Trap

※※※Lissa

I should have known. The extra plate. The unfamiliar black Hummer in the drive. My father’s uncharacteristic, almost gentle lunch invitation. It wasn’t a family meal. It was a fucking trap.

The second vodka burned just as harshly as the first, but it did nothing to thaw the ice in my veins. I set the empty glass down and looked directly at my father, ignoring the solid, looming presence of Enzo beside me.

“What is this about?” My voice was low, but it cut through the polite silence like a shard of glass. “There must be a reason he is here.” I jerked my chin towards Enzo without looking at him. “And you disappear for a week, and now you just pop out again? No. Leave that. That’s between me and you.” I was talking to Enzo now, my words sharp and brittle, forged in the silence he’d left me in.

My father sighed, the sound of a man burdened by necessity, not affection. “Celeste Moretti was attacked last night,” he stated flatly.

The name meant nothing to me for a second. Then I placed it—a socialite, a mid-tier capo’s daughter, seen at a few charity galas. I shrugged, a cold, dismissive gesture. “And?”

“They beat her. They asked questions about a redhead. My redhead,” Enzo said, his voice a low growl from my left. I finally turned my head to look at him. His expression was grim, all traces of the earlier smirk gone, replaced by a hard, focused intensity. “They told her they’d grabbed the wrong girl.”

The meaning slammed into me.

Wrong girl.

My hand went instinctively to my hair, to the black strands. The red was gone, washed down a salon drain, but the target was still painted on my back. A chill that had nothing to do with the vodka crept down my spine, settling in the pit of my stomach.

“The Union,” I breathed, the first logical conclusion.

“No,” my father said, his tone leaving no room for doubt. “But it does not matter who. Not yet. What matters is that they are looking for you. And they are willing to hurt innocent people to find you. You are not safe in that penthouse, Cara. You are not safe alone.”

I saw where this was going. The walls of the ornate dining room, with its frescoed ceilings and heavy damask drapes, seemed to close in, a gilded cage with a new, more familiar jailer. “So what? You’re assigning me a babysitter? One of your goons to follow me around?” My gaze flicked to Enzo, pure venom in my eyes. “Him?”

“Yes,” my father said, his voice final. “He will be assigned to you. But after we return from Sicily. It is Dyla’s wedding, and we need to attend. We will be staying at your uncle’s villa. Please try to behave. I do not need you and Dominic to butt heads.”

I snapped. “We will if he still acts like a fucking psycho!” I looked over to my mother, who was staring at her plate, a silent statue of distress. “I will only attend this for you, Mama.”

I pushed my chair back, the legs scraping loudly on the marble floor. I didn’t wait for permission. I looked at Enzo, my eyes blazing. “Follow me.”

He did, his footsteps a steady, infuriating echo of mine as I stormed out of the dining room, through the grand foyer, and into the large, airy sunroom that overlooked the manicured gardens. The afternoon light was harsh, exposing every detail.

I turned on him the second the glass door hissed shut. “I don’t need your protection.”

He didn’t hesitate. He closed the distance between us, his hands coming up to grip my upper arms, not painfully, but with an immovable firmness. He pushed me back a step until my shoulders met the cool glass of the window.

“I don’t give a fuck what you want or need,” he said, his voice a heated whisper, his face inches from mine. His eyes were dark, burning with a frustration that mirrored my own. “I need to keep you safe. This shit—can you please just stop with this crazy ‘Lissa’ act? It’s getting old fast.”

“Fuck you! Don’t call me crazy!” I spat, trying to wrench my arms free, but his grip was like iron.

“Good,” he hissed, leaning in closer. “Get mad. Get it all out. I want you mad. At least you’ll think clearly.”

We were chest to chest, breathing each other’s air, a current of pure, volatile energy crackling between us. It was hatred, it was fury, and it was the unsaid words of a week of silence and years of history. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat of adrenaline.

Then, his head dipped. He didn’t go for my mouth. Instead, he pressed his lips against the side of my neck, just below my ear. The touch was shockingly intimate, a contrast to the aggression of his hold. His breath was hot against my skin. I froze, every muscle locking.

His voice was a low, rough murmur against my pulse point. “Did you not at least miss me a little bit, Blue?”

The fight drained out, replaced by a sudden, terrifying vulnerability. The anger was a shield, and he’d just found the chink in it.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My eyes squeezed shut. The warmth of his lips on my neck, the solid reality of him holding me against the window, the scent of him—it was all too much. It was a different kind of trap, one I had no defenses against.

He didn’t move, waiting. “No, not even a little bit,” I said weakly. He could sense the lie, but that was all the fight I had in me for now.

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