Chapter 4
Chapter Four
It took another ten hours of work—with Logan at his computer doing his cyber-god thing, and Gideon on the phone with his connections—but Gideon and Logan had finally scrubbed every bit of that AI image and its aftermath from the internet.
Logan had also found the guy Robbie Wilkens hired to create the image in the first place, and he’d given that man’s address to Lucian, their younger brother, who was best described as silent, deadly, and a little… unhinged.
As brothers, they would kill for each other, but Lucian was the only one of them who’d ever actually done it.
And was good at it, even though none of them ever asked for details—not that he’d tell them anything even if they wanted to know.
His head aching from hours of mental grinding, his body aching from the tension in his muscles, and his anger roiling, Gideon was so not in the fucking mood to deal with bullshit when Isabella Motherfucking Mancini slunk into his office too fucking early.
The woman’s painted lips gleamed in the overhead light as she smiled her viperous smile, her eyes glinting.
Brushing her long, blonde hair off her shoulder as she walked, she stopped just on the other side of his desk, crossing her arms over her waist in a move he knew meant to draw attention to her breasts.
He’d give it to her, she was a beautiful woman—long legs, fuckable body, a face to launch a million ships—but that’s where the beauty stopped.
Inside, beneath the Mafia princess glamor, was a creature of vanity, arrogance, and cruelty.
“You look tired, Gideon, darling…” she practically purred, tipping her head to the side, her dark brown eyes slowly scorching along his body, taking in the freshly donned suit he’d put on that morning after a quick shower.
Because running an international business empire often required staying in the office all hours, his massive office suite included a full bathroom and walk-in closet, and a small, window-less bedroom designed to for him catch a few hours of sleep between overseas calls during a crisis.
“Tough night?” Isabella continued, her gaze, once again, devouring him from his head to his Italian shoes.
There was a sharpness to her gaze; an ownership and possessiveness that made his blood turn to ice and his guts churn.
Fuck, he did not need the Mafia princess getting any motherfucking ideas—he was already having enough problems with the one woman he had, he didn’t need another one to add to the fucking mess.
Snarling, annoyed at her fucking gall, he replied, “Why are you here, Isabella?”
And why does it feel like you have some venomous plan in the works?
After the hours he’d poured into dealing with Wilkens, the AI photo and the fallout, and Logan’s frustrating sideways glances every time Gideon looked at his watch, Gideon was barely holding back the beast, snapping and growling to get at the bitch in front of him, tear out her throat, and get home to Kendra…
sleeping all warm and soft and sweet in their bed.
It wasn’t one of their usual fuck days, but—goddamn—he needed a release for the stress and the rage turning every inch of his body into a vibrating tower of desperate, carnal demands.
Fuck, if Isabella hadn’t come uninvited, he’d have taken himself in hand in the bathroom and jerked himself to images of his lush wife, naked, pink, and whimpering as she took his cock.
And since he was an asshole, but not a cheating one, he refused to even consider letting the woman standing before him help in the “relief efforts.”
No, he wasn’t a cheater, which meant he only ever desired his wife—despite what the tabloids were saying about him and Isabella Mancini.
How long had it been since he’d even seen Kendra? Fucked her? Breathed in that delicious warm sugar-cookie smell that always lingered on her heated skin? Days. Too many days.
The beast inside whimpered, as though it missed her.
Fuck! Get a grip!
Gideon hadn’t been home yet, hadn’t seen Kendra, but that couldn’t be helped, because after he finally left Logan’s office, there wasn’t enough time to get to his penthouse on Billionaire’s Row, shower, dress, and then get back to the office for the next call with Mancini, who demanded a report on the “mistake” first thing in the morning.
Isabella swanned over and sat on the loveseat against the far window, where he’d set up a lounge for the more casual business meetings, the lunches he shared with his brothers, and those long nights when sitting on his throne behind his desk became too much.
“I’m here, darling Gideon, because I heard about what happened.
” She peered at him, faux pity and concern in her dark eyes.
She tsked, shaking her head. “When Daddy told me, I knew it had to have been a lie—Gideon Maddox doesn’t make mistakes, so how could he miss something so damaging as a picture of my brother and the mayor’s brother? ”
Of course, she knew the details, but there was something about how she spoke with such confidence about it that made his spine snap straight.
Picking up his cell from his desk, he shot a quick text to Logan, who was more than likely still awake, then slipped the phone into his pocket.
“If you know about the picture, then you know it was an AI fabrication meant to grab headlines and stir up trouble,” Gideon replied, his voice strained at holding back the brimstone he really wanted to rain down on the Mafia bitch.
Fuck, he didn’t like her—never had. He’d first met her when she was a toddler on her nanny’s hip.
Over the years, he’d watched her grow up in the Mancini household as the pampered only daughter of the Tempesta Family underboss.
As she’d grown, she’d become more vain, more narcissistic, more demanding, greedy, and cruel.
Whatever Isabella Mancini wanted, she got, and she’d wanted Gideon Maddox for ten years.
“Of course, I know, Gideon, but my father is old school; he has no understanding of AI or just how much power it can wield—but I do,” she’d said, her voice turning sultry.
“I could help you with him, Gideon, help smooth things over with Daddy.” She crossed her legs, slowly, allowing the slit in her body-hugging pencil skirt to ride up until the lacy top of her black thigh-high stocking was exposed.
She caught him noticing and smirked, like she’d just caught him ogling her—which hadn’t been the case.
“How exactly can you help me, Isabella?” he asked, damning Logan for putting that idea out into the universe where Isabella found it.
She shrugged, then tossed her hair over her shoulder.
“Daddy listens to me, he trusts me, which means he will do what I tell him,” she answered. Gideon had no doubt that was true; the woman had gotten away with murder at least twice that he knew of, and Papa Mancini just put more money on her credit cards and told her to stay out of trouble.
Gideon shifted, widening his stance, preparing himself for what he knew was coming.
“And what is it you’d want in return for helping me, Isabella?” he asked, planting his hands on his desk, to brace for impact.
She shrugged again, her gaze going sharp as a blade, her smile turning predatory.
When he’d first thought of a contract marriage, Adrian had suggested Isabella, but Gideon had immediately shut that shit down.
He refused to entwine his life any tighter with the New York Mafia.
Being Adolfo Mancini’s media fixer was stressful enough; being his son-in-law would have been a fucking nightmare.
And while Isabella was definitely arm -trophy material for galas and the paparazzi, she wasn’t wife or mother material.
She was so self-centered and selfish there was no way she’d ever have a baby, which would have made the arrangement moot anyway.
And when he’d informed Mancini of his marriage to Kendra, the man had stiffly congratulated him…
but Isabella threw a fucking tantrum big enough to involve the police from three different boroughs.
Covering that up hand been a pain in the ass, but he’d done it because that was what Mancini expected of him.
Since then, Isabella had made it a habit of popping in to see him uninvited and unwanted, or showing up wherever he was in public—so, of course, the tabloids wrote shit about it.
Yes, he could “fix” that, but Mancini hadn’t given that order, choosing to let his daughter have her “harmless” fun.
Which meant Gideon was stuck in a scandalous “situationship” with the Mafia princess—a harmless one.
He mentally sneered at that.
It wasn’t harmless to him and his marriage, though; he knew Kendra saw that bullshit, that she had to deal with the whispers and looks from people who knew them, but that was all part of being his wife.
She had to suck it up and deal with it—it was the least she could do since she was failing at the one thing he’d married her for.
Exhausted, already stressed, already simmering with unspent rage, and with a full day of Mafia bullshit ahead of him, he was not ready to deal with the reminder that he was still without an heir three years later.
As if reading his mind, Isabella purred, “Kendra isn’t the right woman for you, Gideon. She isn’t like us; she doesn’t have the skills or connections or even the class to stand beside you.”
Each word pummeled him, making his chest burn. He hadn’t cared about any of that when he’d chosen Kendra, and he still didn’t.
“What does that have to do with you helping me, Isabella? Get to the fucking point,” he snapped, well over the conversation, and still peering down the gun barrel of the phone call with Mancini in an hour.
Isabella rose to her feet, five-foot-ten of leggy, blonde Mafia bitch. She glided toward him until she was just across the desk from him, then she leaned down, placing her hands just centimeters from where his were planted.
“Divorce her, marry me, and I’ll help you deal with Daddy—keep things like what happened with the sleazy photog from ever happening again.”
Suddenly, everything fell into place, the glaring truth slammed into him, and he tensed.
Holy fucking shit…it had been a set up from the beginning.
All fucking night, he and Logan had banged their heads against the wall, trying to figure out why Wilkens, a two bit, low-life scumbag would pay someone to create an AI image of two prominent figures, and then sell it to a dime store rag in a mid-sized town more known for Frank Sinatra than political scandal.
Now, he knew.
Isabella had engineered everything—and he would bet his entire Patek Phillipe collection that she’d maneuvered him into this very position to get what she’d always wanted from him.
A ring. A place in his bed. And the prestige and power and bragging rights that came with being the wife of one of the wealthiest men in the US.
“Not a fucking chance,” he spat. “There isn’t a thing you can offer me that would ever make me divorce my wife and marry you.”
A dark, malicious shadow shifted over Isabella’s face, her bottomless, black eyes narrowing on him.
For a moment, he wondered if he’d signed his own death warrant with his rejection.
But, in the next breath, he reeled back, fucking shocked.
Isabella straightened to her full height, and curled her lips at him in a smile that would have made a lesser man shudder.
Finally, she said, “I can give you a baby.”
Before his synapses could even fire to comprehend what she’d said, his cell rang a familiar ringtone, like the air sirens signaling an incoming tornado.
Adolfo Mancini was calling.