Chapter 4 #2
His fingers curl a fraction tighter around his glass, right before he lifts it casually to take a sip of his cognac, then lowers it.
“You’re wrong, baby. You chose what you wanted to believe and what you wanted to turn conveniently blind to.
You wanted to see me as the man you concocted in that perfect little head, and sure, I let you, because it suited me, at the time. But I didn’t tell you a single lie.”
“You absolutely did,” I fire back. “You curated what I knew. You controlled the narrative of my life. You made sure I was never in a place where I would see who you truly were, or interact with people who would paint the true picture. You set the stage to fool me. While all the time—” I stop. Suck in a shocked breath.
Because after all this time, I’d thought the sharp blade of betrayal would have dulled.
But no.
Apparently not.
And it cuts a little deeper because he doesn’t look ashamed. Not even faintly.
There’s no guilt in his expression. No flinch. Just a calm, immovable certainty that my feelings are my own fault for having them.
“While all the time?” he echoes softly and the deadliness in his tone makes my belly flip once.
Then again.
“While all the time you were head of the Dragoni Crime Family,” I spit, the words searing a path of fire, dread, and betrayal through my body.
“Not, as you let me believe, just a man, a businessman, who happened to share the same last name as the most deadly mafia family in Europe and North America.”
He exhales slowly, like he’s gathering the fraying edges of his patience. And Christ, my fingers itch to slap his hot face, shake that titanium confidence.
“I am a Dragoni,” Giovanni says evenly. “I was born one. I will die one. And I did nothing different after meeting you than I did before. I am in every sense of the word a businessman. But I am also… more.”
“That’s supposed to make this better?” I scoff.
“It’s the simple truth,” he replies coolly. “Men like me deal in the unspoken as comfortably as we do the spoken. Tell me, cara, did you truly expect me to introduce myself as Cosa Nostra the first time we met on the street?”
My jaw tightens.
“Or the second,” he continues. “Or the third. Discretion is paramount in my world. Necessary. Until it is not.”
Cold creeps up my spine as alarm pings through me.
Because the very fact that we’re having this conversation, that Giovanni isn’t rushing to deny anything, means he’s here to drag me into the very thing that terrifies me. The world that erased my father, horribly and mercilessly, without a shred of remorse.
A world I vowed to stay away from as I stood over his casket that freezing January morning.
“And when exactly did you decide it was no longer necessary?” I snap. “When you held a meeting with your men during our wedding reception? Or when your lieutenants lined up to kiss the ring right after we said our vows?”
His gaze sharpens, but his voice remains maddeningly calm.
“I decided it when my enemies already knew you were my wife and had the protection of my name,” he says. “When pretending otherwise became more dangerous than truth.”
“You humiliated me,” I fire back. “You turned my wedding into a performance I didn’t understand until it was too late.”
“I turned it into a shield,” Giovanni counters. “A very visible one.”
I shake my head, breath coming faster. “You don’t get to rewrite this as protection just because you don’t like how it sounds.”
“Protection doesn’t care how it sounds,” he replies flatly. “Only that it’s effective.”
“I didn’t ask to be protected,” I snap. “I asked… thought I was marrying a man I understood. A man I knew.”
Silence stretches between us, thick and volatile. Finally, he steps closer. “You married the man you chose,” he replies coldly. “Not the one you decided to imagine.”
“And what about him?” I demand. “The man I imagined? Was he just a story you told so I’d say yes?”
“No.” His voice is sharp now. “He is me. But not all of me. Not a single-dimensional man blinded by beauty and lust,” he says, and a flash of heat in his eyes reaches across the space between us, forcefully attempting to thaw the cold desolation.
“Although that was certainly a state of being that held me wholly and willingly captive… blue balls aside.”
I curse the heat that climbs faster, deeper, taking over my bloodstream. I shake my head, desperate to dispel the sorcery this man has perfected in weaving over me.
I’m no longer gullible, damn it. “You let me believe you were just… powerful,” I say. “Not dangerous.”
“Power is danger,” Giovanni replies evenly. “You cannot separate the two and survive.”
I stare at him, another uncomfortable truth dawning. “You don’t regret it,” I whisper. “You wouldn’t change a single thing, would you?”
“No.”
My breath strangles in my lungs. “You don’t regret lying?”
His head tilts, that sardonic look back in his eyes. “I regret that you left. I colossally regret that I was deprived of the wedding night we’d been waiting months for.”
He closes the gap between us, captures my chin in his hand to hold me steady while he pins me with his hot, merciless eyes. “A wedding night I still intend to claim, by the way.”
I make every effort to summon a snort, but it dies before it can make it past my throat. “In your dreams.”
His far too sensual mouth quirks, dragging my attention to the sexy curves.
I jerk my chin, but he holds on, his own eyes flickering between my mouth and my eyes and my chest. Stoking the fire.
Disrupting my train of thought. “The wonderful thing about men like me is that we have a near-perfect record of turning our dreams into reality. You, dragunnida, are proof of that, after all, are you not?”
“No, I’m not,” I deny hotly, but his eyes only mock me.
And when his thumb begins to drift back and forth over my skin, I have to scramble harder to retain my focus.
To ignore the slow throbbing between my legs.
“Let’s get back to the discussion. And tell me straight. You don’t deny that you hid the truth?”
He steps even closer, bringing his warmth and his scent and his towering sexiness with him.
“Lucia,” he says quietly, “your father died because he made a choice to step into a dangerous world while knowing the full consequences. That world does not vanish because you wish it gentler.”
“And you just so happen to command that world,” I say, a part of me wishing, foolishly perhaps, that even now, he would deny it. But I’m not at all surprised by his unequivocal—
“Yes.”
I lick lips suddenly gone dry and his nostrils flare as he watches my tongue. “And you… you wanted me, so you didn’t care that I might turn out to be collateral?”
His gaze darkens. “You were the one thing in that world that was not.”
Silence thickens.
“We both know this world you talk about… this world you command, is full of people who believe they’re powerful enough to determine who lives and who dies.” I stop when my breath shortens, with fury and grief. Then I swallow it down. “Men like you killed him,” I whisper.
“No,” Giovanni says firmly. “Men who could not control their hunger or their power killed him. I control mine.”
“Except with me,” I say bitterly.
He studies me for a long moment. “Do you remember how we met?” he asks quietly.
I scoff. “How could I forget? You nearly ran me over in Queens with your big fancy car, and then looked offended when I screamed at your driver.”
A ghost of a smile touches his mouth.
“You didn’t scream,” he says. “You threatened to sue him into bankruptcy and insulted his lineage.”
Despite myself, a breath of laughter escapes. “And you,” I mutter, “stood there like I was entertainment.”
“You were,” he agrees. “You still are. The most beautiful spectacle I’ve ever witnessed. I thought you were a fluke of my imagination. That this thing between us would wear off. It hasn’t, has it, dragunnida? We both know it’s for life, don’t we?”
The air shifts.
I start to shake my head, but he continues.
“I ran legitimate businesses, like all the ones you know about. But yes, I’m involved in other businesses too. I won’t apologise for who I am,” Giovanni says then. “And I won’t pretend the blood that stains my world doesn’t exist. I will not promise you a clean life.”
“What will you promise?” I ask.
His thumb drags slowly across my mouth, making my insides shake with the effort it takes not to moan as sensations, hot and very dirty, shoot through me.
“That you will never be powerless in it.”
I shake my head slowly. “You don’t get it,” I whisper. “I didn’t leave because I was afraid of you.”
He watches me closely, sudden tension invading his towering form.
“I left,” I say hoarsely, “because I was terrified of accepting the man exactly like the one who killed my father. And you just admitted you’re just that kind of man.”
The words scrape my throat raw and his eyes darken with displeasure.
But I can’t stop. This has been a long time coming. “So if you claim you weren’t hiding,” I press on, “why tell me now and not eighteen months ago? Why leave me to find out the way I did?”
Giovanni doesn’t flinch.
Not even a fraction.
“Because we were married,” he says simply. “Because we were legally bound, you were mine, and there was no risk of you running.” His mouth twists. “And yes, I see how the irony lands like a slap to both of us.”
“I believed,” he continues evenly, “that you were strong enough to withstand the truth of me. Strong enough to understand that the world your father was destroyed by is not survived by softness or apologies.”
“So you found out you were wrong,” I snap. “That I felt, feel, very strongly about this. So why do you want to prolong it? Why don’t we both admit we made a mistake and call it a day?”
For the first time since this conversation began, something lethal lights in his eyes. And it comes with a finality that makes the hairs on my nape stand and quiver.