“I’m not hungry,” I say.
“Maria told me you skipped dinner.” I hear the note of disapproval in his voice. “And lunch.”
Food didn’t seem like something I could digest. It’s like getting married has changed my DNA, turned me into some other creature. I still feel like that, but Giovanni stands behind a chair, waiting for me to sit. The alternative to this is sex, and even though I’ve decided to do it, I can’t bring myself to hurry it along.
I sit, the wood cool against my butt. My almost naked butt.
Giovanni sits opposite me, looking completely unconcerned by the fact that he’s dressed while I’m…not. Of course I did this to myself. I thought wearing the lingerie would smooth along the process. He does seem appreciative of the view, watching me with heavy-lidded gratification; we seem to be moving at a glacial pace.
“Champagne?” he asks.
“Please.” Alcohol sounds amazing. In fact if there were women walking around with neon-green test-tube shots, I’d grab three.
He pours three fingers in a slender flute.
I swallow the entire amount before choking on the fiery bubbles. “Oops,” I cough.
With a quirk of his lips, he refills my glass, then fills his. “Tell me about school.”
I eye the flute of champagne like it’s my enemy. I want the numbness that comes with being drunk, but I’m not sure I can survive another round. Especially on an empty stomach. So I grab an olive and nibble on the salty flesh. “I thought you’d have read everything about it, considering you were following me.”
He doesn’t look repentant. “I know your course load and your GPA. I want to know what you think about it. What you loved. What you hated. What you dreamed about.”
Is this a seduction? I want to tell him it isn’t necessary. I want to tell him that stealing my body doesn’t give him the right to my soul. Instead I find myself telling him the truth. “I loved all of it. Sculpture and sketching, composition and even calligraphy. What I didn’t love was the campus politics, trying to fit in when everyone has an agenda.”
“There was one person you’d usually share studio time with.”
After I finish off the olive, I realize I’m actually pretty hungry. I pick some of everything for my plate. The bread is warm and fragrant, the chocolate strawberries cold and hard. “Amy. I love her. She’s a great artist, even if she sometimes doesn’t think so. It’s just that she has lots of interests. The art thing is more about messing with her parents.”
“They don’t approve.”
“Nah, they wanted her to do engineering or be a doctor or something. And sometimes I think she would have enjoyed that. I’m not like that. Art is my passion. Anything else would be a struggle. It would feel like work, instead of…”
“Instead of?”
“Instead of being home,” I say softly.
His expression darkens, and I know he thinks I’m missing Tanglewood. That’s kind of how it sounded, but it isn’t what I meant. I do miss my sister and my friends back there. But art is not something that belongs to a certain place. It’s not a church. It’s inside me. Whether I’m sketching on a drawing pad or planning a sculpture for the conservatory, I can do that here.
“What about you?” I ask, turning the tables. “What do you love about the life? What do you hate?”
His stare is brooding. Long fingers drum on the table gently. Then he takes a swig of champagne—without coughing, the show-off. “I hate everything about it. The violence, the money. The way it brings out the worst in people.”
I swallow, hearing the sincerity of his words. “Then why do it?”
“I get to have you,” he says, his voice rough.
“You could have already had me. If you had shown up at my door as yourself, the boy I loved, I would have been with you in a heartbeat. I’m not why you do this. I’m just the pawn you’re using to help you do it.”
I hadn’t meant to lay it all out there, but now that the words are out, I don’t regret them.
“You’re right.”
“Then why, Gio?”
“They have her. My mother.”
Shock slides through my body. “What are you talking about? Who has her?”
He stands and holds out his hand. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, but not like this. Not across a table.”
Only because he offers me the truth do I take his hand. He leads me to the bed. His movements are cordial, almost stiff, until he sits down. Then he draws me onto his lap, crushing me with his strong hold. I can hardly breathe, but I don’t fight him—and not because it’s practical. Because I sense that he needs this, needs me, and I can’t deny him.
“They took me because they thought I might have information about where you and Honor had gone.”
I don’t mean to flinch, but I do. “Gio—”
“No,” he says roughly. “I don’t blame you. That was how it started. And then, Javier Markam is a sadistic motherfucker. I knew he was going to kill me, but he wanted to drag it out.”
I swallow hard because I’d felt firsthand the cruelty of that man. He pinned me down at my sister’s engagement party. Giovanni was the one to save me that night, in more ways than one.
“I was gone for long enough that everyone assumed I’d been killed. The family would have swept me under the rug, but my mother insisted that they have a proper funeral.” He laughs, raw and humorless. “There’s still a headstone for me in the cemetery.”
“Oh, Gio.”
“That’s why you saw an obituary. No cause of death was listed because they hadn’t found my body. They held me in the basement, doing things that were…let’s just say I was looking forward to dying.”
I wrap my arms around him, pressing my face into his neck. I don’t know whether I’m offering comfort or receiving it, but his arms tighten around me.
“Then your father was killed. There was a power struggle, but in the interim, your father’s consigliere had control of the mansion. He found me in the basement. I was so weak at that point I think he expected me to die. Maybe putting a bullet in me would have been the greater mercy, but he brought me upstairs, tossed me in a bedroom, and waited to see what would happen.”
“You didn’t die,” I whisper.
I feel him shake his head. “I didn’t die, and what’s more, I had heard Markam on a hundred different phone calls over those few months. He didn’t guard what he was saying around me because he assumed it wouldn’t matter. I sold the information to the family in exchange for reinstatement.”
I pull back, not understanding. “But I thought Markam worked with the family. That’s why they let him use the basement.”
Giovanni nods. “They had a partnership, but the family never trusted Markam completely. And he never trusted them back. There were secrets on both sides.”
“Because what matters most is blood,” I say, my stomach clenching with the familiar refrain.
“That’s right. The family in New York stepped in when everything went to hell. Officially Bartolo Vicente became the head of the Vegas operation, but Romero ran operations.”
“And you?”
“I was the punk kid with leftover bruises and too much information to kill. I also had a pretty big chip on my shoulder after coming out of the basement. Bartolo took a liking to me, let me sit in on some big meetings. Between my information on Markam and the meetings with Bartolo, it got to where I knew more than Romero.”
Now I understand why Romero’s an enemy.
“When Bartolo got killed during negotiations with the Albanians, the
Rudaj,
I was the only one who knew the intricacies at play. They let me stand in temporarily.”
“And how do I figure in?”
“You’re going to make this permanent. With my status and your family tree, they won’t dare throw me out of the mansion. As long as I’m here, I’m in the best position to find my mother.”
“Who took her?” I remember the cruelty. “Markam.”
“He didn’t die with your father, but he was very pissed when I sold his secrets. He retaliated by taking my mother. And he’s got a large network of places to hide women against their will.”
My breath catches. “That’s why you’re taking down the brothels.”
“They’re disgusting. A stain on the family. I would always have taken them down if I had the chance, but doing it so quickly has raised some eyebrows. And I’ve already been through the ones owned by the Vegas operation. I need to expand outside my territory. That’s why I need to solidify my position quickly. That’s why I need you.”
W
e stay like
that for a long time, me sitting in his lap, my arms wrapped around his neck. I don’t want to let go of this Giovanni who abhors violence but protects his family at any cost—the Giovanni I once loved. Through the thin fabric of his shirt I feel the crisscross of his scars. I can’t help but stroke him in part sympathy, part wonder, reading the raised skin like braille.
There’s a kind of intimacy in telling the truth, a seduction with every layer and lie fallen away. It leaves me aware of his body in a deeper way, the warmth of his skin at his neck, the hard muscles of his shoulders. It also leaves me aware of the hard ridge beneath my hips.
My heartbeat seems to thrum through every part of my body, through my fingertips and between my thighs. Meanwhile my body stills, even the natural motion of breathing held in restraint.
“I won’t hurt you,” he murmurs against the wild jumble of my hair.
“You might.” I’m not only thinking about his body, the hard planes of him, the size with which he presses against the soft flesh of my ass. I’m thinking about the wedding vows he made to me. I’m thinking about what will happen when my purpose here is over.
“There are things I want to do to you, bella. Things I dreamed about when you were too young for anything at all. And then you hide under the blankets, and I realize you’re still too young.”
I pull back then and meet his dark chocolate eyes. “I’m a grown woman.”
His gaze wanders over my bare shoulders, my breasts clad in satin. The place between my legs cupped with a strap of lace. “Your body, yes.” He brushes a thumb over my temple, smoothing my hair. “Not up here. You hold yourself like you’re bracing to be hit. I know your father was a cold son of a bitch, but I didn’t think he—”
“I don’t want to talk about my father.” He’s the last thing I want to talk about while Giovanni is holding me this way. The air is too inviting after his earlier confessions, teasing out my truths. When I was younger, I kept those secrets to protect the people I loved. Now I keep them to protect myself.
But I don’t need protection from sex. And I don’t really want it. I held myself back from closeness with Shane, with other boys, saving myself for a man who didn’t exist. Now he’s here, in my arms.
“Show me,” I whisper. “Show me what you dreamed of doing.”
He holds me, silent and still. I can only wait for his decision, body strumming with a lifetime of desire.
When he shifts my feet to the floor, my heart plummets. He’s rejecting me.
Except he keeps me in the V of his legs, standing before him, held captive by a single hand linked to me. His eyes are trained to mine while his other hand works the notch of his belt. My eyes widen because I’m about to see his naked body for the first time.
Except he doesn’t undress. Instead he turns me gently to face the wall, catching both my wrists behind me. Supple leather wraps around my wrists and cinches tight enough to hold me.
“Gio?”
“Bella,” he says, a wealth of meaning encapsulated in a single word. The love he once felt for me, the conflicted desire he feels now. The torture did change him, harden him, but I’m beginning to fall for the man he is now.
He gives a little tug on the leather at my wrists as if to see if it will hold. My body turns toward him, and he holds me there, sideways. I realize in those silent, breathless moments that there is no position more on display than that of my side, where I can’t look at him, where I can’t look away. My only purpose is an object for him to appraise, with his gaze and the featherlight brush of his fingers. He touches places that suddenly feel sexual—the tender skin behind my arm, the faint hollow beneath my breasts, the tops of my thighs.
His voice is uneven. “All these years I’ve thought about how you would look all grown up. But I couldn’t have…there’s no way I could have imagined this.”
My throat constricts. I want so badly to believe him, but there’s a voice in my head I’ve never been able to forget.
You look nothing like your sister. Your breasts are huge, like balloons. You look older. Maybe my whore of a wife lied about your age too.
The only reason he wants me now is for my family tree, and even that is suspect. Maybe there is some fondness in him from how he loved me before, as children. I can’t believe that he really wants this body. Shane and his friends wanted it, but they were horny college boys. They wanted anyone. For all that he doesn’t want this role, Giovanni wears the mantle of powerful capo even better than my father. He must have been with a hundred different women, sophisticated and beautiful.
“I’m not… I can’t…” I swallow hard. “I know I’m not as pretty as other women. You don’t have to lie to me.”
He turns me to face him, searching my face with a mixture of shock and fury. “Men have died for calling me a liar, bella.”
I raise my chin, knowing that in this, at least, I am safe. “I don’t need a fake seduction.”
“Fake,” he says softly. “Lies. You don’t believe that I want you. Even though my body proves it.”
He means his erection, but I know how easy those are to be found. I felt them on my father, who had no right feeling that way about me. I press my lips together, forcing the truth back.
Giovanni moves from the bed, and I flinch. He lowers to his knees in front of me, holding my hips in both hands. Even with my hands tied behind me, I feel like a goddess standing in front of him. The way he looks at me, I feel worshipped.
“I have dreamed about you every night,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Now that you’re here, it almost hurts to look at you. You’re so bright and beautiful and good.”
My breasts rise and fall between us. “You mean it,” I say, with some wonder.
“I would have gone to my grave never knowing a woman if I hadn’t taken you.”