Chapter 3
GIOVANNI
We’ve found her.
Three little words.
Almost eighteen fucking months.
I would have sworn it impossible that the most beautiful woman in the world could disappear so completely. A woman with fire in her eyes, venom on her tongue, and a presence that bent rooms around her.
And yet Lucia Dragoni vanished like smoke.
Over and over, my men brought me nothing but dead ends. Sightings that dissolved. Names that led nowhere. Places she should have gone and never did.
Until yesterday morning.
My head of security stood in front of my desk in New York, shoulders squared, jaw tight like a man afraid to breathe too loudly. “We’ve found her.”
I leaned back in my chair so slowly he mistook it for indifference.
It was not.
Relief cut through me like a blade to the ribs, sharp, breath-stealing, violent in its intensity. I fixed my eyes on him, unblinking.
“Tell me everything.”
And what he told me brought me here.
To this absurdly languid corner of the Caribbean. To sun-bleached wood and salt air and a beach shack where my wife poured drinks and pretended she was free.
The last place I would have expected my fierce, espresso-fuelled, no-nonsense Lucia to hide.
Which, of course, made it perfect.
At first, no one dared question where my new wife had gone.
The Dragoni Don does not misplace his bride. Not publicly or even privately.
I was forced into dexterity instead, vanishing under the polite fiction of an “extended honeymoon,” while in reality I tore continents apart looking for her.
She would pay for that enforced retreat, severely punished. Because she had taken something from me I had waited months for.
My wedding night.
The anticipation had nearly driven me insane. Not because of a hard-fought-for conquest, because Lucia was not that woman, but because restraint with her had been agony from the start.
I had touched her sparingly before the ring; kissed her like a promise rather than a demand. I’d taken my time because I discovered, with a shock that still made me smile, that my bold, mouthy, fearless Lucia was untouched.
A virgin.
At twenty-three.
The absurdity of the odds almost made me laugh aloud when I learned it.
And yes, perhaps that was why I put a ring on her finger eight weeks after meeting her. That and the way she tasted. The way she learned me. The way she tested my restraint like a devil with silk gloves.
She had done everything but give herself to me.
And then she ran.
Left me with eighteen months of anticipation, the severest case of blue balls known to mankind, and unanswered hunger, not just for her body, but for the bond she shattered when she fled without a word.
All because she finally chose to see what had always been in front of her. That I was more than a businessman.
She’d deliberately blinded herself to the signs, then dared to blame me.
My jaw tightens as I step towards the steel freezer door. “Lucia,” I say evenly. “You have three minutes.”
Silence answers.
I check my watch.
Two minutes pass.
I reach up and flick the breaker.
The lights die.
Her scream comes instantly, raw, sharp and panicked. She’s always been afraid of the dark, my brave, infuriating little wife.
The door bursts open seconds later and she stumbles out, breathless, pale, eyes wild.
Straight into my arms.
I catch her without thinking, hauling her against my chest as if I had done so a thousand times, because I had.
Her hands grip my shirt. Her breath punches against my throat.
“Easy,” I murmur. “I’ve got you.”
I carry her out into the sun, into warmth, into light.
Marcel appears, flustered.
“A towel,” I snap.
Lucia glares at the way I address him.
Marcel hands me the towel anyway, then turns his weathered gaze to her. There’s apology in there, but not enough to be truly contrite about his decision.
“I couldn’t turn down the offer,” he tells her quietly. “It was… too generous.”
She exhales, shoulders slumping slightly. “It’s okay, Marcel. Truly.”
She smiles at him then, and I growl.
Her eyes flick back to me with a glare and with something else… recognition of the kind of danger she’s skirting.
“You’d better not have been smiling at men like that while we were apart,” I say darkly.
She shrugs and my eyes are drawn, hypnotically and blazingly, to her chest. The cold has made her nipples bead visibly through the thin fabric of her dress.
Her breath stutters when she realises where I’m looking and a blush blooms across her cheeks.
I meet her eyes again slowly. “Brava, cara,” I murmur. “You chose well. I would have picked Rio. Rome. Even Los Angeles as your hiding place. And believe me, I searched them thoroughly.”
“Proves you don’t know me as well as you think,” she cuts in sharply.
“And I know I can say the same about you. Now how are we doing this? Because I’m still not coming back.
You can have your fancy lawyers draw up divorce papers.
I’ll sign whatever you want. I won’t take a dime. Just leave me alone.”
“And if I don’t?” I ask mildly. “You’ll take me for everything I’m worth?”
She scoffs. “Do you even know how much you’re worth?”
“Enough,” I reply calmly.
Her eyes flash. “Is this funny to you?”
My smile disappears.
“You disappearing for eighteen months,” I say quietly, “with no one in your family knowing where you were, or willing to tell me, is not funny at all, dragunidda.”
Silence thickens between us.
And for the first time since I found her…
I let her see the part of me that did not come here for forgiveness.
Only for complete possession.
And a lot of payback for depriving me of what’s duly mine.
Lucia
“My family?” The words tumble out of me before I can stop them. “They’re… okay, right? You didn’t—” I choke on the rest.
Giovanni does not answer.
He stands close enough now that I can feel the heat of him through the air, his presence an undeniable weight pressing into my space. His hands come to rest on my arms instead.
Firm. Anchoring.
Then his thumbs rub slow, steady strokes up and down my chilled skin, coaxing warmth back into me whether I want it or not.
It should comfort me.
Instead it terrifies me.
“You didn’t,” I insist. “You didn’t do anything to them. Tell me.”
His gaze stays on my face, unreadable. “When was the last time you spoke to your uncles, Lucia?”
My pulse stutters. “That’s not an answer.”
“When,” he repeats softly.
I swallow. “A few months ago.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Did they know where you were?”
I shake my head slowly. “No. I didn’t tell anyone.” Not even my own blood.
His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly, eyes flicking away for a fraction of a second, calculation, not guilt. “So they told me the truth,” he murmurs.
“Which truth?” I demand. “That they didn’t know where I was, or that you terrified them into saying it?”
A corner of his mouth lifts faintly. “Both can be true.”
That answer lands like a stone in my chest. “I never knew you at all, did I?” I whisper.
Something flickers in his eyes then, not anger. Something closer to… disappointment.
I step back abruptly and slide behind the bar, as if a few feet of polished wood might protect me from the sheer gravity of him.
He smiles at the move. A slow, dangerous smile. “Make me a drink.”
“It’s ten in the morning.”
“I’ve been awake all night,” he replies mildly. “I can handle it.”
I snort. “Doing what? Terrorising bartenders and breaking into libraries?”
“Not breaking in. But yes, sleeping behind one particularly insubstantial library door,” he says calmly.
My hands freeze around the glass. “You—what?”
“You heard me, cara,” he continues as if discussing the weather. “I haven’t waited all this time just to watch you do something foolish that risked your safety. You barricaded yourself in a place you thought was safe. I allowed you to stay there, but I kept watch.”
“And you slept… outside the library?” I repeat.
“Yes.”
The absurdity of it hits me all at once.
“You, Giovanni Dragoni, slept on the concrete floor?”
His mouth curves. “You weren’t exactly offering a spare couch.”
I stare at him.
At the man who commands armies. Who dismantles men with a glance. Who controls shipping routes and cities and bloodlines.
Slept outside a library.
For me.
I shake myself sharply, reaching for the bottle. No. No, I will not romanticise this.
I pour him a drink with unnecessary force.
As I slide it across, I realise something else is wrong. The bar is… empty. There are no tourists drifting in, no locals waving from the deck.
No idle chatter from the street.
Giovanni follows my gaze then quirks a sooty eyebrow at me.
“Where is everyone?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer immediately. So I look again… and then I see them.
His men.
Casual. Discreet. Stationed at every access point like shadows wearing human skin. Gently redirecting anyone who even thinks about stepping inside.
“They’re… driving them away,” I say slowly.
“Yes.”
My pulse spikes. “You can’t do that.”
“I already have.”
The penny drops like a blade. “You’re not leaving, are you?” I whisper.
He stares back. Says nothing.
“Not without me.”
He tilts his head. “Smart girl.”
Anger surges hot and sharp through my veins. “You can’t control me. This is my life!”
“And now it includes me again. So you can tend bar all you want. I’ll still be your only customer.”
I shake my head. “Why?”
His jaw clenches for a single tick. “Because I’ll probably kill the next man you smile at. I’ll most definitely pluck out the eyes of the next guy who sees you in those shorts and that tiny bikini barely covering your tits and those nipples I want to suck on more than I want my next breath.”
He ignores my hot gasp, glances around the bar thoughtfully. Then his gaze sharpens as it returns to me. “How have you existed without triple-shot espresso? Without silk sheets? Without that absurd vanilla perfume you insisted on wearing even though it made me insane?”
An unexpected pang hits me so hard I have to fight to suppress the next gasp as I fake a careless shrug. “They’re just things.”
“And your plans to become a realtor?” he asks softly. “Was that disposable too?”
The question lands harder than anything else he’s said and I feel a flicker of regret suffuse me before I can stop it.
Then I straighten.
“Discovering what you truly did for a living altered several things,” I say quietly.
“Indeed.” His voice cools. “I thought I married a hellcat who stood her ground and fought with me, for us, instead of tucking her pretty tail between her legs and running at the first sign of trouble.”
Fury explodes.
“You lied to me,” I snap. “You let me build a life with a man who didn’t exist!”
“There she is,” he murmurs. “The island hasn’t rubbed the Queens out of you yet.”
“You’re trying to provoke me. It’s not going to work.”
He shrugs. “I don’t care, baby. The only thing I care about is that you come back.”
“Why?” I challenge. “Why me?”
Something flickers across his face then, too fast to read. “Because I’ve found you,” he says finally. “Because you’re mine. And because it’s time.”
“You expect me to just pick up where we left off?”
“We didn’t leave off anywhere, cara,” he replies coldly. “You ran. I chased. The chase is over. And I won’t look kindly on you attempting anything like it again.”
“So many threats,” I mock. “Where are the flowers and the grand gestures, Giovanni? The diamonds and champagne to coax me back?”
“You left all of that behind after weeks of telling me you didn’t want any of it.” His eyes darken. “But if you’ve suddenly developed a taste for them, I can have you sipping Krug in fifteen minutes.”
I arch a brow. “Let me guess. You bought out the boutiques too?”
“Not at all,” he replies smoothly. “But I did bring six suitcases full of your things.”
My jaw nearly drops.
Six suitcases.
Of me. From a life I walked into blinded by passion and fled in horror.
A startling realisation takes root.
This isn’t love. Far from it, because I’ve had the rose-tinted glasses torn ruthlessly from my eyes.
But this isn’t quite war either.
It’s some twisted in-between, a lethal carrot and a very big barbed-wire stick.
Either way, my mafioso husband has come fully armed and prepared to win this on every front.
I swallow, bunch my fists on the rough countertop. Then glance down at myself.
I’m tired.
Filthy.
Hungry, since I haven’t eaten since… God, I can’t even remember. And there’s no universe in which the six-foot-three, broad-shouldered, immaculately controlled man in front of me is letting me sleep behind another library or anywhere he doesn’t have sight of me tonight.
So I straighten.
No more running.
I’ve had an eighteen-month reprieve.
It’s time to return to the war.
To stand and fight and win it—and my freedom—so that if I walk away from Giovanni Dragoni again, I won’t need to look over my shoulder.