“Why?”

“You can’t expect me to accept presents from you Rafael.”

“You didn’t seem to have a problem buying out half of the boutique. Why would one more little trinket matter?”

“That was me getting back at you for agitating Albini, and you know it. But I won’t wear jewelry bought by a man who’s keeping me as a prisoner. Do you shower all your hostages with gold and diamonds?”

“In my experience, people will choose to dismiss or ignore many things if the offsetting gift is expensive enough.”

“Well, sorry to be the one to break it to you, but money can’t buy everything.”

Her words slash through my chest like a knife. Is she alluding to me holding her against her will or to my looks? I’m guessing, the latter. The gown idea was stupid. Anybody can buy a dress. I need to give her something more astonishing. More exquisite. Something that will help her see beyond my fucked-up face. But what if there’s nothing that will get her to do that? Would she ever be able to?

Gritting my teeth, I take a step back. My hand falls away from Vasilisa’s neck, but my fingers keep tingling from that too-brief contact. Irritation and fury roil in my chest as I give her one final look in the mirror.

“Time to get going,” I say in a clipped tone and leave the dressing room.

Chapter 9

“This can’t be right,” I mumble, staring at the laptop screen.

“A problem, vespetta?” The deep voice comes from the corner of the office where Rafael is sitting.

A pleasant shiver runs down my spine, as it does every time he calls me that in that particular tone. Husky. Seductive. Intimate. Like smooth velvet gliding over my body, teasing my skin. My naked skin.

I grind my teeth, pushing away the mental images of me in Rafael’s arms while he traces his finger down my spine, just as he’d done a week ago at Albini’s. It was a mere few light touches, hardly noticeable, but I still can’t get them out of my mind.

“I fixed the data storage repository the day before yesterday, but it looks like someone managed to fuck up the software again,” I say, refusing to allow myself to look anywhere but at the screen.

It’s hard enough to keep my focus with him just in the room, constantly feeling his attention on me. Although I’ve gotten used to men looking at me and learned to disregard their ogles years ago, Rafael’s stares are very hard to ignore. He doesn’t glare at me with lust-imbued eyes that seem to strip away my clothes, making me feel cheap and somehow dirty, as if there’s nothing more to me than shapely flesh. Instead, it feels like Rafael is trying to peel away my outer layers, eager to reveal what lies beneath.

“That’s unfortunate. You’ll have to fix it again.”

“I can’t believe that a glorified decoy of a company can sprout so many issues.”

“It may serve as a front for my clandestine enterprise, but the profits from it nearly match its shadow sister.”

“So, not all personnel of Delta Security are actual hitmen?” From what I saw while working on the systems, there are over a hundred employees in his private security company.

“Of course not. One four-man team per branch only.”

“They always go in teams? What if there’s only a single target?”

“Are you planning on becoming my competitor, Miss Petrova?”

“Nope. Just curious.” I shrug. “You don’t have to tell me.”

But I truly want to know. I want to know so much more about him. The random tidbits I’ve picked up are not enough. Not that I expect him to tell me confidential things about his business.

“Most hit contracts are for a single target,” Rafael says, surprising me. “But that doesn’t mean they’re easy. We’re talking about very public, high-ranking individuals who have tight personal protection and often reside in heavily guarded locations. If they end up on my agenda, it often means that my business rivals have chosen to pass on the job, and not for the lack of lucrative value. As such, even though it may take only one operative to execute the target, to ensure his infiltration and subsequent extraction proceed smoothly, he needs support. Two team members provide surveillance. Another serves as a backup in case things go awry.”

“Do the jobs often go wrong?”

“Sometimes.” His tone changes, voice drops and comes out sounding almost savage. “I lost an entire team once.”

“What happened?”

“One very important detail got missed.” He grabs the wineglass off the table and, with brisk steps, crosses the room, stepping out on the balcony. “I didn’t realize that the woman we were hired to assassinate was the girlfriend of a rival hitman. The bastard executed all four of my men before they even got the chance to reach their target. Fucking Mazur.”

He launches the glass at the balcony banister. The stemware shatters, the sound of the breakage echoing through the air.

“You killed the guy who slaughtered your men, I assume.”

“No.” Rafael leans back on the railing, crossing his arms over his chest.

Slight shivers run down my spine from the intensity of his darkened gaze.

He doesn’t say anything else, just watches me from a distance, as if waiting to see if I’ll ask for an explanation. I want to. The interest this man ignites within me is beyond compare. Every time I think that I get him, he does something to contradict my conclusions.

“Why not?” I ask, a bit cautiously. “Why not retaliate for the killing of your men?”

“There are rules in every trade. In mine, one does not accept a hit contract against a fellow hitman or his family, no matter what the offered price is.”

“I didn’t expect there’d be an established etiquette in a business that deals in death.”

“There is.” His jaw hardens. “I broke the rule. And my men paid with their lives for my mistake.”

A sudden urge to go to him and offer some kind of comfort overwhelms me. Even with the shadows that obscure most of his features, anger and self-blame are clearly written on his face. That doesn’t track with him seeing his men only as hired workforce. Doesn’t fit the picture of the shitty employer he hasn’t denied being. There’s more to Rafael De Santi than he wants to let on.

I glance at the sticky note I found stuck to the corner of the laptop screen. It’s a drawing of a scene from this morning—of me, while I was having breakfast on the terrace. Alone. I believed he had already gone to work at that point.

The proof of that erroneous thought is in my hand. I smile at his attempt to capture little details, especially by using nothing more than a simple ballpoint pen. No one but me would ever be able to tell that the half-smudged blobs on the ends of the “doodle-me’s” fingers are the marmalade stains from when I was stuffing a croissant into my mouth.

There are four more sketches just like this one, hidden in the drawer of my nightstand. Every time I stumble upon one, I need to fight not to give in to giggles like a schoolgirl. I wonder, what does he do with the doodles I leave for him? Probably throws my crude drawings in the trash.

Rafael’s phone rings.

“Pronto,” he barks.

I’m still staring at the sticky note when my desk chair is suddenly yanked back, the casters smoothly rolling over the floor. “What—”

“How the fuck did that happen?” Rafael leans over the laptop with the phone pressed to his ear.

With him this close, I can hear the muffled speech of a man on the other side of the line, but his English is heavily accented, which makes it hard to grasp what the guy is talking about. Rafael grabs the wireless mouse with his free hand and just nods to whatever the man is saying while minimizing the multitude of windows on the screen.

“Wait a second, Hans.” He lowers the phone to the desk and looks at me.