The smell of burning leather wouldn’t leave my throat.
Hours later, it clung to the inside of my nose, a ghost of smoke and melted plastic drifting through the quiet hospital corridor. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, too bright, too clean, like the world was pretending it hadn’t just tried to explode me.
“They’re discharging you,” Vittorio said, like a verdict.
He didn’t sit. My father prowled the small private room as if it were a boardroom he owned, not a sterile cube with beige walls and a cracked vinyl chair. His tailored suit was immaculate, his cuff links glinting when he checked his watch, but his jaw was set too tight. A storm sealed behind expensive fabric and expensive skin.
I lay back against the white pillows, hospital bracelet cutting into my wrist. Tiny purple bruises ringed the skin from where they’d dragged me out of the wreckage and stuck needles in my veins. The nurse said I was lucky. That word tasted like ash.
“Already?” I asked. “Afraid the nurses will corrupt me with kindness?”
His gaze snapped to me, dark and sharp. “This isn’t funny, Ariana.”
“I wasn’t laughing.”
There was a beat of silence. His phone buzzed in his hand; he ignored it. That alone made my stomach tighten. Vittorio Bellanti never ignored business.
“The car—” I started, then stopped. The room tilted for a second, a flash of memory: door handle in my fingers, the slam of it shutting, my driver, Tommaso, nodding at me in the rearview, his thermos of coffee between the seats. I’d been scrolling my phone when the world turned white.
I swallowed hard. “Tommy?”
My father’s expression didn’t change. Not much ever reached his eyes. “Taken care of.”
I hated that phrase. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
A tiny pause. A confirmation. “He knew the risks.”
“He knew the risks of driving me to brunch?” My voice rose, sharp and thin. “He was there because of me.”
My father stepped closer to the bed, shadow falling over my bare legs. “He was there because he worked for me. Don’t romanticize it.”
I flinched, then forced my shoulders back against the pillows. If he saw weakness, he’d lock it in with chains.
“So that’s it?” I asked. “My driver explodes, the city dodges a fireball, and we pretend it’s just another Sunday?”
His eyes narrowed, a flash of something like fear buried under steel. “We don’t pretend anything. We reinforce. We close ranks.” He exhaled slowly, straightening. “And we eliminate problems.”
The way he said eliminate made my skin prickle.
“What problems?” I asked quietly.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he reached into his coat and pulled out my phone. It was a new one—the last had been in my purse, now probably charred metal somewhere in an evidence bag.
“You’ll use this,” he said. “Numbers are preloaded. If you need anything, you call Elena.”
I stared at the device in his palm. “Elena? Not you?”
“I’m restructuring.” The word was ice. “And you won’t need much. Your movements will be restricted until we find who did this.”
There it was. The cage, rising invisible around the hospital bed.
“Restricted how?” I asked. “Like… no more brunch? No more fresh air? Or am I allowed to breathe without permission?”
He ignored the sarcasm like he always did. “You’ll stay at home. No clubs, no galleries, no charity events unless I approve. No slipping past the gate at midnight. Your guards report directly to me.”
My heart hammered once, twice, a burst against my ribs. “Guards? Plural?”
“One.” His mouth thinned, like he’d bitten into something sour. “You know him.”
Every hair on my arms rose. “No,” I said immediately. “Absolutely not. No.”
“You haven’t even heard the name.”
“I don’t need to.” My throat was suddenly dry. “If it’s someone I ‘know,’ it’s someone you trust. And if you trust him that much, he’s a nightmare.”
His mouth curved, not a smile. A cold piece of amusement slid through his tone. “Perhaps.” He glanced at his watch again, then toward the door. “He’ll be here in five minutes. Get dressed.”
“I have a concussion,” I protested. “I’m not supposed to stand up too fast.”
“You’re cleared,” he said. “Doctor Hayes assured me.”
“Father Gabriel?” I asked, surprised.
“He has a medical degree as well as his collar. You know that.”
I did. I also knew my father trusted the priest because he thought God made men stupidly honest. He underestimated how much sin could teach someone to lie.
The door swung open without a knock.
The air changed before I even saw him, a pressure, a cold front sliding into the room. Then a tall shape filled the doorway, dark suit, darker eyes. Sunlight from the small window hit his shoulders, turning the edges of his black hair to ink.
Killian Drake.
My fingers clenched in the blanket.
He stepped inside, and the room felt smaller. His presence was a weapon—controlled, contained, every movement precise. Broad shoulders under a perfectly cut jacket, white shirt open at the throat, no tie. A gun at his hip, unapologetic. His gaze swept the room once, taking in exits, windows, shadows, before landing on me.
He didn’t flinch. He never did.
His eyes were a shade between gray and blue, like steel left out in winter. They locked on mine, and something hot and confused twisted low in my stomach, the same unwelcome reaction I’d had the first time I saw him years ago, walking out of my father’s office with blood on his hands.
He inclined his head, a fraction. “Signorina.”
“Hand of Death,” I returned automatically.
One of his brows lifted, the only sign he’d heard me. “You’re dressed?” he asked, voice flat, directed at my father.
Vittorio answered before I could spit something impolite. “She will be.”
I wanted to throw the water cup at both of them.
“I’m right here,” I said. “Maybe ask me if I want a serial killer for a babysitter.”
Killian’s jaw flexed once. Not anger. Not quite. “I don’t babysit,” he said. “I neutralize threats.”
“You are the threat,” I shot back.
He didn’t look at my father when he replied, but the words were shaped for him. “Not today.”
My father moved between us like a judge stepping onto a bench. “Killian is your security now. Twenty-four hours. Every step, every room. You breathe, he knows where.”
Heat flared through my chest, panic dressed as fury. “So I really do need permission to breathe.”
Vittorio’s hand closed over the rail of my bed. “You almost died, Ariana.” His voice was suddenly low, raw-edged. “Someone wired that car to explode from the inside. They knew your route, your schedule. They knew when you’d be alone.”
Alone. Except for Tommy.
My eyes stung. I blinked hard. “So find them.”
“I will.” His fingers tightened on the metal until his knuckles blanched. “In the meantime, you do not move without him.” He jerked his chin toward Killian. “He’s the only man I trust to keep you alive.”
The only man you trust to pull the trigger if you tell him to, I thought but didn’t say.
I looked at Killian instead. He stood impossibly still, like a blade on display. Unreachable. Unfeeling. Except… the knuckles of his right hand were scraped raw, scabbed over but not healed. A bruise shadowed the side of his neck where his collar didn’t quite cover it.
How many bodies had he put in the ground since my car blew up?
“I don’t want him,” I said, because I needed to push against something. “Get Marco. Or— or three guys from the gate. I don’t care. Anyone but him.”
Silence stretched, taut.
My father’s gaze cooled by ten degrees. “Marco is needed elsewhere. The men at the gate are cannon fodder. You are not.”
“Funny,” I muttered. “Didn’t feel that way this morning.”
His eyes flickered. I’d scored a point. It didn’t make me feel better.
“It’s decided,” he said. “Killian, take her home. She doesn’t step outside the property without my explicit consent. She doesn’t speak to anyone without your ears on it. No clubs, no ‘quiet drives,’ no priests confessions unless you’re present. Understood?”
The priest part made my stomach drop. Father Gabriel was my only space where I could breathe without watching my words.
Killian didn’t hesitate. “Understood.”
“And if she resists?” Vittorio asked.
Those steel eyes flicked to mine again. We stared at each other, a silent war line drawn.
“I’ll handle it,” he said.
I held his gaze, refusing to be cowed. “I’m not a package you ‘handle.’”
He didn’t respond. He didn’t have to. His control was its own statement.
My father straightened, decision made, conversation over. He leaned in just enough that his cologne—sharp, expensive, like smoked wood and citrus—filled my nose.
“You will cooperate,” he said quietly, only for me. “I will not bury my daughter.”
I stared at the rhythm of his pulse at his throat, beating fast under smooth, tanned skin. “You just buried my driver.”
His mouth thinned. Then he stepped back, nodded once to Killian, and walked out, his bodyguards falling into place around him like satellites.
The door clicked shut. The room grew larger and smaller at once.
For a moment, the only sound was the distant beep of a monitor in another room and the humming lights.
I realized I was clutching the sheet so hard my fingers hurt.
“Get out,” I said.
Killian didn’t move. “I’m your ride, Bellanti.”
“I need to change.” My cheeks heated suddenly. The hospital gown tied at the back, loose and thin. I was acutely aware I was wearing nothing underneath it. “Unless ‘full surveillance’ includes you watching me put on pants.”
His gaze didn’t drop below my face, not even for a second. Of course it didn’t; he was discipline personified. “There’s a bag on the chair,” he said. “Clothes from your room. Shoes. Change. I’ll be outside the door.”
I narrowed my eyes. “How considerate.”
He stepped toward the door, then paused, hand on the handle. “Five minutes.”
It sounded like an order. It was an order.
“Or what?” I asked.
His profile turned, cold-boned and beautiful in a way I tried not to notice. A faint, almost imperceptible mark cut across his lower lip, a thin white scar. I’d never seen it before. I wondered who had given it to him. If they were still breathing.
“Or I come in,” he said. “And I don’t think either of us wants that conversation with your father.”
Heat shot through me, an infuriating mix of anger and embarrassed awareness. “You are enjoying this.”
His eyes met mine, unreadable. “You have no idea what I enjoy.”
The words landed between us like a dropped match. For a heartbeat, the air thickened, something electric and dangerous flickering in the charged space where our gazes held.
Then he opened the door and walked out, and I could breathe again—sort of.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, the floor cold under my bare feet. My head swam as I stood, a delayed wave of dizziness making the blinds at the window blur for a second. I put a hand against the wall, steadying myself.
Tommy is dead because of you.
The thought came like a punch. My chest tightened. If I hadn’t insisted on changing the route to swing by the river first, if I hadn’t texted him last night to pick me up early… would the bomb have gone off on a different empty street? Would anyone have been in the car at all?
I forced myself to walk to the chair, fingers clumsy on the duffel zipper. Jeans, soft from wear. A black cashmere sweater. My favorite boots. Someone—probably Elena—had packed this. She knew what I reached for when I needed armor.
As I changed, the hospital gown sliding off my shoulders and pooling on the floor, I tried not to think about the fact that a man nicknamed the Hand of Death was standing six inches from the flimsy wood door, listening to every rustle.
My pulse kept skipping anyway.
When I opened the door, dressed, he was there like a shadow pinned to the wall. He glanced down at me, a quick inventory. Boots laced. Sweater sitting right. Hair in a messy knot that hadn’t seen a brush in hours.
His gaze paused at the faint bruise blooming along my cheekbone where the airbag had kissed me too hard. His throat moved once. “You missed a button,” he said.
I looked down. The second button of my sweater had slipped, exposing a thin line of skin from my throat to the lace edge of my bra. Heat sparked in my face.
“Peep show’s closed,” I muttered, hastily fastening it.
He stepped back, giving me space in the narrow hall, but not enough that I could get by without brushing his arm if I tried. “We’re leaving. Stay close. No stopping.”
“I need to sign some papers,” I said, gesturing vaguely toward the nurses’ station.
“Already done.”
“You forged my signature?”
“I had authorization.”
“From who, my father or God?”
The corner of his mouth almost twitched. Almost. “At this point, they’re the same thing for you.”
The words were too close to a truth I hated. I brushed past him deliberately, my shoulder touching his chest for a fraction of a second. His body was rock solid, heat leaching through the thin knit of my sweater like a brand. He didn’t move, didn’t react, but I felt the slightest catch in his breath.
Satisfaction curled low in me. Maybe I wasn’t as invisible to him as he pretended.
We walked down the corridor, his steps half a pace behind mine, every inch of him tuned to threat. A janitor pushing a mop cart. A nurse laughing softly into her phone. A visitor with wilted flowers. His eyes touched each person, evaluated, dismissed. By the time we reached the elevator, the back of my neck felt exposed.
“Stop scanning me like I’m a weak point in your perimeter,” I snapped as the elevator doors slid shut, sealing us into a mirrored box.
He pressed the button for the garage. “You are the perimeter.”
His reflection stared back at me from the brushed metal: tall, dangerous, perfectly controlled. Mine looked smaller than I felt, eyes too bright, a bruise mottling my temple like badly applied makeup.
“If I’m the perimeter,” I said quietly, “you did a shitty job this morning.”
The elevator hummed. His shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly.
“I wasn’t with you this morning,” he said. “That was the point.”
I frowned. “What point?”
He didn’t answer immediately. His hand flexed at his side, the raw knuckles whitening. “You were on a routine run. Low profile. No obvious target value.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Someone inside had to feed them your schedule.”
Inside.
The word slid under my skin like ice. Home. Family. The compound, with its cameras and guards and wrought-iron gates. The only place in the city my father claimed was safe.
“Someone in our house,” I said.
He watched the floor numbers tick down. “Or very close to it.”
Marco’s face flashed in my mind, his easy grin as he stole bites of my dessert, his arm slung around my shoulders at Christmas. Elena’s cool eyes above her wine glass, always watching. The gardeners. The drivers. The staff who’d seen me sneak out the side gate more times than I could count.
My stomach turned.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“For once in your life,” he said, voice low, “I need you to understand the difference between rebellion and suicide.”
The elevator doors opened onto the underground garage with a soft chime. The scent of concrete and motor oil rushed in, cool and sharp. My skin went cold.
The last time I’d smelled exhaust, it had carried burning rubber with it.
I didn’t move.
Killian stepped out, then noticed I wasn’t following. He turned back, eyes cutting to my hand where it gripped the rail, bloodless knuckles. His gaze softened for a fraction of a second, almost imperceptible.
“Bellanti,” he said quietly. “Look at me.”
I did. The garage behind him blurred at the edges, the overhead lights too bright.
“You’re getting in the car,” he said. “No one touches you between here and home.”
“You can’t promise that,” I whispered.
He held my eyes, steady as stone. “I don’t make promises. I make sure.”
The sentence hit something deep, something that had been rattling loose since the explosion. My lungs loosened just enough to pull in a full breath. A stupid, treacherous part of me believed him.
One step, then another. The soles of my boots squeaked faintly on the garage floor. He matched my pace, his body angled between me and the open space like he could physically block fate if it decided to take another swing.
A black SUV waited, engine idling. Tinted windows, polished black paint reflecting the fluorescent lights. A twin, almost, to the car that had turned into a coffin.
My heart jerked.
“No,” I said, stopping. “Not that. I’m not getting into that.”
His hand lifted, stopping inches from my lower back, not touching but close enough that I felt the heat radiating from his palm. “It’s armored. We swept it twice. There’s a second car behind us, and bikes flanking.”
“I don’t care,” I said, voice shaking. “I’m not—”
His hand hovered, then dropped, fingers curling into a fist. “Ariana.”
He almost never used my first name. Hearing it in his voice—rough, edged—stilled me.
He stepped in front of me, cutting off my view of the SUV. All I could see was his chest, the rise and fall slow, controlled. Up close, I saw the faint sheen of sweat at his temple, the lines at the corners of his eyes carved deeper than I remembered.
“I can carry you,” he said quietly. “If you fight me, that’s what will happen. You’ll scream, you’ll dig your nails in, and I’ll still put you in that seat because the alternative is a bullet in your skull two minutes from now.” His eyes pinned mine, fierce, relentless. “So you can hate me in there, or you can hate me out here. But you’re getting in the car.”
The image of him lifting me like a piece of luggage, slinging me over his shoulder while my father’s men watched, burned hot and humiliating. I swallowed, the back of my throat tight.
“Those aren’t great options,” I managed.
He exhaled through his nose, a ghost of tired humor. “Welcome to your life.”
For a heartbeat, neither of us moved. The garage hummed around us. Somewhere, a door slammed, distant.
I thought of Tommy’s ruined car, of my father saying taken care of like it covered the fact that someone had cut my life into before and after this morning.
I thought of the nameless person inside our walls who wanted me dead badly enough to turn my safe world into shrapnel.
And I thought of Killian Drake, the man I’d watched execute someone in our marble foyer at seventeen while my father sipped espresso, now offering me the worst kindness I’d ever been given: the truth, stripped of sugar.
“Fine,” I said, throat rough. “But if you so much as touch my seatbelt, I’ll break your fingers.”
A flicker went through his eyes. Not quite a smile. Not quite not.
“Get in the car, princess,” he said softly. “We’ll negotiate your breathing later.”
The word princess should have sounded mocking. Instead, it wrapped around something fragile inside me. I shoved past him, chin high, every step toward the SUV a battle between terror and fury.
The door handle was cool under my palm.
I opened it.
And even as I slid into the shadowed interior, my skin crawling, one thought pulsed louder than the thud of my heart:
If the bomb didn’t kill me, being locked in with Killian Drake just might.
