Chapter 1 - The Lethal Poison in the Sunscreen Bottle and the Boss Who Almost Lost His Mind
Enzo Moretti had watched men lie to his face with guns under their jackets and death already decided in their eyes. None of them had ever made him feel what he felt when he stepped onto the sun-drenched terrace in Monaco and saw Marco Bellini’s hand resting on Elena Russo’s bare shoulder.
For one terrible second, the entire world narrowed to that hand.
Marco was six-foot-three, built like a reinforced door, and had protected Enzo for nearly eleven years. He had taken a knife meant for him in Brooklyn, dragged him from a burning car outside Newark, and once spent forty-eight sleepless hours outside a hospital room because Enzo’s younger cousin had been threatened. Enzo trusted Marco with his life.
Apparently, that trust did not extend to Elena.
She sat with her back partly toward the terrace entrance, dark hair twisted into a loose knot, a cream blouse exposing a delicate strip of skin at the nape of her neck. Papers covered the glass table in front of her. The Mediterranean sun had turned her shoulders faintly pink.
Marco stood behind her. His fingers moved slowly across the exposed skin near her collar.
Elena smiled. “Thank you,” she said.
Something primitive rose inside Enzo. “Is this your job?”
His voice was quiet. That made it worse.
Marco’s hand stopped. Elena turned. The smile vanished from her face.
For several seconds, nobody moved. Beyond the terrace, the sea glittered beneath an almost offensively beautiful blue sky. Somewhere below them, tourists laughed near the pool. Glasses clinked. A waiter carried champagne between white umbrellas. The ordinary world continued as though Enzo Moretti were not standing three yards away imagining breaking the hand of the man who had saved his life.
Marco lowered his arm. “Boss.”
“I asked a question.”
Elena stared at him. Marco’s expression barely shifted. “Miss Russo was getting burned.”
“And that required your hands?”
“I was applying sunscreen to a place she couldn’t reach.”
Enzo looked at the white bottle on the table. Then at Elena. Then back at Marco. Objectively, the explanation was ridiculous only because Enzo desperately wanted it to be ridiculous.
Elena folded her arms. “You could also ask me what happened.”
His gaze snapped to her. Most people changed when Enzo looked at them that way. Voices became softer. Spines straightened. Men twice Elena’s size suddenly discovered an urgent interest in being agreeable. Elena merely raised one eyebrow. She had worked for him for two years, which perhaps explained why she had developed the dangerous misconception that she could survive honesty.
Enzo walked toward them. “Did you ask him to touch you?”
Marco’s head turned sharply. Elena’s expression changed. Not fear. Anger.
“That is an incredibly inappropriate way to phrase that question.”
Enzo stopped. Marco quietly said, “Boss.”
“Go inside.”
“I think—”
“Marco.”
That single word emptied the terrace faster than a shouted threat could have. Marco looked at Elena. It was a quick glance, but Enzo saw it. Concern. He hated that too. Then Marco walked inside.
Elena pushed back her chair.
“Sit.”
“No.”
Enzo almost laughed. Not because anything was funny. Because nobody told him no.
Elena gathered the financial reports into a neat stack. “You have a four o’clock meeting. I have forty pages of revisions to finish. If you’re done interrogating me over sunscreen, I would like to work.”
“You think that’s what this is?”
“I have no idea what this is.”
“Neither do I.”
The admission escaped before he could stop it. That silenced her. For the first time, something uncertain moved through Elena’s hazel eyes.
Enzo hated uncertainty. He had built his entire adult life around removing it. Every room had an exit plan. Every alliance had leverage. Every man had a price, a weakness, or a fear. Elena had become the exception.
He knew her coffee order, but not because he had asked. He knew she called her father every Sunday night. He knew she rubbed the inside of her wrist when nervous and hummed almost inaudibly when reviewing contracts. He knew she kept emergency chocolate in the bottom drawer of her desk and pretended not to know he occasionally stole it. He knew she loved old bookstores, hated elevators that moved too quickly, and had once stayed in his office until two in the morning because his aunt was undergoing surgery and Elena had somehow understood that he did not want to be alone.
He knew too much. And not enough.
Elena looked at him for several long seconds. Then realization entered her face so gradually that he saw each stage of it. Confusion. Disbelief. Then something dangerously close to amusement.
“Oh my God.”
His jaw tightened. “Elena.”
“You’re jealous.”
“I am not jealous.”
She actually laughed. It was soft. Stunned. Beautiful. Enzo’s irritation deepened mostly because his body had chosen that moment to notice how sunlight caught the brown in her hair.
“Marco has worked for me for eleven years.”
“Congratulations.”
“He understands professional boundaries.”
“So do I.”
“Apparently not.”
Her laughter disappeared. There it was. The mistake. Enzo knew it the moment the words left him.
Elena’s face closed. “You should go to your meeting.”
“Elena—”
“No. You’ve made your position quite clear.” She picked up the reports.
Enzo reached for her arm, then stopped himself before touching her. The fact that he had to stop himself only made him angrier. Not at her. At himself.
“At four,” he said, forcing his voice back into its usual controlled register.
“I know.”
“And Marco will escort you.”
“No.”
His eyes narrowed. She looked straight at him.
“Since his hands apparently create an organizational crisis, I wouldn’t want to put either of you through the emotional strain.”
She walked past him.
Enzo remained alone beneath the merciless Monaco sun. Five minutes later, Marco returned. Enzo did not look at him.
“If you are here to tell me I behaved irrationally, remember who signs your checks.”
“I was going to tell you something more important.”
That got his attention. Marco placed the sunscreen bottle on the table. Not Elena’s sunscreen. The hotel brand. Marco turned it over. There was a tiny slit near the bottom. Almost invisible.
“What am I looking at?”
“I noticed someone leaving Miss Russo’s room this morning,” Marco said, his voice dropping into the low, razor-sharp tone he used during tactical debriefs. “I checked her room while she was at breakfast. Nothing obvious was missing. But her toiletries had been moved. I swapped this bottle from her dresser with a duplicate from the concierge.”
Enzo went still. The blood drained from his face, replaced by pure ice. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because until twenty seconds ago, I hadn’t run the quick-test strip. Look at the nozzle, Enzo.”
Marco held up a small chemical strip. It was stained a violent, glowing purple.
“Contact neurotoxin. Synthetic organophosphate,” Marco whispered. “Transdermal. Absorbs through the pores within thirty seconds. Causes respiratory paralysis in five minutes. If Miss Russo had spread that over her neck and shoulders, she would have collapsed before she reached the elevator.”
Enzo stared at the innocent plastic bottle. His heart slammed against his ribs with the violence of a sledgehammer. The irrational anger that had scorched his throat minutes earlier morphed instantly into an abyss of cold, lethal terror.
Someone hadn't just tried to intimidate him. Someone had come into his territory, crept into the suite beside his, and tried to murder the only woman who had made him feel alive in ten years.
“Who was in the hallway?” Enzo’s voice wasn't loud. It was the sound of a trigger being pulled back.
“Man in a silver service uniform. Tall, thin build, limp in the left knee. He slipped out through the service stairwell before I could intercept without causing a panic,” Marco reported grimly. “He didn't come for your financial portfolios, boss. He came specifically for her.”
Enzo gripped the marble balustrade so hard the stone cut into his palm. “Lock down the entire floor. Cancel the four o’clock public meeting in the lobby. We move her to the private compound in the hills within twenty minutes.”
May you like
“And Miss Russo? She thinks you’re furious about a personal boundary.”
“Let her think whatever keeps her compliant until she’s behind bulletproof glass,” Enzo growled, turning toward the hallway. “Because if anyone lays a single finger on her again, I will burn Monaco to the waterline.”
Related Stories
