Almost immediately, I spot Kosta moving across the back of the space directly below me, followed by the man — Marco, I assume — who let me in tonight and brought me up to the office. Kosta heads straight toward a shadowy area away from the bar, the dance floor, and the tables and booths.

When he’s almost there, I see a trio of men standing near one wall. The man in the middle is short and slender. He’s dressed like Kosta — black suit, white shirt, no tie — but his clothes don’t look nearly as good on him. The men to either side of him are big and beefy. Security guards, I think.

Kosta’s moving fast, and the tension in his body makes my stomach tie itself in knots. There’s a control panel under the windows, set into the wall, and I scan the buttons and then start pushing them. I get lucky on my third try. Somewhere in the walls around me, a speaker crackles to life just as Kosta reaches the men.

Then I gasp, because he doesn’t even say anything. He grabs the center guy by the throat and slams him up against the wall. My hand goes to my mouth; the guards just watch.

“I warned you,” Kosta says, “not to bring your shit into my place.” His voice is low and deadly and it chills my blood. The man claws at his neck, and for a second I’m afraid Kosta isn’t going to let him go.

Then he does, and the guy sucks in a ragged breath and says, “Not here for that. Need to talk to you.”

“We have nothing to talk about.” Kosta moves a step closer, and the guy shrinks back against the wall. “I see you here again, I will end you. Capisce?”

I can’t breathe. I’m frozen, staring in horror at the tableau unfolding before me. The man holds up his hands and says, “You don’t understand. My man is tired of waiting. You don’t deal with him, he’ll deal with you.”

He’s barely finished speaking when he doubles over from Kosta’s fist in his stomach. Pulling the guy’s head up and back by his hair, the man I just screwed on his desk says, “Don’t you ever threaten me, you moronic sack of pus. Tell your man he tries to start a war with me, it’ll be the last thing he does.”

Stepping back, he gestures to the two security guards. “Get him out of here.” The men grab the guy by either arm and half-walk, half-drag him toward the rear exit, where I came in.

Marco has been standing by all this time. “Who the fuck let him in here?” Kosta asks.

The man shakes his head. “Benny first spotted him near the front, is all I know.”

Kosta lets out a stream of fluent Italian that I’m certain is profanity, and then his eyes come straight to the window where I’m watching him.

I gasp again. Even though I know he can’t see me, it feels like he can. For a long moment he stares up at me, and then he turns and makes his way through the club, heading for the front.

My freeze ends abruptly. Unstuck, I hurry to the door and out to the stairs, going down them as fast as I can in my heels, which is not very fast. At the bottom, I dart into the shadows, my heart beating like a scared rabbit’s.

I see you here again, I will end you. Capisce?

Tell your man he tries to start a war with me, it’ll be the last thing he does.

Oh god. Dear god.

My beautiful man is a mobster.

I have to get out of here.

Just as I start to move out of the shadows, Kosta comes back. I freeze as he goes straight to the stairs and jogs up them two at a time. Hurrying back to me.

In a panic, I race down the dimly-lit hallway to the back entrance and shove through the door, rushing forward as I turn toward the mouth of the alley. Just beyond the garbage bin, I trip on something and go down hard.

It knocks the wind out of me, and it’s a few seconds before I can roll onto my back. The pain in my palms and elbows and knees tells me I’ve skinned them all. Probably ruined my dress, too.

Wincing, I manage to sit up. I stagger to my feet just as the back door opens. Kosta says, “Erin. What are you doing?”

I start to turn away, then freeze. Next to the garbage bin, in the shadows beyond the light over the door, I can just make out what looks like a shoe. A shoe on a foot, that’s attached to a leg.

The smell hits me then: motor oil, mixed with a stench that makes the bile rise in my throat, and layered over all that, the warm scent of copper.

Kosta starts toward me. An overwhelming sense of danger swamps me, and I rush toward him, pushing him back toward the door. “Inside!” I yell when he tries to get around me. “Inside!”

“Blondie, what the fuck?” But he lets me back him up into the club, where he grabs me by the arms. “What were you doing out there?”

“Call the police,” I tell him. His head snaps back. “There’s a body out there.”

Kosta swears and moves toward the door again. When I block it, he simply picks me up and sets me aside. “No!” I shriek, grabbing the back of his jacket, then getting a hand in the waistband of his pants. “You can’t go out there!”

I can’t hold him, but I’ve delayed him just enough because now Marco’s here, followed by the security guards. “Boss,” he says quietly. “Do me a favor. See to your woman, and let us check it out.”

The three men are all blocking the door now. Kosta looks from them to me; his jaw tightens, but he puts an arm around me and pulls me against his side. “Yeah, all right. Get some lights from the utility room. If there’s a crime scene, we don’t want to fuck it up.”

He leads me away, and I let him, because I know what just happened. The deepest, most primal part of me detected a potential threat to my man, and I went gonzo trying to protect him.

Kosta may be a criminal. He may even be a mobster. But my heart doesn’t care.

He’s already mine.