“Don’t Fall in Love With Me,” She Warned—The Mafia Boss Locked the Door and Broke His Own Rule

For forty-eight hours, the penthouse suite of the Grand Sovereign became an island in the middle of an escalating storm.

Outside, the city of New York continued its frantic, noisy dance. Inside, Beatrice worked with a cold, relentless precision that surprised even herself.

She didn't sleep more than two hours at a time.

She ordered cases of Pellegrino, trays of roasted vegetables, cold cuts, and endless espresso. She paced the perimeter of the library, her burgundy blazer discarded, her white silk shirt unbuttoned at the collar, her dark hair held up with a wooden chopstick she had borrowed from her lunch tray.

Bastion returned to the penthouse late on the second night.

His charcoal shirt was dark with rainwater, his tie removed, his eyes showing the faint, reddish strain of two days spent conducting brutal, silent interrogations across the docks of New York.

He walked into the library carrying a small paper box from a bakery in Little Italy.

He set it down on her work desk without a word.

Beatrice looked up from her terminal, her eyes bloodshot, her glasses resting on her head. "What's that?"

"Cannoli," Bastion said, sitting down in the heavy leather armchair across from her desk. "From a small bakery on Mulberry Street. The owner owes me his life. He makes them with sheep's milk ricotta and orange zest."

Beatrice looked at the pastry box, then at the exhausted, dangerous man sitting across from her.

"Are you trying to bribe your accountant, Mr. Mercer?" she asked, a small, genuine smile touching her lips for the first time in three days.

"I'm trying to feed my accountant," Bastion replied, his voice raspy. "You haven't eaten a full meal since yesterday morning. Viktor keeps detailed logs of your coffee consumption. He thinks you're constructed out of caffeine and spite."

"Viktor is very perceptive," she said, reaching into the box and taking one of the crisp, powdered pastries.

She took a bite. The shell was perfectly crisp, the cream light, sweet, and scented with fresh citrus. She let out a small, quiet sigh of absolute culinary satisfaction.

"Good?" Bastion asked, watching her with an intensity that made her skin tingle.

"Acceptable," she said, wiping a speck of powdered sugar from her bottom lip with her thumb.

Bastion’s eyes tracked the movement of her thumb, his silver gaze darkening into something deep, heavy, and dangerous.

"You look tired, Beatrice," he said softly.

"I'm close, Bastion," she said, unconsciously dropping his formal title for the first time. She pointed her chin toward her main monitor. "The ghost key didn't just clear the manifests. It was tied to a secondary encryption layer that requires a dual-biometric sign-off."

Bastion sat up straight, his fatigue instantly vanishing. "Dual-biometric?"

"Two people had to approve every transfer," Beatrice explained, her voice rising with the sharp, triumphant energy of a hunter who had finally located the prey's lair. "One key belongs to the ghost account. The second key... belongs to an active device inside your personal executive network."

Bastion stood up, walking behind her chair. He leaned down, placing one hand on the back of her chair and the other on the table, his chest almost touching her shoulder.

"Which device?" he demanded softly.

"I'm running the hardware serial handshake now," Beatrice said, her fingers flying across the keys. "It's bouncing through three proxy servers in Frankfurt, but I've isolated the MAC address."

She hit the Enter key.

A progress bar appeared on the screen: DECRYPTION PROXIMAL TRACE — 68%... 74%... 89%...

While the system processed, the quiet room fell into a heavy, intimate silence.

Beatrice could feel the heat radiating off Bastion's body. She could hear his calm, measured breathing. She turned her head slightly, her face only three inches from his.

"Bastion," she whispered.

"What?" he murmured, his eyes dropping to her mouth.

"Why didn't you hire a big accounting firm?" she asked softly. "Pricewaterhouse. Deloitte. They have armies of auditors. They have two hundred people who could have done this in six hours."

Bastion looked at her eyes—at the fierce intelligence, the quiet vulnerability, and the complete lack of deceit reflecting in her grey irises.

"Because big firms are full of men who tell me what I want to hear," Bastion said softly, his fingers gently reaching out to stroke the back of her hand resting on the desk. "They're full of cowards who look at my suit and tremble. I didn't need an army, Beatrice. I needed someone who wasn't afraid of the dark."

Beatrice felt her breath catch in her throat. The air between them felt supercharged, heavy with a thick, magnetic gravity that made it impossible to look away.

"I told you," she whispered, her voice trembling slightly for the first time since they met. "Don't fall in love with me, Mr. Mercer. I don't fit into the quiet, pretty frame men like you build for their women. I'm too loud. I'm too difficult. I take up too much space."

Bastion leaned down, his lips brushing against the sensitive curve of her neck, just beneath her ear, sending a fiery jolt straight through her veins.

"I don't want a quiet woman, Beatrice," Bastion growled softly against her skin. "And I have never in my life wanted a small space."

BEEP.

The monitor let out a sharp, metallic ping.

The progress bar completed: HARDWARE MATCH CONFIRMED — DEVICE ID: EX-MERCER-001.

Beatrice pulled back slightly, looking at the screen.

Her heart stopped.