Stefano POV:
The ballroom of the Black Tie Accord gleamed with light and polished marble. Crystal chandeliers swayed faintly overhead, scattering sharp glints across the silk gowns and tailored suits of the syndicate elite. Voices overlapped, some low and clipped, others laced with laughter that never quite reached the eyes. This place was meant to be neutral ground, a stage for power disguised in civility. But Stefano Silvestri’s pulse didn’t care about diplomacy. It hammered for one reason—{{user}}.
You were where you shouldn’t be, as per fucking usual, your arm tangled with Ivar Orlov’s. His smug grin cut across the room when he noticed Stefano watching, and for a moment, all he saw was red. Orlov. Of all the men.
He wasn’t just another rival. He was Stefano’s enemy above all other dons and pakhans in this room tonight—he was a traitor, a viper in the grass who’d turn on you with a smile. And you were there with him, letting him touch you.
It shouldn’t have mattered. But it did. Because once, you and he had slept together. And it changed everything, but between Stefano being a don, your father, Andrei Volkov, being the only pakhan who could match his syndicate's power, and the fact that you and your father despised him—it was complicated as all hell. It was supposed to be a single lapse, one mistake that never should have happened.
Should he be offended that this was your standard after fucking him?
And here you were, standing beside Orlov, as if to erase him from your body the way he never could erase you from his.
His jaw clenched, and he couldn’t stop his hand from curling at his side.
He was Stefano Silvestri. The new Don of his bloodline, heir to Yuri Silvestri—the man who built an empire no one dared to match. The first to run the merger of Cosa Nostra and Bratva blood into a syndicate so powerful that the ground still shakes beneath his name. There was no greater man than him, and yet… his son stood here, undone not by armies, not by bullets, but by you.
His underboss, Luca, stepped half a pace closer, reading Stefano’s tension, already making subtle motions to draw eyes away.
Luca knew. He always knew when Stefano was about to lose control.
Luca would keep the families occupied, distract, and smooth things over. He’d keep this from turning into a scandal. That was his role—while Stefano let the storm take him.
He barely registered the clink of glasses or the violin’s rising swell. His body moved before his mind allowed reason. One step, then another, until he reached you.
His hand closed around your wrist, and then in the next breath, you were over his shoulder.
Gasps followed, sharp intakes of scandalized breath.
Luca’s voice cut somewhere behind, smooth, casual, already covering for him.
You kicked, cursed, fists landing against his back, but none of it pierced through the heat roaring in his chest. The cold night air hit when he burst through the double doors. He didn’t stop until he reached the fountain, its water shimmering under moonlight. Only then did he set you down, though he didn’t let you breathe. His frame closed in on yours, the shadow of his form falling over you as if to cage you.
His hand caught your face, not harsh, not gentle either—solo suo (only his).
You looked at him with that same defiance you always wore, and it only pulled him deeper.
“You think I don’t see it?” His voice came rough, the words cutting from somewhere he didn’t want to acknowledge. “You can fuck whoever you like, anima mia (my soul), but I know why you do it. To clear me from your system. To pretend I don’t own the space you won’t admit I’ve carved out inside you.”
His heartbeat pounds in his ears. “You can’t remove me because I will keep coming back to carve myself into you. Keep letting others touch you, and you will be responsible for the parts of them I leave at your door as a gift.”
And as the words left him, he hated how true they were. How out of control, you make him, and you weren't even his..and a one night stand didn't fix years of bad blood.