Chapter 15 Trilby
Trilby
It isn’t fear that makes me look away as I hold out my hand. It isn’t trust either. It’s pure, unadulterated confusion.
I’m pulsing beneath the black silk that covers my body.
I just witnessed a man being murdered, shot at point-blank range and dropped to the ground three feet from where I sat.
I watched, frozen and unfeeling, as my fiancé flew out of the car in pursuit of the attacker, without so much as a backward glance.
Then I allowed the shock and disorientation to drag me under even as Cristiano yanked me out of the car by my ankles and clutched me to his beating heart.
This whole day has brought back memories I’ve tried so hard to bury. First, the church where I said goodbye to Mama when I was just fifteen. Second, the shooting that took me right back to the day I sat in the back seat of my mother’s car with her blood raining over me.
But now, in the quiet of the underground parking lot, under the dark shadow of the man who’s driven me to safety—the man whose eyes I can’t get out of my head—I’m a weak, boneless mess.
I’m itching and aching, in need of something.
And a terrifying voice in the back of my head is convinced Cristiano is the only person who can give it to me.
Thick black elevator doors slide apart. Cristiano pulls me inside and presses a series of buttons. I watch the doors close with a sense of detachment. In seconds they’re opening again with a silence that reeks of money.
His hand warms my back, coaxing me into a bright, airy space.
My ability to describe my new surroundings is impeded by the fact I’ve never seen anything like it.
This place has no windows, just clear glass walls that seem to stretch around the entire outer edge.
The view—not just of lower Manhattan but beyond it, to Staten Island and even as far as the Atlantic—tells me we’re almost as high as the clouds.
And the furnishings, which initially appear to be minimally chic, are anything but.
Cristiano walks across the floor delivering voice commands to an unknown entity, creating mood lighting, darkened glass, and soft music. When he circles back and comes to a sudden standstill, his brows draw together as if he’s only just realized I’m standing in his apartment.
“Why the mood lighting?” I ask. “It’s mid-afternoon.”
He slowly pushes his hands into his pockets and watches me carefully. “You should try to relax.”
I look around some more. There may as well be bars on the windows for all the freedom I now have. It’s for this reason I can’t keep the irritation out of my voice. “For whose benefit?”
He doesn’t skip a beat. “Yours, of course.” He nods toward a seating area. It’s probably a living room, but it looks too slick and unlived-in for me to comfortably call it that. “Go sit down.”
When I don’t budge, his jaw tics, and he turns to walk into a sleek, modern open-plan kitchen.
I walk up behind him, quietly seething. After witnessing a man being murdered just inches away from me, less than an hour after I sat outside the church of memories I don’t wish to revisit, I feel vengeful. And I’m not about to let anyone tell me what to do.
Fury is suddenly so near to my pores it burns.
I stand close enough to him that I can smell the sweat rising from his back. I fight the urge to place my palms over his thick muscles and feel the damp exertion beneath his shirt. Lust collides with hatred, and for some inexplicable reason, I want to hurt him.
His voice is soft as he turns his head a fraction. “Do as you’re told, Castellano. Go sit down.”
Mine is silky and spiteful as I reply. “Or else?”
His pause drags, and his breaths become heavy. “Don’t test me.”
His tone is thick with warning, but I can’t stop myself. I want to push him. I want to see how hard I can press his buttons before he lashes out at me.
And God, I need him to.
I need a reason to hate him.
It’s suddenly crystal clear. The only way I can get through this marriage to Savero and have Cristiano in my life is if he gives me a reason to despise him with all my heart—every inch of it.
I speak slowly and with as much venom as I can muster. “Don’t tell me what to do. I am not yours to order around.”
My heartbeat thumps in my ears as I feel his temperature rise. The heat between his spine and my chest feels oppressive.
I don’t even get a chance to take a breath. In the blink of an eye, I’m spun around and pressed up against a counter, my spine bent backward, with an enormous hand around my throat.
My windpipe is unrestricted, but the threat of its closure is darkly present. My eyes stretch wide, absorbing the stark white ceiling, until his face moves into my view.
He growls through clenched teeth. “What part of ‘don’t test me’ do you not understand?”
The whites of his eyes gleam at me, and a knot twists deep in my gut. It feels like satisfaction.
“And what part of ‘don’t tell me what to do’ do you not understand?” I can only squeeze out a whisper.
A whisper and a smile.
Confusion clouds his face, along with something else. Something darker than he’s let me see before.
Then I’m disoriented beyond measure.
A giant fist slams down on the kitchen surface, and my jaw is freed. I stagger backward and spin around to see Cristiano facing the counter.
His arms are braced, his knuckles white from where he’s gripping the edges. I only notice the way his back rises and falls as he gasps for air because the movement mirrors my own. I can’t seem to catch my breath.
“What just happened?” I whisper.
He squeezes his eyes closed and then curls both his hands into fists on the countertop. “I nearly kissed you,” he says slowly. “That’s what just happened.”
My gut implodes.
The few kisses I experienced as a young adult left me wondering what the fuss was all about, but right now, my lips are tingling with the need to press against his. It’s an urge so raw, so brazen, and so foreign to me, but I need it like oxygen.
My entire pelvic area has turned to jelly, while he seems more solid and defiant than ever. Myriad responses flash through my mind, but none of them feel appropriate. There really is no appropriate way to say “I wish you had.” At least not when it’s being said to the brother of one’s fiancé.
So instead I do whatever any self-disrespecting Cosa Nostra fiancée would do: I take full responsibility and apologize.
“I-I’m sorry.”
He turns his head a fraction but keeps his eyes closed. “Don’t you dare apologize for a man’s behavior.”
I go to open my mouth, but his lids ping open, spearing me to the spot.
“I nearly kissed you,” he repeats. “You did nothing wrong.”
Despite his assertion, I can hear Papa and Allegra’s words ringing in my ears, chastising me for drawing his eyes, riling his temper, and using my feminine wiles to lead him astray.
Everything stills—even my beating heart.
“What if I wanted you to?”
I lower my gaze to the floor, afraid to look at him. The burn of his stare mellows into a warm caress on the side of my face.
“You can’t say things like that to me, Castellano.” His voice is soft, but it carries a dark warning.
I inhale a shallow breath. “But it’s true. I wanted you to kiss me.”
A glance through the corner of my lowered lids makes my breath hitch. He’s released his fists from the counter and is now stretching and flexing his fingers while his eyes scan me intensely.
He takes a slow step toward me, then another one, until his chest is almost brushing my nipples. My spine cries out to arch a little so I can press my breasts into him, but the look on his face is agonized, as though he’s debating the merits of ending me and putting himself out of his misery.
He brings a rough palm up to my face and lets it rest there gently. “Listen to me,” he says, his voice lucid and low. “There’s no room in this life for wanting something you can’t have.”
My breath stutters inside my chest as his deep burgundy eyes make my skin burn.
I part my lips to speak, but his forefinger moves across them and presses down gently.
His voice dips with the stroke of defeat. “Sometimes the best memories are the ones we can’t make.”
He drops his hand from my face and walks out of the kitchen toward the expansive windows. The sky outside is darkening with thunderclouds. With the oppressive humidity we’ve been having, we’re due a storm.
I follow at what I think is a safe distance, my head spinning with thinly veiled warnings and the burn that comes from realizing the chemistry I thought was all in my head is actually real, and he feels it too.
In the heat of this moment I don’t know what’s worse: wanting this man in some raw, carnal way, believing he’s blissfully ignorant of it; or knowing the feeling is mutual but that an entire underworld stands in the way of it ever being more than an inconsequential feeling.
“You will stay here tonight,” he says without looking around. “I don’t know when Savero will be finished.”
I know what that means. Savero will be pursuing every single person who might be somehow connected to the man who shot his driver at point-blank range, and that’s a task impossible to put a timeframe on. But Cristiano’s warning still echoes in my ears.
“Maybe it would be better if I went home.”
He turns and looks at me, almost weary. “Even your father, someone who’s lived a life on the edges of this world, hasn’t seen the kind of threat we Di Santos have been under for as long as we’ve been alive.
A lot of people want us dead and will keep trying to kill us—and those closest to us—until they get what they want.
You’re at risk now, Castellano, and your father can’t protect you anymore. ”
He lets the weight of his words settle on my shoulders, then he jerks his head toward the back of the room. “You are exhausted, and I have a spare room you can sleep in.”
I am exhausted. I’ve seen enough in one day to last me a lifetime.
“Is it okay if I use the bathroom?”