Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
When Siena woke, only a dim filter of light had seeped into the room. Too early to be awake.
She’d turned in her sleep, but not away from Elio. He was spooned into her back, his thighs bent beneath hers, his arm a deadweight over her waist. His hand was tucked beneath her breast. His deep breaths of sleep danced through her hair.
Memories of the night flooded her mind, filling her eyes with hot tears. One fell before she could hold it back. Then another.
Clamping her mouth tightly together and holding herself as still as she could, she let the tears pour. She had no choice. She couldn’t stop them.
She’d always understood why her mother had protected Stefano.
In her mother’s mind, by protecting him, she was protecting the family as a whole.
Stefano was their most valuable henchman.
If a body needed burying, he was the man to bury it, no questions asked.
Even Siena knew his loyalty could not be bought by anyone else. He was an Esposito man, heart and soul.
But what he’d done to Siena that joyful afternoon had broken her soul. Her mother’s actions in the aftermath had broken the rest of her.
In less than two minutes, the safety of her happy world had collapsed. It wasn’t just the assault but the sudden knowledge that she was expendable. Until then, she’d always felt special; the much-wanted girl her parents had craved after three boys.
Her mother believed the incident with Stefano had taught Siena a valuable lesson on men, but what it had really taught her was a valuable lesson about her mother.
She couldn’t trust her to put her children first. Even the romantic view Siena had taken about her mother moving into her own bedroom as soon as Siena was born and forbidding her father from entering it had shifted.
Looking back, she couldn’t understand why she’d believed turning the marital intimacy tap off had been romantic.
Probably because she’d been looking at it with a child’s eyes and so didn’t understand it.
Her mother loved her children, but the big picture – protecting the family as a whole and the empire they’d built – came first. Sentimentality had no place in their world, and for their mother, that lack of sentimentality encompassed the family she was protecting, too.
It was a state of mind Siena had spent the last decade teaching herself to emulate.
It was a state of mind she’d clearly failed at.
If her mother had been in Siena’s shoes, there was no way she’d have married Elio to save Francesca.
She hadn’t batted an eyelash when Siena announced she’d changed her mind and would marry Elio after all, even though she knew Siena believed him to be a monster.
But then, she’d never raised a word of objection to Siena being married off to Niccolo Martinelli.
She’d wanted the society connections marriage to him would have given their family as much as Siena’s father had.
With the weight of Elio’s arm around her and the warmth of his naked body pressed against her, it was the sense of safety she was feeling that had set the tears flowing.
She hadn’t felt safe in over a decade.
Never trust me in life, Siena.
She wished she could. Lying there that early morning, cocooned in the safety of his arms, she wished Elio felt for her what Rico felt for his angel Marisa and what Tommaso felt for Gabriella.
Her brothers loved their wives fiercely and would protect them with their lives – Tommaso had protected Gabriella with his.
Both her brothers had put their wives before family.
When she and Elio climbed out of this bed, the closeness they found in the hours of darkness would be gone, and she’d have to deal with the man who made love to her by night being her enemy again.
* * *
The meeting between Elio, his distributors and the Espositos went as well as he’d expected. Mattia had taken charge in that presumptive way of his. Elio sat back and let it all unfold.
Elio watched all the Espositos closely. Mattia thought he was dealing with future business partners.
He had no idea he was revealing precious secrets that would put Elio in an even stronger position to wrestle the shadowed world from him.
He had no clue the business deal he thought he was shaking hands on would never happen. Not with Mattia calling the shots.
Tommaso, he noted, kept his arms folded and his muscles tensed throughout. Even when he shook hands at the agreed deal, his muscles remained flexed. Little trust there. Well done, Tommaso.
Siena also kept her arms folded, but much more loosely.
She was watching the distributors as closely as Elio was watching the Espositos…
except for when her gaze flicked to him.
Every time their eyes connected, a hint of colour would stain her cheeks before she turned her attention back to the matter in hand.
His wife, he knew, knew better than to trust him or the distributors.
He didn’t believe Siena trusted anyone. And who could blame her after what her mother had done?
He had to stop thinking about that. It had been ten days since she’d told him, but instead of time dimming it, it was playing on his mind with ever-accelerating frequency.
He was so close to the culmination of his vengeance that he was a fingertip away from touching it.
Allowing his wife to keep invading his thoughts the way she was at this most important time was dangerous.
He needed to keep his eye on the ball and his mind focused.
He couldn’t let himself replay the way she’d looked at him when he’d slid a finger inside her the first time.
The trust she’d put in him. It was the same trust she’d given when she’d let him pleasure her with his mouth for the first time.
She knew not to trust him outside of the bedroom, but that she did trust him in the bedroom meant more than it should.
More than he should let it. The bedroom was the bedroom.
In the bedroom, she was his wife, and he was her husband.
That was the only time and place he could allow himself to think of her in that way.
Gaining her trust in that one way though…
That she no longer turned away from him after sex but nestled into him…
He could scarcely understand how protective he felt towards her when she lay in his arms. He would lie in the dark and listen to her quiet breaths and feel such a twist in his heart.
But there was no room for his heart in this marriage.
The meeting over, they all shook hands with the distributors again, everyone smiling at the amount of money they were all going to make off the back of this deal.
Using Elio’s distributors would see the Espositos’ earnings on the agreed routes increase by ten per cent, even with Elio’s share factored in, so it was no wonder that Mattia slapped Elio’s back when he shook his hand, and almost cracked his face into a smile.
Clasping Mattia’s hand, Elio smiled broadly and casually said, “Anything planned for Saturday night?”
Mattia’s eyes narrowed a little in thought. “I don’t think so, but I’d need to check my schedule. Why?”
“This deal is going to make us all a lot of money. I think that calls for a celebration. Why don’t you come over for dinner?
” He looked at Tommaso, standing beside his brother.
“And you and Gabriella, too. It’s past time that we put the past to bed and look to the lucrative future we’re all going to enjoy. ”
Mattia looked at his sister. Siena looked startled but after a beat shrugged as if to say, why the hell not?
Mattia slapped Elio’s back again. “Let’s do it,” he decided.
“Great. Bring your mother.”
“And Rico?”
“The more the merrier.”
Outside, in the late-morning sunlight, Mattia and Tommaso disappeared into their cars.
Elio caught Stefano’s profile as he turned Mattia’s car around.
So the bastard was back from South America.
A sharp and sudden swell of loathing rose inside him that was every bit as powerful as the loathing he’d carried for the Espositos all these years.
He watched the bastard who’d assaulted Siena drive away with his heart thumping murderously and an acrid taste in his mouth that was unlike any taste he’d experienced before.
Who knew how long he’d have watched the car disappear into the distance if he hadn’t heard the quick, light steps of his wife approaching.
Swallowing the acridity, he faced her.
Stefano would be dealt with in due course, but for now, Elio needed to keep his eye on the ball he’d been playing for so many years he barely remembered a time before it.
Siena gazed up at him. She’d rammed her hands in the pockets of her black jeans. That faint stain of colour reappeared on her cheeks even as scepticism resounded in her voice. “A dinner party?”
He forced his lips to curve upwards at the corners. “Sure. We’re family now, princess. I think it’s time we acted like it, don’t you?”
“I suppose. But a dinner party?”
“It won’t be anything formal. Just a decent meal served with decent wine.”
Her shoulders loosened a little, her own lips curving. “My mother only does formal.”
“She can dress however she likes.”
“She always does,” she said drily.
How, he wondered, could Siena retain any affection for that bitch?
She held his stare a moment longer before reaching into her handbag and pulling out her shades. “I need to go. Family stuff to do.”
“Anything I should know about?” he asked casually.
Elio knew exactly where she was going and what she would be doing.
She shook her head, sadness in her eyes. “Just tying up the loose ends from all the restructuring.”
The restructuring and loose ends that had come about with her father’s death.
Siena had loved her father. Loved the man who’d slaughtered Elio’s family. The sadness in her eyes should not be inducing any kind of empathy in him for her over this, or guilt that the loose ends she thought she was going to be tidying up were nothing of the sort.