Chapter Nine
CHAPTER NINE
I T WAS LUNCHTIME when Eve was dropped at the eco-resort.
She was dying for a long, hot bath and a long, undisturbed sleep, but she had promised Dom she would see first aid. She got her foot rewrapped and they gave her a pair of crutches. She then gave the manager of the resort the story they’d agreed on. The resort hadn’t organized the day trip so they weren’t liable, but the manager was horrified all the same. He said he would review procedures to ensure nothing like it ever happened again.
Eve made her way to her suite, dreading bumping into wedding guests and having to explain her injury. That would only lead to even more awkward explanations. Hopefully, Logan wouldn’t even be here—
He was here. She heard his voice on the terrace. Ugh.
Expecting he was on the phone, Eve peeked out the door to say, “Hey, Logan—”
He was in the hot tub with Cat on his lap. They jerked apart and Cat leapt to the stairs, emerging naked as she hissed at him, “You said she left . That it was over.”
“I am leaving. Oh, gawd.” Eve hurried into her room and clumsily got her suitcase opened onto the bed, then started throwing things into it.
Logan came in a half minute later, belting a hotel robe around his dripping body. “What are you doing here? I thought you left yesterday.”
“I was stuck on the island overnight.” Thankfully, the first aid attendant had also given her fresh painkillers which were starting to kick in. Not that she was hurt by Logan moving on within hours. She thought it was sitcom-level hilarious, especially given what she’d done last night and with whom.
Their being here gave her no chance to shower and catch her breath, though. She packed willy-nilly while Logan stood in the doorway and Cat hovered behind him.
“I thought Dom ghosted me,” Cat said. “I called his hotel. They said he wasn’t there.”
“Is he even still alive?” Logan joked lamely.
“It was an uncomfortable night, but we’re fine,” Eve said mildly. “Would you call the bellman to carry my luggage? I have a flight booked.”
She didn’t, but ninety minutes later, she was on a chartered flight to Brisbane where she checked into one of the Visconti properties. She spent the rest of the week ambling from her king-sized bed to a pool lounger to pampering treatments in the spa.
She didn’t turn on her phone, not wanting to see whether Dom had reached out, which he hadn’t, she learned, when she was on her way to New York. She very nearly shut the thing off again when she saw the number of texts from her family, all outraged that she’d thrown over Logan and spent a night alone with Dom.
She sent one quick text to Nico, fueled by her anger over the way he had deliberately held her back because he had consulted Logan about her future, not her. It would be a long time before she got over that and forgave him.
As for her parents, she put off responding to their outrage until she was home, only realizing as she arrived at the building on Madison Avenue how embarrassing it was that she still lived with them. They spent most of their time on Martha’s Vineyard now that her father was retired so remaining in her childhood bedroom—which had been redecorated three times since she’d been an actual child—in the penthouse apartment had always seemed practical, not immature. She worked in Manhattan so it was convenient, but it probably contributed to the way her entire family still saw her as a child.
Boy, did they ever, she thought dourly, when she came off the elevator to find her parents waiting for her, tapping feet and already wagging fingers. Nico, was here, too, wearing his most smoldering expression.
“I’m moving out,” she informed them, hoping to take them by surprise, which she did.
“What? When? Why? Where are you going?” her mother responded in breathy panic.
“I don’t know yet. Thank you.” She smiled at the doorman who’d brought up her luggage for her. He sent her a “good luck” look and exited.
“What the hell is going on with you, Eve?” Nico asked.
“Did you get my text?” Six words from an old song had been all she’d needed for her resignation letter. “That’s all I plan to say to you for a while.”
“You’re such a child,” he muttered. He was twelve years older and unbearably arrogant.
“I’m not your child, though. Even if I was, how dare you ask a man I barely know whether I’m going to be too pregnant to work for you? Go to hell, Nico. Go all the way to hell, then go a little bit past it so you’re completely out of my sight.”
“Evelina,” her father said in a dangerous rumble.
“No, Papà. He disrespected me first. This is about my working for him for four years and him not once giving me the challenge or opportunities that Jackson and Christo have had at my age. The only reason he’s doing it is because I’m a woman. That is sexist and wrong .”
“The Offermans are an important connection. You threw his proposal in his face then spent a night with that man?” her father railed. “Nico has a right to be angry. This is a bad look for the entire family.”
“Logan didn’t propose,” she scoffed. “It was a job offer for domestic service. But you’re right, Papà. I’m so very sorry, Nico, that you had to go through the terrifying ordeal of hearing that your sister rejected a man you shook hands with once. She was stranded on a remote trail on an uninhabited island in the Pacific and could have been stuck there for days before someone found her, might even have died, but that’s not important. Refusing to give up her life and uterus because you think she should is the real anguish she’s causing you.”
“This is why I don’t give you more responsibility. You have the temperament of a toddler,” Nico bit out.
“Calm down,” her mother insisted. “Eve, you’re tired. Does your foot hurt? Come sit down.”
Eve didn’t move. She glared at her brother, then her father’s stony expression, then her mother’s pinched mouth.
“You all think I’m being hysterical, don’t you?”
“Selfish,” Nico provided. “We all act for the good of the family. Except you. Because you think you’re special. Like Nonna.”
Eve realized she was shaking. Her heart was pinched in a vise and all she could think was that she might have been able to comply with an arranged marriage eventually, if she hadn’t slept with Dom. Now she knew what she’d be missing and it would make any other man’s touch repulsive to her.
She picked up her purse and opened the door.
“Evelina! Where are you going?” her mother cried with alarm.
“I’ll let you know when I get there.”
Dom wanted to hate her, but he couldn’t. He wanted to forget her. But he couldn’t.
Not when he and Nico were once again playing a game of chicken over a property in Miami.
Eve had nothing to do with it. The timing of Nico’s bid made that impossible, but Dom still wanted to believe she had something to do with it.
Why? Because it would prove she was thinking of him? That he was as far under her skin as she was under his?
Even if he was, Eve wouldn’t resort to asking her brother to deliver a message in such a cryptic way. She wasn’t afraid to confront someone directly. He’d seen it more than once. He’d felt the smack on his ass, even.
Plus, asking her brother to exact revenge would necessitate revealing why. She wouldn’t do that. They’d agreed on a statement labeling their night a misadventure, nothing else. It had been released into a heavy news cycle, burying it. Like the first time they’d trysted, this was their little own secret and, for some reason, Dom liked that most of all.
What was he, nine? He didn’t convey messages by decoder rings and peer at diary entries and share secrets under the covers. He didn’t share anything with anyone. Ever. He didn’t need special connections. He barely tolerated the required relationships of work and basic social fabric. He’d spent his whole life learning to live at a distance from the rest of the world. He liked it that way. It was comfortable.
But he knew so many secrets about Evie now. Intimate ones, like how soft her mouth felt around him when he stood like a lighthouse in the dark, feet braced and hands clenched on either side of the narrow aisle of the shack while she rocked his world.
Then there were the intriguing tidbits Cat had shared with him when she’d come to his hotel. Dom had planned to use the light scandal of his night with Eve as a clumsy excuse to cool things off, but Cat had sheepishly confessed where she had spent the night and with whom.
She must have had a guilty conscience about it because she’d spilled a few of Logan’s confidences. As much as Dom had appreciated the information, he’d also realized Cat was a gossip. They definitely hadn’t had a future so that was off his conscience, at least.
“Sir?”
There were eight people at the boardroom table behind him, waiting for him to decide whether to increase his bid against Visconti Group while he, yet again, had spiraled into making love with Evie.
“The clock is ticking on our ability to counter,” someone else said. “It’s already been three weeks. Visconti Group has it locked in unless—”
“I know.” Nico had put funds into escrow to secure it.
Which wasn’t why Dom was stalling on matching and exceeding his bid. He was suffering a pinch of conscience.
Cat had revealed that Visconti Group was overextended. If Dom wanted to topple the first domino on what could spell the beginning of the end of Visconti Group, he would let Nico have the Miami property. According to Cat, they couldn’t afford it.
Dom had been working toward a moment like this for four years. It was the culmination of three generations of bloodthirst. He could hear his father’s voice shouting at him to, “Pull the trigger.”
Because all his father had ever wanted was revenge. Suffering. He’d thought causing someone else to hurt would somehow make his own pain stop.
No. Despite the attacks he’d suffered through the years at the hands of the Viscontis, Dom knew that crushing his father’s enemy wouldn’t do a damned thing to fill up the empty spaces inside himself.
He needed to do something else.
“I want to speak with Eve.” He turned to confront a sea of confused expressions.
Someone leaned to the person next to them and murmured, “The one in accounting?”
“Evelina Visconti,” Dom clarified with exasperation.
“Really?” They all sat taller and looked warily at each other.
“Um, sir?” A hesitant hand went up. “I’m not sure if this is relevant, but when I was doing my research, I noticed she’s no longer on their org chart.”
“Why?” Because of him?
A startled shrug.
“Find out where she is,” he ordered. “I want to speak with her.”
Four days later, Dom was vacillating between livid and sticky nausea when he walked into the Miami hotel that Nico Visconti wanted so badly.
It was showing its age, definitely not worth the price Nico had driven it to, but location, location, location. The view from the penthouse was exceptional.
Nico Visconti turned from the windows when Dom entered. He stiffened.
“What the hell are you doing here? I was expecting Perez,” he said of the current owner of the hotel.
“I asked him to set this up. Where’s Eve?” Dom’s staff had delivered the disturbing news that she was quietly missing. Her family didn’t seem concerned, but she hadn’t been spotted by paparazzi or photographed since Australia.
“Why?” Nico narrowed his eyes.
“She’s no longer with Visconti Group. Why?”
“Why do you want to know?”
Good God, they were never going to get anywhere.
“Did it have anything to do with our being stranded that night?”
“You have an exaggerated sense of your own importance.” Nico looked at his watch, likely to appear patronizing and dismissive. “Why?” he asked again, gaze sly as it came up to meet his. “Is there a reason I should have fired her? Did you sleep with her?”
Dom had prepared himself for that question.
“Would you excommunicate her for that? How medieval of you. Especially when the grapevine has it that she’s saving herself for marriage.” Thank you, Cat, for that nugget. “Do you really think she’d break her vow for me ?” Dom offered his best poker face. “Or that I’d tell anyone if she had? I hear the last man who claimed he had slept with her walked away with a broken nose.”
“Because he was lying. My brother knew it. That was years ago,” Nico muttered.
“So where is she?” Dom pressed.
“Why?”
Dom’s temper started to slip, but he had a flash of memory of her saying, My brother is being a sexist jerk.
“You don’t know, do you?” He couldn’t help a smirk of dark amusement. He knew exactly how irritating it was to be ignored by Eve. “Who can tell me where to find her? Your mother?”
“Do not talk to my mother. No one in my family wants to talk to you,” Nico said impatiently. “I’m already tired of it.” He started past Dom toward the door.
“Wait.” Dom pushed his hands into his pockets and rocked on his heels. This was it. Once he took this step, he couldn’t un-take it, but he’d been going around and around in his mind, trying to find another way. There wasn’t one.
“I want to propose marriage.”
Nico froze beside him.
Dom braced for anything, a sarcastic, Me? A thrown punch...
He got a scoffing choke. “Are you on drugs? I’d rather throw you off this building and spend the rest of my life in prison than call you my brother-in-law.”
“Why?” Dom asked with genuine curiosity. “Do you ever talk about the feud? With your father? With any of your family? We never did.” Dom shook his head, not waiting for an answer. “Talking to Eve was the first time I even imagined there was another side to the story my father had told me about my uncle. All I knew growing up was that I was supposed to hate your family. Making the Viscontis miserable is simply what we do, like celebrating Thanksgiving and running hotels. Aren’t you tired of it?”
“What’s the matter, Blackwood. Are you feeling the pressure? You can’t afford this place so you came here to cut a deal that might soften the sting?”
“Oh, I can afford it, Nico. Can you? Does your father know how overextended Visconti Group is?”
Nico’s poker face was good, but not impervious. There was the tiniest hint of a flinch in his right eye.
“Eve was supposed to marry Logan to get you out of trouble, wasn’t she?” Dom was repeating what Logan had told Cat. “Offerman was a lousy bet on your part. Eve had zero interest in him and he spilled your money troubles to my date while they were wrecking his bed.”
Nico swore and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Where’s Eve?” Dom asked again.
“You’re right. I don’t know.” He dropped his hand. “She blocked me over how things went with Logan.”
“Who does know?”
“Let it go, Blackwood. None of us are going to condone your marrying her. How could we ever trust you?”
“If I wanted to hurt her, I had ample opportunity in Australia,” Dom pointed out flatly.
Nico’s belligerent stare turned troubled. His mouth tightened and his nostrils flared.
“How bad was it?” Nico asked with gritty reluctance. “That night on the island. Was she scared?”
“It could have been very bad if she’d been there alone. At least I got her to the shack, otherwise she’d have been in the open all night during a storm.” Dom refused to pull that punch. “While we were getting drunk, waiting for rescue, she said, ‘My grandmother refused to marry your grandfather. Maybe he should have got over it.’ She’s right. It’s time we all got over it. If we don’t, who will? Do you really want to consign our children to playing this silly game?”
“We could just put down our swords,” Nico said. “Eve doesn’t need to be involved.”
“True.” But that wouldn’t bring Evie into his bed, would it? “But you’re not wrong about how little trust there is on both sides. We’ll both keep expecting a betrayal unless we have an old-fashioned arranged marriage that binds both families into one. The way it was supposed to happen in the first place.”
“Is that what this is?” Nico challenged. “Are you setting her up to be left at the altar, trying to settle that old score?”
“God, no. I’m tired, Nico. You’ve driven up the price on this property to the point it’s not practical for either of us to purchase it. But if I don’t counter your offer, you’re going to be in a very tricky position. Aren’t you?”
“So I can have this place or my sister? Is that what you’re threatening.”
Dom released a beleaguered sigh to the ceiling.
“Why do you even want to marry her?” It wasn’t the same cantankerous question. Nico’s eyes narrowed as he finally weighed Dom’s proposal more seriously. “What exactly happened between the two of you that this is even something you would consider?”
“She’s not exactly hard on the eyes.” Understatement. “Financially, an alliance between our companies would put us so far ahead, no one will ever catch us. And, believe it or not, I don’t relish destroying you. But I can .” Dom paused to let that sink in. “Now tell me where she is. If she agrees to marry me, I’ll buy this place for her as a wedding gift.”
Nico’s lip twitched into a sneer, but he only asked, “And if she doesn’t?”
“Then we’ll see.”
After a long, unbroken stare, Nico muttered something foul under his breath. Finally, he took out his phone, tapped and brought it to his ear.
“Where’s Eve?” Nico asked without any other greeting.
“Call her and ask.” The bored male voice was loud enough for Dom to hear it.
“It’s important, Christo,” Nico said with impatience. “Tell me.”
“Where do you think she is?”
“I’m not playing twenty questions.”
“Nonna’s. Obviously .”
“Oh. Of course.” Nico ended the call. “Our grandmother’s villa on Lake Como.”
“Give me the address.”
Nico did, then said with heavy sarcasm, “Good luck.”
“Don’t need it. But you do,” Dom said and walked out.