Chapter 15 #2
She didn’t flinch or drop her stare. “The only way I would ever be your enemy is if you take Gino out against my wishes. I might be the youngest member of this family, but I still belong to it, and I would never do anything that brings harm to it. I have talents. Use them or don’t, but know that I’m not staying here. ”
Now she turned to her parents. They loved her. She knew that. And she loved them. But this was her life, and she couldn’t keep living it for them.
“If I have to hitchhike my way to a city and live off the streets, then I’ll do it,” she told them. “I want a life, a real life, and I will create one with or without your help and with or without your blessing.”
It was Siena who broke the silence that followed. Speaking slowly, her eyes narrowed, she said, “I need an assistant.”
Mattia’s glare lasered to his sister.
Siena shrugged. “My workload is enormous. I need to bring someone in that I trust to help me manage it.”
“She has developed feelings for our enemy. We can’t trust her.”
“How can you say that when she spent a week living as a hostage for the reason that she shares our blood? That bitch Gabriella was actively working to take us down, and now she’s our sister-in-law.
” Gabriella was Tommaso’s wife. “Francesca is one of our own and wants only to work with us. Sure, she’s asking for mercy, but maybe we should be reconsidering our plans for Vicario – we both know that if his clubs close or someone else takes them over, running our world will be made harder. ”
“You want me to let him win?”
“I want us to win. He’s a powerful ally, you cannot deny that, and you cannot deny our little cousin here has balls. I’m saying let’s give them both a chance.”
“Letting him live shows weakness.”
“No, letting him live shows strength. It shows that you think with your head.” Siena’s whole demeanour suddenly changed. “But, of course, you are the head of our family, so it is for you to decide.”
He nodded slowly. After a long while, said, “Okay. Francesca can work for you on a trial basis. As for Vicario…” He turned his cold stare to Francesca. “I will decide his fate at a later point.”
Francesca’s heart had been racing from the moment she woke. Today, she would see Gino.
It had been three weeks and four days since she’d been released as his hostage.
The nightmares of him being shot dead had stopped; her dreams now a different form of torture.
They were always of Gino and the blonde woman from his club who’d kissed him so proprietarily.
Not even moving in with Siena and starting work as her assistant had worked as a cure for that dream.
Not even being plunged into a new world where she was often on the go for sixteen hours at a time had cured her longing for him.
And today she would have to face him again.
“You’re up early.”
So lost in her thoughts had she been that she hadn’t heard Siena slip into the kitchen. Wrapped in a silk robe, her blonde hair tousled from sleep, Francesca didn’t think her cousin could ever look anything but chic and beautiful.
“So are you,” she responded with a sad smile.
Siena’s marriage to Elio Ranieri was only days away.
Guilt over her cousin making a marriage with the man Francesca had refused weighed on her.
That she’d volunteered herself for Francesca’s sake as well as for the sake of peace only added to the guilt.
It was a guilt Siena had no time for, reminding her just two nights ago that it should have been her in the first place.
Siena shrugged and poured herself a coffee before fixing her beautiful blue eyes on her. “Nervous about seeing him again?”
“A little,” she admitted. While she would never tell what had happened between herself and Gino during her week in captivity, she had the feeling Siena had guessed. “But I’ll be okay.”
“Of course you will. You’re a tough cookie.” Her eyes narrowed as she inspected Francesca’s face critically. “Although I think I’m going to have to do your makeup today. We don’t want him thinking you have dark circles under your eyes because you miss him so much you can’t sleep, do we?”
The port was busy. Being both a cargo and a passenger hub, the port was always busy, but that particular morning, it seemed to Gino that every cargo ship and cruise liner in Europe had filled the bay.
Passing the commercial area, his driver navigated them to the container terminal where they were meeting the wheat importer, while Gino dictated a quick message to his club manager in London.
This was his first ‘job’ with the Espositos, and he needed his mind clear for it.
What they were importing within the wheat should, if all went to plan, prove that his usefulness to the Espositos went far beyond introductions and facilitating deals.
Car parked, Gino and his men headed towards the group waiting for them.
When they were ten meters away, his feet came to a dead stop. He took in the waiting group, suddenly certain the brilliance of the sun was performing hallucinatory tricks on him.
“Boss?”
He blinked and jerked himself back to the present; forced his legs to get moving again.
His heart was thumping hard as he made the usual handshakes with the Esposito siblings.
“You don’t need me to introduce you to my new assistant, do you?” Siena said with a knowing, playful lilt.
It was all he could do to stop himself from swallowing before letting his eyes fall on the face that haunted him.
“Not at all.” He managed a tight smile. “Good to see you, Miss Marino.”
Francesca’s eyes were hidden behind a pair of enormous shades, but the plump, heart-shaped lips tugged into a much looser smile than his own, and she held a hand out to him. “Good to see you too, Mr Vicario.”
Having no choice but to shake the offered hand, he reached for it. The moment his fingers wrapped around hers, a burst of emotion punched through him, so strong it threatened to wind him.
Oh God, oh God, this was worse than the morning after their first night in a bed together.
At least then she’d had the office bathroom to hide in.
Here, there was nothing, and all Francesca could do was thank God for Siena deciding the circles beneath her eyes were too much for even her box of magic tricks to fix and thrusting a pair of her shades at her, and thank God she’d been able to prepare herself for seeing him again.
Not that anything could have prepared her, not properly, but how much worse it would have been to have been flung into his presence without any advance warning.
If Gino had been shocked to see her, he’d recovered quickly. But then, seeing her wouldn’t have had nearly the same effect on him as it had on her. The dark circles beneath his eyes would be caused by lack of sleep from screwing his way through Europe’s most beautiful women.
It was sheer good fortune that she was there as Siena’s right-hand woman, no contribution to proceedings required. It meant she could stay close to her cousin and keep her stare away from Gino. It hurt to look at him. It hurt not to look at him.
They were done. Hands were being shaken again. Mattia was even smiling. Francesca pretended to check messages on her phone in the hope she could be excluded from the goodbyes. Her heart was still throbbing painfully from the earlier shake of Gino’s hand.
“Time to go, Chicca,” Siena said brightly, nudging her with her elbow.
How she stopped herself turning back to him she would never know, but somehow Francesca managed to keep her gaze fixed on the car they were walking towards.
So intent was she on not looking back that when Siena murmured, “Wait in the car for me, I’ll be back in a minute,” she obeyed without question.
Gino should be experiencing the bliss of relief that everything had gone without a single hitch, not be fighting his eyes from watching Francesca stroll away.
God, he’d thought he’d remembered every inch of her beauty, but all he’d remembered was the print of the original. The original needed to be seen for the full effect to be felt, and he was feeling it. Lord, was he feeling it.
“Hey, Vicario.”
He pulled in a breath and then pulled a smile for Siena, who was striding back to him. Francesca had disappeared into the car.
“What can I do for you, Siena?” he asked steadily.
The lips that were so like her cousin’s smiled. Siena Esposito was a beautiful woman. A month ago, he would have hit on her. Now her beauty did nothing for him.
“Nothing,” she said with the same sweetness he’d always distrusted when Francesca used it. “I just thought you might like to know that my cousin has the evening off and will be home alone in my apartment tonight.”
He stared at her, uncertain what she was getting at.
The smile only widened. “Just so you know, though, if you do pay her a visit and then subsequently hurt her, I will kill you myself. Understood?”