2. Smoke and Silk
501 Words
Five months ago.
The first time Nico saw her, it wasn't in a club, or on a security feed, or from behind a gun.
It was at a funeral.
Rain had been falling in slow, heavy sheets, soaking through the black umbrellas lining the cemetery. He hadn't planned to attend-he hated unnecessary sentiment-but a lieutenant had insisted: "Vega will be there. Could be a chance to feel the temperature."
And there she was.
Standing just to the left of Dario, her eyes hidden behind oversized black glasses, her lips set in a still line. The funeral had been for one of Vega's old soldiers, gunned down in a message meant for Nico. The irony hadn't been lost on him.
But Sienna... she had been the storm.
Calm. Still. Devastating.
He remembered the way she touched Dario's hand-not lovingly, but like a script she'd been forced to memorize. The way her heels didn't sink into the mud, as if even the earth knew better than to mess with her. The way her eyes flicked up, just once, to meet his across a sea of mourning bodies.
And held.
Nico had felt something then.
Not attraction. Not yet.
Recognition.
A quiet sense that this woman would be trouble.
And he hadn't been wrong.
---
Present day.
The interior of the Escalade was dark and quiet, save for the low thrum of the city outside. Nico leaned back in the leather seat, staring out the tinted window, replaying every second of the meeting like a crime scene.
His driver, Luca, glanced at him in the rearview. "You good?"
"No."
He didn't elaborate. Luca knew better.
Sienna's voice still echoed in his head. "You want what you can't have."
Wrong.
He could have it.
He just needed to decide what he was willing to burn to get it.
"She's not like the others," he muttered, almost to himself.
Luca raised a brow. "Vega's wife?"
Nico didn't answer. His mind was elsewhere, caught on the way she'd looked at him before Dario arrived. Not like a pawn. Not like a woman caught in a war.
But like a match waiting to be lit.
He reached into the mini-bar console, pulled out a cigarette-rare for him-and lit it. The smoke curled into the roof of the car as his jaw flexed.
This wasn't a crush.
This wasn't lust.
It was strategy.
At least, that's what he told himself.
Because if he started admitting the truth-the way she occupied his mind like a fever-he'd lose the one thing that kept him dangerous: control.
His phone buzzed once.
A text.
Unknown Number: "She's not happy. You should use that."
Nico stared at the message, pulse tightening. There were only a few people who had that kind of access. Fewer who would dare to bait him with her.
He tapped a response.
Nico: Who is this?
Three dots blinked. Then stopped.
Nothing more came.
But the seed had been planted.
And Nico Moretti had never been good at ignoring temptation.
- Writer
