Chapter Thirteen
Vito
A month later
‘We have Dante. He arrives tonight.’
My muscles tightened as I read the text in Italian on my phone from Lorenzo, followed by a skull emoji. The text I had been waiting to receive for over six months.
I gazed out the bedroom window of the historic home I owned on Via Torino, Milan’s luxury shopping street.
Aware of Mia in the bed behind me, my groin pulsed, reminding me of how she’d responded to me in the hours just before dawn, when I had woken her, hard and aching.
We’d spent the day yesterday shopping in a series of exclusive boutiques, her expression wary at first, her insistence she had never intended for me to spend so much money on her new wardrobe both captivating and amusing.
After all, she had been badgering me for weeks to honour the promise I’d made to her a month ago to let her off the island.
I had wanted to forget the rash promise, had tried to make her forget it too.
Because I hadn’t wanted to trust her, and I had also enjoyed keeping her dressed in the clothes I’d had ordered for her online—which were more my style than hers, she’d pointed out several times.
In other words, revealing. But eventually I had been forced to admit the truth.
She had held up her side of the bargain, so I must hold up mine.
But always in the back of my mind had been the concern about Dante.
What had disturbed me more, though, when I had whisked her to Milan in the jet and set about buying her whatever she desired—which turned out to be much less than I wished to give her—was admitting my fears for her safety were about a lot more than just the baby now.
Thank God my men had finally captured the son of a bitch. And were bringing him to Isla Donna as I had ordered.
I dialled Lorenzo’s number. Keeping my voice low so as not to wake Mia, I spoke to him about what would happen next. But as I ended the call, the relief I wanted to feel didn’t come. Instead dread settled like a block of ice in my stomach.
‘Who’s Dante?’
The sleepy whisper had me spinning round to find Mia standing behind me draped in a sheet, her round belly more pronounced now than a month ago. Devoid of makeup, her heart-shaped face was still groggy with sleep and her hair even wilder than usual from our early-morning lovemaking.
Even though we had fucked less than an hour ago, I felt the familiar wave of arousal sink into my groin…and pound in the pyjama pants I had put on when I’d received the text.
When was I going to tire of her, and why did she captivate me so?
Was it simply that she carried my child, as I had tried so hard to convince myself since bringing her to Isla Donna?
Or was it her live wire responses, her silent strength, that intoxicating combination of determination and pragmatism and innocence which had made me start to trust her, to become addicted to her presence, more than I should?
I clicked off the phone and dropped it into the pocket of my pants, then clasped her neck and drew her towards me to press my face into the soft mass of her hair. I inhaled the intoxicating aroma which clung to her, that unique perfume of spring flowers and sex.
‘Nobody,’ I murmured—angry that Dante had intruded onto our time here together.
We would have to return to Isla Donna a day early. Perhaps I should leave her in Milan, I thought as I pulled the sheet aside to cup her naked bottom. It would be safer for her here while I concluded my business with Dante.
But a part of me knew, as she let out a sob against my neck, signaling her arousal, that it wasn’t just her safety I wanted to insure. I also wished to keep her away from the darkest side of my life.
Dante was a dead man, and once he was gone, the threat he posed would be dead too.
But while I’d been waiting for him to leave the Malvini estate near Sicily, I had spent the past weeks indulging myself with Mia, taking a time-out on Isla Donna—allowing myself to be distracted, enjoying my time with her.
Mia’s sweetness, her artlessness, our conversations about the baby and her sister’s impending visit, and her dogged attempts to learn more about my past—which I had deflected—had been as captivating as her eagerness to explore our insane chemistry.
She had been a delightful distraction, an addiction, an escape even from the demands of the syndicate—and the knowledge of what needed to happen next.
But news of Dante’s capture meant I would have to return to reality today, confront my brother and then end him myself.
He deserved that much.
But right now, I did not want to think about him. Or what he was forcing me to do.
I threaded my fingers through her hair, loving the feel of the silky softness, and pressed a kiss to the pulse point in her neck.
She shuddered, but as I clasped her to me, to grind my already lengthening cock against her soft curves, planning to get lost in her again, she flattened her palms on my chest and pushed me gently back.
‘I know Dante’s not nobody, Vito,’ she said softly, her chin firm.
I stiffened, the sound of his name on her lips making the emotions I did not want to confront—not just about my brother, but also about her—surge.
‘How do you know this?’ I demanded, regretting the sharp tone when she flinched. I realised I had said too much because her mossy-green eyes became shadowed with concern.
‘The women talk about him sometimes when they think I don’t understand,’ she added, making me curse the fact I had allowed her to befriend the other women on the island while I worked during the day.
But I had enjoyed watching her make friends on Isla Donna as she taught them English and they taught her Italian.
I regretted that, too, when she continued.
‘And you looked so troubled when you were talking about him on the phone just now with Lorenzo. Who is he? Why is he being brought to Isla Donna? Is he the man who tried to kill you that night? I want to know who…’
‘No, you don’t, Mia,’ I interrupted her, pressing my finger to her lips to silence her, my stomach starting to churn. ‘He is not your concern.’
She grasped my finger and dragged it away, still staring at me with that crippling concern in her eyes. ‘Of course he is, if he wants to kill you,’ she said. But the fierceness in her gaze only troubled me more.
I had told her once she could not save me when I did not want to be saved. But why did I still find her refusal to obey me as enchanting as it was frustrating?
‘He doesn’t want to kill me any more than I want to kill him.’ I ground out the words, forced to admit the truth. ‘But he will keep trying until he gets what he believes is rightfully his.’
As a boy, my younger half brother, Dante, had been reckless, impulsive and dangerously charismatic—but he had also hero-worshipped me.
Even though, when I had first arrived on Isla Donna scared and alone and traumatised, I had taken his place, declared as the heir because I was my father’s first-born child and his only legitimate son.
My father had always been a hard man, but why, when he had valued family so much, had he treated his own flesh and blood so cruelly? Discarding Dante and his mother less than a year later, when he tired of Angelica Malvini’s charms.
After my father’s death two years ago, the prospect of joining forces with Dante and the Malvini family had seemed to make more sense than prolonging a feud which could bleed into generations.
But all thoughts of a compromise had been lost six months ago in Naples, when I had seen the bullets fly across the bed so close to Mia’s head.
Had I instinctively known my son was already growing inside her, that I must protect her at all costs?
As I stared at her now, her gaze glowing with compassion, I finally admitted to myself my attachment to her wasn’t just about the baby anymore.
If it had ever been… Something had happened between us that night which had changed me even then.
And it had got progressively worse since I had brought her to Isla Donna.
I trusted her now more than I had ever trusted anyone. She hadn’t lied about accepting her place was here with me. She had even begun to build a life in the compound. I had enjoyed seeing her blossom, seeing her start to belong, but I could not allow her to make me weak.
‘Why does he think he should have a share of the syndicate?’ she asked, clearly believing my silence was an opportunity to push for information.
‘Because he is my father’s son too,’ I said, the truth bitter on my tongue.
‘He’s… Dante’s your brother?’ she whispered, recoiling in horror at the implication.
I nodded. ‘We will return to Isla Donna today, and then tonight, this will be over,’ I said flatly, determined not to let her shocked reaction matter.
She needed to know how this worked. She needed to understand that there could be no compromise. Not in my world. Or Dante’s. He understood there was a price to be paid for threatening my men, my businesses, for threatening me and my woman and my child, even if Mia did not.
She shuddered as the impact of my words hit her.
‘But you can’t kill him, Vito. You said yourself you don’t want to. And he’s your brother… There must be another way.’ She swallowed, her gaze rivetted to my face now. ‘I… I’m falling in love with you Vito,’ she said. The quiet words sliced through me.
But I steeled myself against the sudden rush of longing for it to be true.
What the hell was happening to me? I couldn’t need her love. I didn’t want it. That was not what this was about. She was mine now, and I had realised in the past weeks I might never be able to let her go.