Chapter 16: Tasting the Past
The morning light was a knife between the blinds, cutting the room into stripes of gold and shadow. Sofia woke to an empty space beside her, the sheets cool. She could hear him in the living room, his voice a low, steady rumble on a phone call. Business. Always business.
She stretched, her body a catalogue of pleasant aches. The soreness between her thighs was a persistent reminder. She showered, dressed in the clothes someone—Marco, probably—had quietly delivered: dark trousers, a simple silk blouse, expensive and understated. Armor for a new day.
Enzo was at the dining table, papers spread before him, a half-empty espresso cup at his elbow. He looked up as she entered. The vulnerability of the night was gone, packed away behind the impenetrable mask of the man who settled scores before breakfast.
“Anya will be here at ten,” he said, without preamble. “She’s expecting you. Be polite. Listen. Learn.”
“I know how to be polite,” she said, pouring coffee from the silver carafe.
“I know you do. But polite with me is different. Polite with Anya is a currency. Use it wisely.” He sipped his espresso, his eyes assessing her over the rim. “She’ll test you.”
“I’m ready.”
He grunted, a non-committal sound. He returned to his papers, but the tension in his shoulders was a live wire. Last night’s confession still hung in the air between them, unacknowledged. The fear. The cage.
She finished her coffee in silence. At five to ten, the intercom buzzed. Marco’s voice crackled. “Anya Volkov is here.”
“Send her up.”
The woman who entered the penthouse was not what Sofia expected. She was in her late fifties, perhaps, with a severe silver bob and eyes the colour of glacial ice. She wore a impeccably tailored pantsuit, no jewelry save a simple, masculine watch. Her handshake was firm, dry, and brief.
“Sofia,” Anya said. Her accent was faint, Eastern European, smoothed by decades elsewhere.
“Ms. Volkov. Thank you for coming.”
“Anya. And we will see if thanks are necessary.” Her gaze swept the room, taking in the art, the view, the powerful man pretending not to watch from the table. “This is a nice cage. Better than most.”
Sofia felt a jolt. Anya’s smile was thin, knowing.
“Let’s go,” Anya said. “My car is downstairs. We will talk in motion. It is harder for walls to listen in moving vehicles.”
The day was a whirlwind. Anya’s “legitimate” empire was a labyrinth of holding companies, a high-end art gallery in the financial district, and an import business that brought in everything from Georgian wine to Italian marble. The books were pristine, dizzying in their complexity. Anya explained with razor-sharp clarity, her explanations leaving no room for ambiguity or sentiment.
“This column,” Anya said, tapping a spreadsheet on a tablet in the back of the silent Mercedes, “is for the art. This one is for the wine. This one,” her finger hovered over a third, “is for the gratitude. You do not ask what is in the gratitude column. You ensure it always balances.”
Sofia understood. The gratitude was the rinse cycle for the money from the other life. The Vault’s profits, washed through canvas and cabernet.
“Why are you showing me this?” Sofia asked as the car slid through midday traffic.
Anya didn’t look up from her tablet. “Because he asked me to. And because I have worked for Lorenzo Mancini for twenty-two years. I have seen flowers come and go. They are decorations. They wilt. He looks at you not as a flower, but as a potential lock. Or a key. I am deciding which.”
The frankness was jarring. “And what’s your verdict?”
“Too early.” Anya finally looked at her. “You are not afraid. That is either very smart or very stupid. We shall see.”
They returned to the penthouse in the late afternoon. Anya departed with a curt nod, leaving Sofia’s mind buzzing with numbers and implications. Enzo was out. The space felt cavernous, humming with silent energy.
He returned as dusk was falling, shrugging off his jacket. He listened to her summary, his expression unreadable.
“She thinks I’m a lock or a key,” Sofia finished, sinking onto the sofa.
“She’s right.” He poured two whiskeys, handed her one. “You survived the first day. That’s something.”
The whiskey burned a familiar, comforting path down her throat. The silence stretched, but it was different now. Charged with the day’s revelations, with the unspoken question from the night before.
She set her glass down with a decisive click. “You never answered me.”
He stilled. “Answered what?”
“Last night. I asked you to tell me about her. The girl who was too scared.” She held his gaze, challenging. The memory of her dominance on the sofa, riding him, demanding the truth, hung between them.
A shadow passed behind his eyes. He finished his drink in one swallow. “That’s ancient history.”
“Not to me.” She stood, crossing to him. She took his glass from his hand, set it aside. “You show me your ledgers, your knife, your bed. Show me this.”
His jaw tightened. She could see the war inside him—the instinct to shut her out, and the newer, weaker impulse to let her in. The latter won, fueled by whiskey and her unwavering stare.
“Her name was Livia,” he said, the words pulled from a deep, dark place. “I was thirty. She was… bright. From a good family. Naive. I thought I could keep the worlds separate. She found a gun in a drawer. A piece of metal and she looked at me like I’d peeled my skin off and showed her the monster underneath. She couldn’t reconcile it. The man who brought her flowers with the man who owned that thing.” He gave a short, bitter laugh. “She begged. Not for me to change. Just to let her go. She whimpered. Like a frightened animal. So I let her go.”
Sofia listened, her heart a hard drum in her chest. This was the ghost. The one who proved love couldn’t survive the truth.
“And you’ve punished every woman since,” she stated softly. “By not giving them the chance to be scared. By being the monster first.”
He didn’t deny it. His silence was confirmation.
She moved then, closing the distance. She pushed his shoulders, not hard, but with enough force to make him step back until his legs hit the arm of the sofa. He sat, looking up at her, his expression guarded.
“I’m not Livia,” she said, her voice low. She climbed onto his lap, straddling him, mirroring their position from the night before. She ground her hips down, feeling him respond instantly, hardening beneath the fine wool of his trousers. “I found the gun, Enzo. I licked the blood from your knuckles. I’m not scared of the monster.”
She kissed him, a fierce, claiming kiss that tasted of whiskey and defiance. When she broke it, she held his face between her hands. “Now, I want you to show me the difference. Show me what you do with someone who isn’t scared.”
A raw, hungry sound escaped him. His hands flew to her blouse, buttons pinging onto the floor. He pushed the silk off her shoulders, baring her to the waist. His mouth was on her breast, sucking hard, his teeth scraping her nipple. She gasped, arching into him.
“You want the difference?” he growled, switching to her other breast, his hand squeezing the freed one roughly. “The difference is I don’t hold back. I take everything.”
He stood up, lifting her with him, and turned, dropping her onto the plush rug before the fireplace. The city’s neon glow painted her skin in streaks of blue and red. He undressed quickly, his cock already thick and jutting, flushed with need.
He didn’t lay her down gently. He pushed her onto her back, hooked his hands behind her knees, and drove her legs up and apart, exposing her completely. He knelt between her splayed thighs, his gaze burning over her soaked sex.
“Livia wept,” he said, his voice dangerously calm. He leaned forward, his tongue not seeking her clit but licking a broad, possessive stripe from her entrance to the tight knot of her ass. She jerked, a shock of pure sensation. “She closed her eyes.”
He did it again, slower, his tongue delving into her folds, lapping up her wetness before circling her asshole with a blunt, insistent pressure. Sofia cried out, her hands fisting in the rug.
“You,” he said, lifting his head, his lips glistening with her, “you watch. You fucking dare me.”
He lowered his mouth to her clit then, sucking it hard between his lips, his tongue flicking rapidly. At the same time, his thumb found her entrance, pushed inside, then a second, stretching her. It was an overwhelming assault of sensation—the sharp, focused pleasure on her clit, the deep, filling stretch of his fingers.
“Oh god, Enzo…”
“Eyes on me,” he commanded, his own gaze locked on hers, dark and ruthless.
She obeyed, her vision blurring, her hips pumping against his mouth, fucking his face. She was shameless, grinding herself against his tongue, chasing the coiling tension. He added a third finger, curling them inside her, searching until he found the spongy spot that made her scream.
“There! Right there, don’t stop, please don’t fucking stop!”
He didn’t. He worked her with his mouth and hand in a brutal, perfect rhythm, his fingers pistoning in and out of her dripping cunt while his tongue tortured her clit. The orgasm detonated, a convulsive, body-seizing wave that tore through her with vicious intensity. She screamed, her back arching off the floor, her climax pulsing around his invading fingers.
Before the last tremor had faded, he was moving. He flipped her onto her stomach, dragged her hips up.
He flipped her onto her stomach, dragged her hips up. The ornate rug scratched her knees. He slapped the full curve of her ass, the sound a sharp report in the quiet room. "This is the difference," he gritted out, his cock nudging against her soaked entrance.
He didn't ask. He drove into her with one relentless thrust, burying himself to the root in her tight, clutching heat. The air left her lungs in a punched-out groan. He felt bigger like this, deeper, carving a space inside her that felt brutally possessive.
"Livia would have broken," he snarled, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise. He pulled back and slammed home again, setting a punishing rhythm. "She would have shattered on the first push."
Sofia pushed back against him, meeting each thrust. "I'm not her." Her voice was strained, breathless. The fullness was overwhelming, a glorious ache. "I'm the one who stays."
He leaned over her, his chest a hot weight against her back, his mouth at her ear. His pace never faltered, the hard length of him pistoning into her yielding flesh. "You stay because you're fucking addicted to this," he breathed, his words laced with self-loathing. "To the monster and his cage."
She turned her head, her cheek against the wool. "Maybe I am." She reached back, her hand finding the tense muscle of his thigh, holding on as he fucked her. "Or maybe the monster is mine now, too."
His rhythm stuttered. A low groan vibrated through him. He withdrew almost completely, leaving her empty and clenching, before plunging back in with a force that made her cry out. "You arrogant little bitch," he said, but there was awe in the profanity.
"Yours," she gasped, the word a concession and a claim with every driving impact. "All yours. Every fucked-out, screaming inch."
His control was fraying. She could feel it in the growing urgency of his hips, the damp sweat on his skin where she touched him. His breathing was ragged gasps in her ear. He slid a hand around her hip, his fingers finding her clit, slippery and swollen. His touch was rough, perfect.
"That's it," she urged, grinding back against him, taking him even deeper. "I feel you everywhere. Don't you fucking hold back on me."
"I'm not," he choked out. His fingers worked her clit in frantic circles, matching the brutal pace of his cock. The dual assault was incendiary, a feedback loop of pure sensation. "I'm right there. Sofia—"
Her name was a broken thing on his lips. It undid her. The climax tore through her without warning, a raw, screaming wave that clenched around his invading thickness, pulling him deeper into the convulsing vise of her body.
"Now, Enzo, come inside me, now!" she demanded, her voice cracking.
The order shattered him. With a guttural roar that was part agony, part surrender, he plunged in one final, devastating time and erupted. His release was a scalding flood, pulse after endless pulse pumping into her depths as his hips jerked against her ass. He collapsed forward, his weight driving her into the rug, his face buried in her tangled hair.
They climaxed together, a fused, trembling entity in the silent, neon-lit room.
They climaxed together, a fused, trembling entity in the silent, neon-lit room.
His weight was a solid comfort, pressing her into the wool of the rug. Their harsh breathing was the only sound, synchronizing slowly. The smell of sex and sweat was thick, a testament to the violence of their connection.
He shifted first, rolling onto his side beside her, breaking the seal of their bodies with a soft, wet sound. The cool air touched her skin, raising goosebumps. She kept her eyes closed, listening to the city’s distant pulse.
“You’re going to be sore tomorrow,” he said finally, his voice gravel.
“I’m sore now.” She turned her head to look at him. His profile was stark against the dim light. “It’s a good ache.”
A faint, unguarded smile touched his mouth. It vanished as a sound cut through the penthouse’s quiet. A thump. Then a low, rhythmic knocking from somewhere down the hall, followed by a woman’s muffled, drawn-out cry.
Sofia froze. Enzo didn’t move.
The cries grew louder, punctuated by the relentless, wooden thud of a headboard hitting a wall. They were raw, uninhibited sounds. A man’s gruff voice, Marco’s, was a barely audible rumble beneath them, offering sporadic, rough encouragement.
“Oh fuck, right there! Yes, Marco, just like that! Harder!”
Kate. The assistant. Sofia had met her once, a woman with a sharp smile and tired eyes.
The sounds were unabashed, a crude soundtrack seeping under the door of a guest suite. The headboard's tempo increased. Kate’s wails climbed higher, losing coherence, dissolving into pure, wanton noise.
Sofia looked at Enzo. His expression was impassive, as if hearing the weather report. “They’re fucking,” she said, the words flat.
“Astute.” He pushed himself up to a sitting position, reaching for his discarded trousers.
“It’s… loud.”
“Marco isn’t a subtle man.” He stood, not bothering to dress further. “And Kate has aspirations. This is her audition.”
The callousness of it chilled her. Kate’s cries hit a crescendo, a shriek that was almost painful, then cut off into abrupt, heavy silence. The sudden quiet was somehow worse.
“An audition for what?” Sofia asked, sitting up, pulling her knees to her chest.
“For a more permanent position. In his bed, in his itinerary.” He walked to the bar, poured a whiskey. “She wants out of admin. Thinks this is the ladder.”
Sofia thought of the delicate ecosystem of this world, the unspoken trades. Her own position, scrutinized by Anya. “Is it?”
Enzo took a long drink. “It’s a hammock. Comfortable, swinging in the breeze. Until the ropes rot or he gets bored.” He looked at her over the glass. “It’s not a ladder.”
The comparison hung in the air. She was meant to see the difference. Contract versus covenant. She felt a surge of something ugly and possessive. She stood, naked, and walked to him. She took the glass from his hand, finished the whiskey, and set it down with a sharp click.
“I don’t want a hammock.” Her voice was low. “And I don’t want to hear another woman screaming for someone else in this place.”
His eyes darkened. He understood the demand perfectly. It wasn’t about silence. It was about erasure. Replacement.
“Then make me forget,” he said, his gaze dropping to her mouth.
She shoved him backward. He let her, his body impacting the leather of the sectional sofa. She followed him down, climbing astride his lap, her knees digging into the cushions. His semi-hard cock lay against his thigh. She took it in her hand, stroking him roughly to full, relentless hardness.
“You hear that empty noise?” she whispered, leaning close, her red hair a curtain around their faces. She guided him to her entrance, not waiting, sinking down onto him with a choked gasp. He was still thick, stretching her freshly used flesh. “That’s nothing. That’s a transaction.”
She began to move, a slow, deep grind, taking him all the way to the root. Her internal muscles clenched, a deliberate, milking pressure. His hands gripped her hips, his fingers biting in.
“This,” she hissed, her pace quickening, her nails scoring his shoulders, “is a claim. You feel the difference?”
“Christ, Sofia.” His head fell back against the leather. His hips bucked up to meet her downward strokes, driving deeper. The friction was electric, a burning, full sensation that pushed the distant echoes of Kate’s pleasure completely from the room.
“Say it.” She rode him harder, her body slapping against his. “Say you feel it.”
“I feel it.” The words were torn from him. “Your greedy cunt is sucking me back in. It’s fucking possessive.”
“It is.” She leaned back, bracing her hands on his knees, offering him the full view of where their bodies joined, his cock glistening, sliding in and out of her. The obscene, wet sounds of their coupling filled the space where the other sounds had been. “This pussy owns you, Enzo. It remembers every inch. It wants every drop. And it doesn’t fucking audition.”
His control snapped. With a growl, he flipped her, reversing their positions, pinning her beneath him on the wide sofa. He hooked her legs over his shoulders, bending her nearly in half, and drove into her. This angle was devastating, a deep, punishing penetration that made her see stars.
“You want to claim me?” he gritted out, each thrust a promise of violence. “Then take this. Take all of it. You want my come? Beg for it. Scream for it so the whole goddamn building knows who I’m fucking.”
She was unraveling, the intensity too much, the fullness absolute. “Please,” she gasped, her composure shattering. “Please, Enzo, I need it. Fill me up. I want to feel it for days.”
“Louder.”
“Give me your fucking come!” she screamed, the words raw and loud enough to echo. “Paint my insides with it, daddy, please!”
Her plea destroyed him. He plunged once, twice more, then buried himself to the hilt as he came. His release was a hot, endless flood, spurting deep inside her clenching channel. She climaxed with him, a second, sharper wave triggered by the feel of him pulsing within her, marking her from the inside out.
They collapsed together, a tangled, sweating mess on the leather. The penthouse was silent again, a true silence now, heavy and complete.
Several minutes later, a soft knock sounded at the front door. Enzo didn’t move. “It’s Marco,” he said, his voice rough.
“Are you decent?” Marco’s voice called through the door, a hint of awkwardness in it.
“No,” Enzo answered, his hand splayed possessively on Sofia’s stomach. “What do you want?”
“News. From the docks. It can’t wait.”
Enzo sighed, the sound one of profound irritation. He pressed a kiss to Sofia’s sweat-damp shoulder, then stood. He pulled on his trousers, zipped them, and walked to the door bare-chested, leaving her lying there, exposed and glistening.
He opened the door a fraction, blocking the view inside. Sofia saw Marco, straightened and professional, his own shirt neatly re-tucked. Kate was nowhere to be seen.
“The shipment from Cartagena,” Marco said, his voice low. “Intercepted. Coast Guard. They’re holding the crew.”
Enzo’s posture changed instantly, all softness evaporating. “Which crew?”
“The new ones. The Colombians.”
“Fuck.” Enzo ran a hand through his hair. “That was a clean channel. Someone talked.”
“Looks that way.”
“Get the car. I’ll be down in five.” Enzo shut the door. He turned, his eyes finding Sofia on the sofa. The man from the rug, from inside her, was gone. The Boss was back, his face a cold mask of calculation.
“Stay inside,” he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. “Don’t answer the door. I’ll have Marco post two more men in the hallway.”
He dressed with swift, efficient movements. He strapped a watch to his wrist, then retrieved a sleek, matte-black pistol from a drawer, checking the clip before tucking it into the waistband at the small of his back. He shrugged into a fresh shirt, buttoning it with focused precision.
He came to her finally, crouching before the sofa where she still lay. He cupped her face, his thumb stroking her cheek. The touch was at odds with the ice in his eyes. “This is the world, mia cara. The one you’re not scared of.” He kissed her, hard and brief. “Don’t make a liar out of me.”
Then he was gone, the door closing softly behind him. The lock engaged with a heavy, final click.
Sofia lay still, listening to the retreating elevator. The scent of their sex was still thick in the air. The heat of him was still inside her. She slowly sat up, her body protesting.
She walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows, naked, and looked down at the city. Somewhere down there, a problem needed solving with a gun and a threat. Up here, she was to wait. To be the thing worth protecting.
The silence now was different. It wasn’t peaceful. It was pregnant, waiting for the echo of whatever violence he was about to commit. She placed her palm against the cool glass.
She wasn’t scared of the world. But for the first time, she felt the true, cold weight of loving a man who lived in its darkest trenches. The fear wasn’t for herself. It was a hollow, gnawing thing in her stomach, entirely for him.