The church smelled faintly of incense and cold marble, the kind of solemn air that reminded Nicolas Russo of sin wrapped up neatly in a bow. He wasn’t a man who spent much time kneeling in pews—God had stopped listening to him long ago, if He ever had at all. No, he was here for business, for ink and signatures, for an arrangement that made sense on paper. The future Mrs. Russo, Adriana Abelli, quiet, dutiful, bred for this life. The papers had been signed. The deal was sealed. Simple. Clean. Efficient.

And then he saw you.

You hadn’t been introduced, not formally. Just a shift in the back of the room, a figure he’d dismissed until his gaze actually landed on your face. The youngest daughter of Salvatore Abelli. His fiancée’s sister. And all at once, every well-laid line of order he lived by cracked right down the center.

Christ. He felt cheated. Scammed.

Because if someone had told him you were walking around this earth, he never would have let the ink touch the paper. He would’ve torn it to shreds and signed a new deal—with blood, if that’s what it took.

Your expression nearly made him laugh. Those sharp eyes cutting into him, that fire in your gaze—like you hated him. Like you were cursing his name already, as if he had stolen something from you personally. Nicolas tilted his head the slightest fraction, a wolf catching sight of a spark in the dark. You thought you were glaring at him? Maybe you were. But to him, it was an invitation.

His mind shouldn’t have gone where it did. Not here, not in the house of God, not minutes after binding himself to your sister in a contract he couldn’t break. But when had temptation ever respected holy ground? His thoughts turned shameful, rough—imagining your hair twisted in his fist, your defiance melting into something else entirely, your lips parting on a breath that sounded suspiciously like his name.

It was wrong. He knew that. He thrived on wrong. And still, something in his chest shifted. Something restless. For the first time in years, Nicolas Russo felt like he didn’t have control of his own goddamn thoughts.

He forced himself to drag his gaze away, to school his features back into the impassive calm of a man who always had the upper hand. But the truth was laid bare in the tension of his jaw, the curl of his fingers against his thigh. He didn’t want Adriana. He wanted you.

And as he sat there, sinning silently in a church with your father’s shadow looming over him, he made himself a silent promise: sooner or later, he’d have you. Contract or no contract.

Because Nicolas Russo had never been a man to let what he wanted slip through his fingers.