Chapter Two #2
My head whips to Matteo, who until now has been quietly watching the confrontation.
There is accusation in my eyes, and I watch him flinch when he sees it.
No one told me about Matteo being the executor of the funds or my not being able to access them for three more years.
I can’t wait three more years. They love me, I know that, but their love is suffocating in the way they show it.
I need to leave. I have to. God knows I will sell everything I own if it means I can get away.
“Gabby—”
“You never told me,” I say, betrayal heavy in my voice. Of all my brothers, I am closest to Matteo. To think he’d keep something so important from me. Okay, maybe I should be thankful that he’s the executor of my trust and not my father.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say with a shake of my head. “I can access the trust for the trip, right?”
“No.”
“What?”
“Gabby…” I read the conflict in his eyes as he slowly lowers his glass of wine to the table. “I can’t in good conscience let you travel to Las Vegas alone.”
“It’s my choice,” I say, steeling my expression. “And it’s my money. Left to me. By my mother!”
“Look, I understand that you want to go to this exhibition, but you should have told us so we could have made plans in advance. Our business may be based in New York, but we have enemies everywhere. What do you think will happen when someone recognizes you in Las Vegas?”
I can’t hear a word he’s saying. Not with the buzzing in my head and definitely not with the raging anger threatening to close my throat.
“You’ll need an escort.” His tone is final.
Except no one is available. I knew they all had plans that weekend, and that’s why I was excited to leave then, knowing no one would be free to offer to accompany me. With my brothers all busy and my father traveling overseas with Estella, there’s no one.
From the corner of my eye, I spy Sof tug Matteo’s arm and whisper in his ear, but her words carry to me. Her proposal to take a bodyguard with me doesn’t seem to please Matteo much, if the firm set of his jaw is anything to go by, but before he can voice his opinion, someone else speaks up.
“I’ll take her.”
Every pair of eyes in the room turns to the man seated on Matteo’s left, who has been silently watching us argue all evening.
“You will?” Matteo voices my disbelief. As Matteo’s consigliere, Nico is a busy man, and it makes no sense for him to offer to take me to Vegas.
“I’m sure I can take a weekend off and accompany Gabriella to her exhibition as her bodyguard, if it’s that important to her.”
A hush falls over the room, and I follow Matteo’s glance toward my father, who nods. “Well then, I don’t see why not,” he finally says, turning to me. “What do you think, Gabby?”
Oh, so now they care what I think? I can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of me but it’s empty of any mirth.
My opinion in this home has never mattered—always brushed aside under the guise of “It’s for your own good”—because, well, I am just a sheltered little girl with no self-preservation.
How else would I know what was good for me without my big, strong don of a brother or the all-powerful Leonardo Rossi to tell me.
This was my one chance to escape Nico and start a life away from my overbearing family, and they took that from me.
Some trace of what I’m thinking must show on my face because Matteo rushes to assure me. “I know you and Nico have your moments, and he likes to tease you, but I promise he’ll be on his best behavior,” he says.
I don’t respond. I don’t have words and those I do have would only further damage our relationship. So I push back my chair and, without a word, walk out of the dining room. I don’t respond to the calls of my name or the words that follow my exit.
Somehow, I make it to my bedroom without breaking down or screaming the roof off this house.
I fall face-first on my bed and scream into the pillow until my throat is raw, before flopping onto my back and staring up at the ceiling.
Aside from Silvia, everyone else believes that Nico and I can’t stand each other—that we simply think of each other as siblings.
Sure, Nico is always teasing me, and we bicker constantly, but that never stopped me from falling for the man.
I snap at him to keep anyone—especially him—from learning the truth.
Maybe if I told them that and confessed my feelings to all of them, then it would make things awkward enough for them to send me off alone.
That would never work.
Christ, they’re probably planning on holding on to me until I’m thirty and married to someone who will never let me make my own decisions because “it’s for my own good.
” I calculate the balance of my savings account before letting out a groan when I realize it’s not enough to cover a weekend trip to Las Vegas, let alone finance a new life out there.
A knock on my door pulls me from my thoughts, and I assume it’s Silvia, so I tell her to come in.
I turn to the door, expecting to see her, but the person who steps into my room is the last person I need to see right now.
My body immediately goes on alert, heat rising in my cheeks as I watch Nico slowly close the door behind him—locking us both in my bedroom.
My bedroom. A room with a bed in it, and it just so happens to be in the furthest corner of the house. Far enough that no one would hear us if we… I clear my throat and sit up, brushing my hair from my face just so I have something to do with my hands. “W-what are you doing here?”
“I never got the chance to congratulate you on your senior project and winning the contest.”
“Not much good that winning will do me now, but thanks.”
I wait for him to leave, but he doesn’t. He stays with his back against the door, watching me through those mesmerizing green eyes that always leave me aching and wanting.
“You’re angry,” he finally says after a long beat of silence. “Will my promise to stay out of your way in Vegas make things better? I promise you’ll barely notice I’m there.”
I scoff at that. Even in a crowded room, I’m always hyperaware of where Nico is, and I doubt Vegas is going to change anything.
“Gabby.”
“Just leave me alone, Nico.”
“Why do you want to go to Vegas alone so badly?” he asks, pushing away from the door and approaching me. I suck in a sharp breath when he sits on my bed, close enough that our hips nearly touch. “Does it have anything to do with the paintings? Are you planning to meet up with him in Vegas?”
It takes a moment for my overwhelmed brain to make sense of what he’s talking about, and when I realize that he’s referring to the final painting from my senior project where I fly into the arms of a man, I find myself strangely impressed that he caught that.
Well…at least part of it. How could he look at those paintings and not see my affection for him in every stroke, and understand that the last painting was wishful thinking?
That the Gabriella in the painting was saying goodbye to the dream of being with Nico and imagining a happily ever after with someone else instead?
Even if the dream is bleak in reality, I can dream in my own art, can’t I?
Christ, I want him.
Even now, filled with resentment for not being the woman in Nico’s heart, I want him still. I can’t help it.
“Please leave,” I whisper, hoping he has the sense to walk away. “I want to be alone.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“Because it’s none of your business,” I snap.
I start to turn away when he takes my chin between his fingers and turns my face back to his.
Heat licks through my body when he leans close—so close I can see the green of his eyes, feel his breath against my face.
It’s intimate, and it’s messing with my head. “Nico.”
“If you’re going to Vegas to meet up with someone, I need to know so I can run a background check on them. I have to make sure it’s safe to meet them.”
I try to pull my chin from his hand, but his hold is firm even as rage blooms fresh in me. How dare he? How dare he tease me with something he cannot give me? Asshole.
“Who I date is none of your business! Contrary to what all of you think, I am not a child who needs permission to live my life. I can go where I want and date whoever I like without—”
Nico makes a low, frustrated sound in his throat seconds before he leans forward and crashes his lips to mine. For a moment—two heartbeats—I’m taken aback, and my mind is slow to process what’s happening.
Nico is…kissing me?
He’s kissing me.
Oh. My. God.
A broken moan, desperate and needy, tears out of my throat when I feel long, calloused fingers slide to my nape and hold me still as Nico’s mouth moves over mine. My fingers curl uselessly in my lap even as my brain is void of any thoughts.
He’s kissing me.
The man I have loved long before I understood what the word meant is giving me my first kiss, and I should…
I have no idea what the hell I should be doing, but when the hand on my nape slides into my hair and gently tugs, I realize that it doesn’t matter.
Nico makes a deep guttural sound as he deepens the kiss, his tongue pushing into my mouth and making me gasp.
I taste wine on his lips, on his tongue and his breath against mine drives me wild.
The sounds he makes only fuel the heat flooding my belly and turning my nipples hard against my bra.
A whimper slips out as I try to kiss him back, my lips awkward and eager.
All reservations fall away as I lean into the one thing I’ve wanted for so long.
Nerves give way to desperation, and inexperience is buried by need as I fully submit to the kiss.
Another broken moan slips out when his tongue finds mine, sucking at it with a hunger that burns through my skin and leaves me flushed and sensitive.
I’ve wanted his lips on mine forever, waiting to feel his breath mingle with mine.
The deep, all-male sounds he’s making only stoke my hunger for him.
I love you.
Christ, how long have I wanted to say those words?
To hear him say them back to me. To feel them in a kiss so hot it makes me ache deep and low.
To share this moment with him. I’m trembling when he pulls me onto his lap, gasping when I feel the hard press of his cock against my bottom.
His hand circles my waist and pulls me closer as the other tightens in my hair and claims my mouth like I hold the air he needs to breathe.
And it’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of. More.
“Nico,” I gasp, rolling my hips and rubbing myself against his erection, the friction sending little sparks of heat up my spine.
Except his name on my lips must snap something in him because he freezes a moment before drawing his hands away and pulling back.
Where I expect to find desire on his face, I find something harder to read—conflict, a jaw clenched tight.
“Nico?”
Slowly, he pulls away and gets up from the bed.
Without a single word or another glance at me, he leaves.
With my lips still tingling from the kiss, I stare at the door long after he’s gone, confused by what just happened.
I’m not entirely convinced that I didn’t imagine the whole thing, and if my body wasn’t still aching for him, I might believe I had.
There’s no way Nico would actually kiss me, right? Not after all he’s done to drill his new role in my life into me. My stepbrother. Forbidden to me.
Now that we’re family, it’s only right that I protect my little sister, don’t you think?
I reach up and touch my lips, already dreading the Vegas trip. Maybe I’ll wake up, and all this will be a bad dream, something I can shake off. Except, as I lie back in bed, all I can do is replay the kiss over and over again until each second of it is burned in my brain.
Vegas is going to be a disaster.