Chapter 13 Lucia
LUCIA
We end the night with a layer of tension between us, despite him yanking me into his arms and keeping me pinned to his side all night long.
Despite peaceful sleep overriding my annoyance and churning alarm.
And when he drawls at the breakfast table, “Wanna come into work with me today? See I’m not the absolute monster you think me to be?” the temptation is too fierce to resist.
Giovanni’s office is nothing like I expected.
I don’t know what I imagined—dark wood and shadows, maybe, men murmuring over maps with pins stabbed into cities—but what I find instead is light, glass, screens, and motion. Everything hums with purpose. Calls are taken and ended. Decisions ripple outward with the soft inevitability of tides.
I sit in the corner on a leather chair that probably costs more than my first car, watching my husband work.
He doesn’t posture and he doesn’t raise his voice.
He listens, asks precise questions, then delivers conclusions that sound less like orders and more like inevitabilities people are relieved to obey.
On one screen, a port authority dashboard updates in real time, containers logged, ships docked, delays flagged.
On another, a real estate portfolio scrolls past: commercial holdings, residential developments, redevelopment zones.
Security briefings blink in and out. Logistics contracts. Shipping routes.
Legitimate. All of it.
Or legitimate enough that the line between clean and compromised is impossible to see.
“You’re staring,” Giovanni says without looking up.
“Because you’re not hiding anything,” I reply, suspicion sharpening my tone. “Which makes me nervous.”
He finally turns to me, one brow lifting. “I told you that on the island. I never meant to keep secrets from you.”
“That’s… not reassuring.”
A corner of his mouth lifts. “Ask me anything.”
The invitation hangs between us, real and dangerous.
I hesitate, then go for the thing that’s been circling my thoughts since the dinner party, since Isabella, since the women in tailored suits who move through this space like they belong to it far more than I do.
“Why do you want me this much?” I ask quietly.
The room seems to still.
Giovanni studies me, not like a man searching for the right answer, but like one deciding how much truth to give.
“Because you don’t cower when you see me coming,” he says at last. “You stand your ground. You bare your teeth. You’re a chihuahua facing down a grizzly without an ounce of fear, and I find that very, very sexy.”
Warmth blooms in my chest despite myself.
“I don’t know about chihuahua,” I say, lips twitching. “I see myself more as… a fox. Cute. Clever. Will absolutely ruin your life if underestimated.”
He grins outright.
We hold each other’s gaze for a beat too long, something unspoken tightening the air. Then I break it, because if I don’t, I might forget why I’m still fighting.
“I don’t want to be a housewife,” I say abruptly.
Giovanni blinks.
“That wasn’t a question.”
“I’m clarifying,” I reply. “Before assumptions get made.”
He leans back against his desk, arms folding.
“Go on.”
“Before I met you, I was studying for my real estate licence,” I continue. “Commercial focus. Development. Urban renewal. I like spaces. How they change people. How money reshapes neighbourhoods for better or worse.”
His gaze sharpens, interest unmistakable. “You’d fit in my empire, bellezza,” he says slowly. “Property is the spine of this city.”
“That’s not an offer,” I warn.
“No,” he agrees. “It’s an observation.”
I hesitate. “I don’t want to disappear into your world. I want… agency.”
He considers that, then smiles with dangerous ease. “You could also give me heirs if you get bored.”
I snort. “Oh, absolutely not.”
“Shame,” he murmurs. “You’d make formidable ones.”
I step closer, jabbing a finger into his chest. “I’m not a womb with legs, Giovanni Dragoni.”
His hand closes gently around my wrist, stopping me without force. “And I am not a man who would cage you.”
“Yet.”
His eyes darken. “Yet,” he agrees. “But don’t mistake my desire for you to be mine with a lack of respect for who you are.”
I search his face, unsure whether to believe him, unsure whether it matters that I want to.
He leans in, kisses me, slow, claiming, familiar, and before I can regroup, he swings me up into his arms like I weigh nothing at all.
I yelp, then laugh despite myself, clutching his shoulders.
“Time to take you home,” he says against my temple. “Mia mugghieri.”
I should argue.
I don’t.
And as he carries me out of the office, past the empire that is now unavoidably part of my life, I know one thing with bone-deep certainty.
Whatever comes next, whatever the streets have planned, whatever La Fratellanza is sharpening in the dark, I will not face it as an ornament.
I will face it as myself.
Giovanni
Morning comes to me in fragments.
Warmth. Breath. The faint press of skin against skin.
Lucia is half tangled with me, one thigh thrown over my hip, her hair a dark spill across my chest, her mouth parted in sleep like she trusts the world not to hurt her while she rests.
The thought pushes harder than it should.
I lie still for a moment, listening to the quiet of the house, to the distant movements of guards changing shifts, to the steady rhythm of her breathing.
This…this is the part that unsettles me.
Not the danger. Not the war coming like a tide I can already taste in the air. This quiet intimacy that asks nothing and gives everything.
My hand moves almost of its own accord, tracing the curve of her spine, down to the small of her back, memorising her again as though I haven’t already done so a hundred times. She stirs, murmurs something incoherent, presses closer.
We have not consummated our marriage.
The irony would make my father laugh himself hoarse.
Any other woman would have tested my patience beyond reason by now. I have never been a man who tolerates being strung along, teased without resolution, kept waiting while desire sharpens into something ugly.
Sex has always been simple to me: take, give, move on.
Lucia has undone that certainty completely by not being a vessel or a convenience. She’s not a warm body to be used and discarded.
She is… everything else.
Her defiance. Her mouth. Her mind. The way she looks at me like she’s constantly deciding whether to fight or forgive me. It fascinates me in a way that borders on dangerous obsession, and the knowledge tightens something low in my gut.
I push the boundary again because the challenge of her is irresistible.
Deliberately.
My hand slides down her side, slow, deliberate, tracing the dip of her waist before settling on the curve of her hip. She stirs, a soft hum vibrating in her throat, but she doesn’t wake fully.
I follow the line of her jaw, my lips brushing against her skin before my teeth graze just hard enough to leave the faintest imprint. She tastes like sleep and something sweet, like the wine we shared last night, lingering on her tongue.
I flick out my tongue to taste her, feel the moment her body reacts: the way her pulse jumps beneath my lips, the way her skin warms instantly, as if she’s been waiting for this just as long as I have.
“Mmm,” she murmurs, shifting slightly, her fingers flexing against my shoulder before her nails dig in, just a little, just enough to tell me she’s waking up.
“Giovanni.”
Her voice is rough with sleep, but there’s something else there too: a thread of warning, but thicker than that, richer, is the unmistakable pull of invitation.
She doesn’t tell me to stop. She doesn’t push me away. Instead, her thighs press together, just slightly, like she’s trying to ease an ache I put there.
I kiss her again, deeper this time, slower.
My lips part against hers, my tongue sliding into her mouth with a possessive stroke, claiming her.
She melts into it, her body arching towards mine, her fingers curling into the muscles of my shoulder.
I let the kiss stretch, let the tension between us build until it’s thick enough to choke on, until the air between us crackles like a live wire.
When I finally pull back, it’s just enough to let her breathe, just enough to let my words sink in.
“Lucia, my bella ragazza,” I murmur, my voice rough, my accent thicker with desire.
My hands slide up her body, palming her breasts, my thumbs finding her nipples and circling them until they tighten into hard little peaks.
She gasps, her back arching, pushing herself further into my touch. She whimpers when I pull back.
“W-what are you doing?”
“Making this better. Get up here. Straddle me.”
Her eyes flicker open, dark and dazed with sleep and something darker, something hungrier.
For a second, she hesitates, her gaze searching mine, uncertainty flickering there. But I don’t let her think too long.
My fingers pinch her nipples, just hard enough to make her whimper, her hips jerking forward involuntarily. “Umm…”
“Trust me,” I murmur, my voice a low rumble against her ear. I guide her hips, my hands firm on her waist, lifting her just enough to shift her over me. “Let me taste you.”
She swallows, her throat working, her breath coming faster now. I can see the battle in her eyes—the part of her that wants to be good, to resist, warring with the part that wants to give in, to let me ruin her.
But I already know which side will win.
I’ve seen the way she looks at me when she thinks I’m not paying attention. I’ve felt the way her body responds when I touch her, when I tell her what to do.
Slowly, she nods, her fingers trembling as she reaches for the headboard, gripping the carved wood like it’s the only thing keeping her grounded.
I help her, my hands on her waist, lifting her until she’s straddling my face, her thighs bracketing my head, her pussy hovering just above my mouth.