heart gave a heavy kick against my ribs. The air in the room suddenly felt too hot to breathe.

"Luca..."

He crossed the floor in three heavy strides.

He stopped right in front of the couch, towering over me, broad and solid, blocking out all the light from the ceiling. The heat coming off his body was thick, smelling of cedar, rain, and raw danger.

He reached down and grabbed both of my wrists, his grip iron-tight, pinning my hands against the leather cushions beside my hips.

"Aria," he growled, leaning down until his lips were an inch from my mouth, his breath hot against my lips. "I am going to take off these pants, bend you over this couch, and f**k you until you lose your voice. And not a single person in this world can hear you scream down here."