The Intelligence Unit Series
The Guardian Chapter 12

Delia had imagined this moment for years. Wanted it for just as long. Strong, sexy, overly brooding Matteo Garza had put his mouth on hers. On purpose.

She breathed past her wildly beating heart, forcing herself to focus. Matteo's lips were softer than she'd ever expected. They matched the kiss perfectly, though-another thing that surprised her. His rough edges, his hard, unfinished lines, all of them had fallen away the second he'd put his mouth on hers. He was taking care with her. And Delia wanted more.

Slowly, she pressed her lips to his with more pressure, testing the way. His goatee provided the friction that his mouth didn't, and oh, God, that was good. The feeling anchored her, the possibility of how much hotter, faster, everything the contact between them could become pulsing through her like a drumbeat.

Delia shifted, her arms knotting around Matteo's shoulders. Holy crap, his muscles felt even sexier than they looked. She wanted to wonder how that was even a thing, to let her fingers play on the cotton of his T-shirt, to explore the hot, hard skin beneath. But then his hands were on her hips, gripping tight as he yanked her flush against his body to deepen the kiss, and all of her thoughts disappeared.

Now, all she could do was feel.

Matteo swept his tongue over her lips, making her breath catch hard in her chest. Delia opened for him on a sigh, and he grabbed hold of the control that she'd lost, tasting and taking and making her s*x clench with a ridiculous amount of need as he took the kiss deeper still. She kissed him back just as hard, her fingers digging in to those beautiful shoulders, until finally, she pulled back for a breath.

"You taste like cake," Delia murmured, the thought flying out of her, unchecked.

Matteo laughed against her lips. "You taste like sin."

"Oh." It came out all sigh, and God, she wanted him. "Well, if that's what you're after, you should probably try more than just my mouth."

His body stilled, his stare pinning her with intensity so dark, she felt it like a touch. "Be sure, Delia. Because if you tell me to pull off these shorts and make you come with my tongue, I'm going to do it. And that'll only be the beginning of how good I make you feel." "Matteo," Delia said, desire roughening her voice so much, she barely recognized it as her own. "I think we've established that I mean everything I say. So, if you'd like to pull off these shorts and make me come"-she slid a thumb beneath her waistband, the glint of dirty promise in his stare making her c**t throb in anticipation-"then by all means, do it. But you'd better be prepared for me to make you feel good, too. I give as good as I get."

He had her flat on her back in a second. Which was capital-F fine with her, since-yes, yes, yes, yes-his hands had moved between them. Working the button of her cutoffs free, he made even faster work of her zipper. Wetness gathered between her legs, the want pulsing there so strong that she couldn't be moved to care that she'd thrown on a pair of ridiculous purple and gray zebra-striped panties this morning. One corner of Matteo's mouth edged up as he caught sight of them, and he opened his mouth, although whether it was to say something smart or something sexy enough for her to beg him to rip said panties clean off, Delia couldn't be sure.

What she was sure of, though, was the distinct sound of his cell phone making nine kinds of a racket from his jeans pocket.

"Matteo," she whispered, flattening her palm over his chest. For a split second, his face showed all the fierce, beautiful intensity that had stolen her breath ever since he'd appeared on her doorstep tonight. But then he blinked, his expression slamming closed. "I can't ignore it," he said, sitting up. "I'm sorry."

His jaw hardened right along with his stare as he pulled out his phone and saw who was calling. "Garza."

A pause stretched out, during which Delia's heart didn't slow down. "And you're sure? Okay, okay, relax." Matteo exhaled. "I should've known better than to ask. Tell Sinclair I'm on it right now. No"-this time, his eyes flickered over her, if only for a second-"you don't have to call Delia. I'll tell her. Yeah. Copy that. Thanks."

Delia made a grab at a deep breath, but fell short. "Matteo? What's going on?"

"That was Capelli," he said, his words low and even. "He got your laptop up and running."

"What? Oh, my God." Her pulse tripped, the white noise thump-thump-thump filling her ears. "It works?"

"It's on," Matteo qualified. "It's still going to take a while to recover the hard drive, and there are no guarantees that he can reverse all the damage."

God, all this maybe made her want to scream. Facts, facts. She wanted facts. "So, what does that mean, exactly?"

Matteo looked at her, his mouth pressed into a line as if the kisses she'd put there just moments ago had never happened.

"It means we're done waiting. Sinclair wants to open an investigation. And that means you've just officially become our only witness."

***

Nicky sat backin his desk chair and frowned at the laptop in front of him. The chair-a high-backed, handcrafted affair made of maroon leather and heavy wood-was more throne than anything else, really. He'd chosen it with great care. After all, he was inheriting a legacy, the work of which would be done from here. Decisions made. Power taken. Respect earned through force and fear.

The only thing he was missing now was money.

Letting his eyes skim the digital spreadsheets in front of him one more time, Nicky reached for the cut-crystal tumbler beside his right hand. The scotch went down like anger, burning in his belly. But unlike people, these numbers didn't lie, and the fact was, he'd been forced to live honestly for too long. F*****g Dante, so careless and stupid. The legal fees alone had cost them a king's ransom, and the scrutiny had been enough to warrant a change in their finely honed business practices. Dante's foolishness had made it so Nicky and their father had needed to rely on their nightclubs and restaurants-ventures that had been created as nothing more than fronts-honestly.

Trouble was, there wasn't any money in honest work, and no money meant no power. No power meant no legacy, and unlike Dante, Nicky had earned his seat at the head of the table. While their father still had a hand in some of their smaller business dealings, his health wasn't what it had been even five years ago. Dante's high-profile trial, and the intensity of the media spotlight that had gone with it, had made the man tired. Eager to hand over the legacy. The respect that Nicky, as a second son, had always wanted and never had the chance to fully realize.

He was smarter than Dante. Hungrier than their father. More ruthless than both men put together.

Nicky would have what was rightfully his. His birthright.

It all came back to the money. And he needed more.

The sound of a driving bassline pulsed through the silence as Peyton opened the door to the office at the back of the nightclub and clipped her way inside on her thousand-dollar stilettos. "There you are," she teased, her blue eyes glassy with whatever she'd snorted or swallowed-probably both, now that Nicky thought on it.

His hand eased off the ebony-handled M1911 he kept in an easy-access compartment beneath his desk. "You shouldn't walk into my office without knocking, unless you want me to ruin that dress."

Peyton laughed. "Nicky, please. This is vintage Dior. Don't even joke."

"Believe me. I'm not."

He left the silence to crowd the air between them until she smiled her way back into his good graces. "You've got two huge bodyguards out there. They frisk me half the time I ask to come see you, and the blonde is handsy." Ironic of her to complain, since she'd already f****d both bodyguards twice-the second time, together. "You like it."

At least she had the sense not to argue. By now, she knew full well that Nicky not only knew about everything his employees did, but authorized it. Peyton had a shrewd head for business when she wasn't high as a satellite. Too bad for her, her drug problem and her penchant for pretty things had dumped her into so much debt that not even her salary at Cromwell A&M could take a chip out of it. Honest work never did pay when you wanted to play big. It had been all too easy for Nicky to realize Peyton's usefulness when her dealer-who just so happened to be Nicky's club manager-introduced her to him a few months ago.

The second he'd discovered her position at Cromwell and the skillset she brought to the table along with her weakness, Nicky had been all too happy to pay off her debt. For Chrissake, he'd smiled like a kid on Christmas morning while doing it. In return, he'd "requested" small favors, at first. A little shift of the books here. Tiny change in the system there. Any time she'd tried to manipulate her way free of the assistance, Nicky had found her bruises and applied just enough pressure to make them ache. "It's just some skimming from the top, Peyton," he'd said time and again as he'd dangled a vial of cocaine from his fingers or piled a handful of pills in front of her like candy in a dish, knowing she would salivate for it like the good little puppy she was. He'd pushed her in deeper and deeper, watching her go from "It's not like I'm murdering anyone. What's the harm in taking a little money?" to "Nicky will find someone to turn money around, somewhere no matter what, and I'm smart enough to do it. Why shouldn't I get a payday, too?" to "I'm in so deep that if he gets caught, I get caught." He'd used Peyton's weakness to lure her over to the darkest part of the city, where she'd learned the cardinal rule of the Bianchi family business.

In was forever. No one retired with a pension and a pat on the head. No one quit with brighter things on the horizon. You were either loyal or dead.

No gray area. No exceptions.

Of course, Peyton hadn't gotten where she was on blow jobs alone. She knew how the dynamic of power worked. She thought f*****g him earned her a few ounces of control. Nicky let her believe it, even though she was dead wrong. She might be useful to him right now, in this moment, but she was a means to an end. Peyton cleaned his money and sucked his d**k. He could get two dozen people willing to do that with an hour's notice.

She wasn't special. But she was useful, and she did owe him.

Peyton's sigh brought Nicky back to his office with a sudden snap. "You've been hiding away all night," she pouted, her tits and her lower lip in a competition to see which could stick out more. "Let's go out into the club and relax a little."

"You're relaxed enough for both of us," Nicky said. "Anyway, I have things to take care of here." Her addiction might be how he kept her in line, but bleeding Christ, it was a pain in the a*s sometimes.

Peyton's lower lip won the shootout. "Do you really want to work right now?"

Nicky let his stare answer for a moment before he backed it up with, "We need to step things up at Cromwell."

Her lips parted gracelessly, and ah, he'd put a dent in her high. "We've already got a lot of activity there," she said carefully, her unease ringing like a bell. Under other circumstances, the way she tiptoed around him would turn his d**k to steel-that fear was such a f*****g turn-on. But right now, there was only money.

"We need more. Everything is going according to plan there, isn't it?"

"Of course," Peyton said, and score one for the coke and pills. It made it easier to tell when she was lying, which-thankfully for her-she wasn't. "It's just that I have the system running so perfectly. If we push things, they may not go unnoticed."

"We have fail-safes for that," Nicky said. At least his brother had been good for something; namely, a reminder to have an exit strategy that offered plausible deniability for every scenario. "We'd be foolish not to take advantage of the situation. A bigger payday is right in front of us. Begging to be had."

A greedy glint moved past the glassiness in Peyton's stare, and ah, there she was. "That's true."

"And that other issue has been taken care of," Nicky said. He knew, because he'd monitored everything Delia Sutton had done with her brand-new work laptop all week. It had been as boring as watching middle-class fifty-somethings screw. "And we've got a fail-safe there, as well, in case that changes."

"Your fail-safe is to murder one of my employees," Peyton said uneasily, and the shine really was coming off her high.

It was the perfect time to strike. "Don't get squeamish on me now, Peyton. You're already committing no less than six different felonies, here. Would you rather get caught? Because Dior doesn't do prison orange."

"Of course not," she said, fiddling with the Cartier bangle on her wrist-her only nervous tell. "But I've already told you, it isn't going to be necessary. Delia is easily dealt with by manipulation, and she's terrified to speak up. She couldn't make a bold move if her life depended on it."

"Well, in this case, it does." Thinking of the gun resting not even a foot from his hand, Nicky's pulse quickened. Before Dante, he'd have shot Delia in the face without a second thought. Loose ends always had the potential to turn dangerous. But bodies created investigations, and investigations meant cops and Feds and Christ knew who else crawling up his a*s. Since they couldn't all be bought off, that was more of a risk than Nicky could afford right now.

Which meant Delia Sutton was one lucky bitch.

At least, she would be. As long as she continued to mind her own business.