Chapter 5
GIOVANNI
I’m seated at the head of a table that could comfortably host twelve people but there are only two place settings.
Mine and Lucia’s.
Caterina has outdone herself tonight, just like I trusted she would. The smell of rosemary, garlic, and roasting meats lingers in the air, rich and warm and dangerously domestic.
Candles burn low along the centre of the table, their flames steady in the stillness of Emerald House. My men have placed themselves discreetly out of sight as instructed.
It should feel like a victory.
I’ve found her, brought her back under my roof.
She is upstairs, in my house, breathing my air again, getting ready to grace me with her presence just like she used to do before we married.
And yet.
My jaw tightens as I lift my wineglass and let the dark red liquid roll slowly along the curve of the crystal.
Our argument earlier plays itself back in my head with ruthless clarity.
The moment she finally said it out loud. The thing that our very future hinged on.
While all the time you were head of the Dragoni Crime Family.
The way her voice fractured around the words. The way she looked at me like I had reached into her chest and crushed something soft and vital in my fist.
I am not ashamed of my name. Never have been.
Dragoni is not just a surname. It is a dynasty. A history written in blood and loyalty and conquest. It is ports and shipping lanes and power structures that governments pretend they do not rely on while quietly doing exactly that. It’s the name that sways opinions in very high and very low places.
I was born into this life. Knew very early on there was no escaping it, only wielding it to my will with steel and cunning. So I mastered it. Grew very comfortable with ruling it.
And no, I did not become a different man after meeting Lucia.
But.
I roll my shoulders back, exhaling slowly, my jaw tightening as if it would stop the thought most would find as sacrilegious as blasphemy.
But… I would be lying to myself if I pretended I had not enjoyed the anonymity she offered me. The sheer novelty when she looked at me on that Queens street with eyes that bore no recognition of the man I was.
Then the realisation in the weeks and months that followed that Lucia Argento really had zero clue about the man she was letting put his hands and mouth all over her fucking delectable body.
The illusion.
The reckless, intoxicating normalcy of being seen as just a man.
Not a Don or a threat. Not a weapon wrapped in silk or a candle to a thrill-seeking moth.
She didn’t look at me with awe or calculation or secret fascination for violence the way the women I fucked before her gagged over.
She looked at me like I was… charming. Infuriating. Sex-charged and eager to get between her thighs, naturally.
But perhaps most of all… human and not a larger-than-life lord of the New York mafia underworld.
She argued with me over coffee orders. Mocked my three-piece suits even as her beautiful eyes lingered all over me, her eager innocence giving away her inexperience I discovered was authentic right to her never-been-touched pussy.
Hell, she had zero clue how near the truth she was when she told me my driver looked like a retired assassin and that I should stop surrounding myself with men who scared small children.
It’d been intensely and fuck… addictively gratifying that she wanted me.
Not my power or my money or even the possibility of dwelling in my shadow empire.
Me.
That had been a reprieve I had not realised I was starving for until I was drowning in it.
So yes, maybe I had withheld more of myself than I needed to because I liked who I was allowed to be when she didn’t know everything.
I liked that my woman did not lie awake at night imagining blood on my hands. I liked that she thought my worst flaw was arrogance and a tendency to buy her absurdly expensive diamonds and shoes she refused to wear.
I liked that when she looked at me, there was no fear in her eyes. Only heat. Only want and sexy defiance that made me want to throw her over my knees and spank her juicy arse until it was as red as her gorgeous cheeks.
It had been heady and surprisingly unique in a way I’d never experienced before. Dangerously so.
But my life is my life. And illusions rot. Change is not optional in my world. Nor is the unrelenting war for survival.
Especially now.
I set the wineglass down and glance down at my watch just as I hear footsteps on the stairs, curbing a stiff smile.
Fashionably, and I suspect defiantly, late, as usual.
I look up when my wife, the woman who’s taken up an increasingly obscene amount of space in my head, enters the room.
And for a moment, every thought leaves my head.
Lucia is dressed simply. Not in any of the clothes I brought, of course, because that would be too easy for my feisty bride.
It’s another of those island dresses that would look drab and cheap on any other woman. Except on her, it’s anything but. I suspect she could walk down the runway in Milan and turn every head.
Like the flick of a match, heat ignites, then rises up from my very toes, lingering long enough to turn into a damned blaze in my loins as my compelled gaze tracks the fitted black dress that hugs her dangerous curves, the thin straps I want to drag down her bare shoulders with my teeth, while I fist the hair she’s brushed into a perfect, shining waterfall down her back.
So very effortlessly, she proves she doesn’t need diamonds or silk or designer heels.
She only needs to look exactly like herself to look… absolutely ravishing.
Devastating.
In the days following our first meeting, I waited, regretting when the shine would wear off, when allure would inevitably slide into boredom or ennui.
When one characteristic or another would begin to grate and I would need to inform my assistant to start putting together the ‘farewell package’.
And with each day that sensation didn’t arrive, I’d been both alarmed and elated. Then prodded into believing I’d found the woman who could, with her streak of rebellion coupled with an unabashed zest for life, hold my attention for years, if not a lifetime.
And right in this moment, as every one of those sensations rouses to painful life, I allow my gaze to flick deliberately over her body before returning to her face. Stoking that fire I know lurks just beneath the enchanting surface of her smooth skin.
“You didn’t wear any of the clothes I had waiting for you,” I observe mildly.
Her chin lifts. Predictably. As her eyes fire poisoned darts at me. “I told you I wouldn’t. You shouldn’t have bothered bringing them.”
“So you say.” A corner of my mouth curves. “And perhaps I’m willing to let it go for now.”
She narrows her eyes. “How generous of you. And what prompts this magnanimity?”
“Because you look incredible,” I state calmly. “And because the only argument I intend to have about your clothing tonight is when I get to take it off your body.”
Colour floods her cheeks instantly and her fingers flutter enchantingly before she stills the movement. “Keep dreaming, Dragoni,” she snaps, even as her pulse jumps visibly in her throat.
I rise to my feet, try not to look too smug at the accelerated pulse beating at her throat, and pull out her chair. “Sit down, cara.”
She hesitates, torn between rebellion and the needs of her body. I know for a fact she hasn’t eaten anything else besides the bruschetta Caterina gave her earlier.
When hunger wins, she takes the last few steps and she sits. While I attempt not to gulp in the maddeningly addictive scent of her perfume. Her shampoo. Her warm skin I want to stroke more than I want sustenance.
Dinner is served in silence at first because food this exceptional deserves several moments of appreciation. I watch her devour the burrata al tartufo nero con carpaccio di fichi e prosciutto riserva with satisfaction.
Lucia eats like someone who hasn’t realised how hungry she is until the first bite hits her tongue.
I watch her more than I eat.
Remember how she described the silk-thin ravioli filled with butter-poached lobster, floating in a delicate Champagne-saffron broth, the first time I had it prepared for her.
She catches me at it twice. “Do you plan to stare at me all night?” she mutters when I top up her Malbec.
“Yes.”
She snorts despite her fluttering eyelashes and the faint colour staining her cheeks, and for a few minutes, we manage something almost civil.
Almost normal.
She manages only half of the perfectly seared Wagyu filet mignon on a crisp brioche round, and I don’t object when she sets her fork down carefully.
But I’m perfectly braced for the next battle when her fingers begin to drum on the tablecloth.
“If divorce is off the table,” she says, voice too controlled, “then we need to talk about a separation.”
The word lands between us like a thrown knife.
I let my own fork rest on the plate, swallow the fuck no that snarls up my throat, then pick up my wineglass, for a moment wishing it was something stronger. “Explain how you see that playing out,” I indulge, knowing full well that will never happen.
But it’s clear she needs time. And for now, I’ll grant it.
If she’s surprised by my even tone, she doesn’t show. Or maybe she’s simply not aware that Giovanni Dragoni is at his most dangerous when he appears calmest.
“We live separate lives,” she continues. “Separate spaces. I’ll leave it to you to come up with an acceptable story. One we can both live with, of course. We untangle things slowly. Like adults who—”
My hand slams down on the table before I even realise it’s moving as calm evaporates in an instant. Another fucking first.
She jumps. The plates rattle and the candles flicker violently. One vase sways drunkenly before it rights itself. “What the hell do—?”
“Enough!”
She stiffens. “Do not fucking shout at me.”
“This is not shouting because I do not shout, cara,” I say coldly. “And for an intelligent woman, you seem surprisingly eager to keep slamming your beautiful head against an immovable brick wall. This is the last time I allow you to pretend this is a negotiation.”
She rises halfway out of her chair.
“I don’t know who the hell you think you are but you don’t get to dictate my life after—”
“You disappeared for eighteen months,” I cut in sharply. “You left me to run an empire with one hand while tearing the world apart with the other to find you.”
Her face pales.
“And while you were bartending on a beach and pretending to be free,” I continue, voice low and lethal, “La Fratellanza Nera was deciding whether they had the balls to challenge me for my throne.”
Silence crashes down.
She sinks back into her chair slowly.
“What?” she whispers. “Who… who are the La Fratellanza… whatever?”
“They’re the old but very serious guard,” I say evenly. “A hardline faction of the Cosa Nostra that believes power should look the same now as it did fifty years ago. Same bloodlines. Same marriages. Same brutality, just dressed up in nostalgia.”
Her fingers curl into the tablecloth.
“I allowed them a foothold in New York years ago,” I add coolly. “A strategic compromise. One I regret daily.”
Her eyes lift to mine, alarm sharpening.
“They never accepted my modernisation,” I continue. “Never accepted that I refused to rule through terror alone. And they especially never accepted that I married you instead of Isabella Bellandi.”
Her eyes widen, and something sharpens in her eyes before it dulls. “You… you were supposed to marry someone else?”
My jaw grits and my nod is stiff. “Sì. Their don,” I go on, “is Salvatore Bellandi and very old-school. Vindictive. And deeply offended that I denied his daughter the crown he believes should have been hers. They tolerated your existence when they believed you were temporary,” I say.
“They tolerated my distraction because they assumed it would end.”
My jaw tightens when my gaze drops to her ring finger. Her very bare ring finger.
She catches my stare and her fingers tremble before she yanks her hand off the table and drops it to her lap.
“It didn’t.”
Her breath stutters. “What does that have to do with me wanting a s-separation?”
“Besides my not wanting to grant you what you want? Besides the fact that you’re mine and I want you back where you belong? Why… everything.”
She swallows audibly at my deadly tone and starts to shake her head. “No. Absolutely not. You can’t lay something like this at my feet. This… this is your world. Your problem—”
I lean forward into her space, drawing her scent into my lungs even though I know it’ll simply compound one problem with another.
Thicken the erection pulsing against my zip with the fury riding my being.
“My problem. Which you unfortunately greatly exacerbated by pulling your vanishing act. My enemies learned that my wife could vanish,” I say quietly.
“That I would burn time, blood, and leverage to find her.”
Her eyes widen. She opens her mouth again but I beat her to it.
“Yes, you became leverage,” I continue. “A liability. A weakness they intend to exploit.”
Colour drains from her face and her breathtaking eyes grow wide, almost beseeching. But the time to hold back, pull my punches is over. “And while they were manoeuvring,” I finish, “I delayed dismantling them.”
“Why?” she whispers.
Because of you.
I don’t say it despite the words landing heavy as an anvil between us. She’s far from stupid.
Instead, I go with another unfortunate but inescapable truth. “Because I would not move against them until you were under my protection again. I couldn’t risk you falling into their hands if they found you first, playing bartender on the beach while calling yourself Lucy.”
Her breath rattles in and out, her mouth working for a few seconds before she speaks. “So you’re saying this is my fault?” she breathes.
“No,” I snap. “This is their fault. But it is now your danger.”
Her voice trembles. “What are they going to do?”
I sit back. Shrug. “For now, they’re deciding,” I reply calmly, “whether removing you will be enough to bring me to heel. Or if it’ll make me an even more dangerous opponent.”
Silence stretches. Deadly and absolute.
“And you think I should just… what?” she whispers. “Fall back into your arms and play mafia wife while men debate killing me?”
I meet her gaze unflinchingly.
“Yes.”