Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Vittoria
The mirror doesn't lie. Neither does Amanda's face.
"He's going to lose his freaking mind." She stands behind me, hands clasped together like she's watching a masterpiece unveil itself. "Babe. Babe. I'm actually jealous of a Russian mobster right now."
I smooth my hands down the black silk. The dress is a fitted bodice that hugs my curves without screaming desperate, a neckline that hints at cleavage without giving everything away, and a slit that stops just high enough to make a man wonder. Elegant.
Sexy as hell.
"It's not too much?" I reach for the gold earrings on my vanity. Simple drops. Nothing flashy.
"It's perfect." Amanda adjusts a strand of my hair, which we spent forty-five minutes curling into soft waves. "You look like you could run a Fortune 500 company by day and destroy a man's entire existence by night."
"That's... oddly specific."
"I've been workshopping it all afternoon."
The gold slides through my earlobes. I add the matching bracelet. My nails are a deep red, almost black. My makeup took two hours. Smoky eyes that make the brown look almost black. Lips the color of crushed roses.
Nine hours. We spent nine hours preparing for this dinner.
It's just strategy, I remind myself. Playing his game better than he plays it.
A knock rattles my door.
"Vittoria?" The door opens before I can answer, and Dante's dark head appears. His eyes sweep over me once. Quick and brotherly. "You ready? Car's waiting."
Of course it's Dante. Not just Elio, who would stand silently and ask zero questions. No, Pietro sent Dante. The man who practically grew up in our house, who taught me to throw a punch when I was twelve, who once threatened to castrate a boy for looking at me wrong at a family barbecue.
This is going to be a nightmare.
"Three minutes," I say.
Dante's jaw tightens. He doesn't like this. Doesn't like me going to dinner with a Bratva heir, doesn't like the dress, doesn't like any of it. But Pietro gave the order, so Dante nods once and closes the door.
Amanda waits until his footsteps fade.
"You nervous?"
"No." I turn back to the mirror, adjusting my bracelet. "I don't even want him, remember? This is just playing the game."
Amanda laughs.
"Right. Sure." She flops onto my bed, blonde hair fanning across my pillows. "We just spent nine hours at the spa. Facials. Manicures. Hair. Makeup. Then we went shopping for the dress—not a dress, the dress—and you tried on seventeen options before finding this one."
"Seventeen wasn't that many—"
"You made the saleswoman nervous, Vittoria."
"She was being dramatic."
"You told her the coral made you look like a dying fish."
"It did."
Amanda props herself up on her elbows, green eyes glittering with amusement. "And you want me to believe you don't want him? That all of this"—she gestures at me, at the dress, at the nine hours of preparation—"is just strategy?"
My fingers still on the bracelet clasp.
She's wrong. She has to be wrong.
I don't want Dmitri Baganov. I want to beat him at his own game. I want to walk into that restaurant looking so devastating that he chokes. I want him to realize that manipulating a Sartori comes with consequences.
That's all.
That's all.
"It's strategy," I repeat. Firmer this time.
Amanda rolls her eyes so hard I'm surprised they don't get stuck. "Okay, sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night." She sits up, tucking her legs beneath her. "But just so you know? If you decide to throw strategy out the window and just fuck him instead? That's also a valid option."
"Amanda."
"What? I'm just saying!" She throws her hands up. "He's hot. Like, criminally hot. Literally. And you've been celibate for two years—"
"I haven't been—"
"Your vibrator doesn't count."
My cheeks burn. "I hate you."
"You love me." She grins, utterly unrepentant. "And I love you, which is why I'm telling you that it's okay to want something. Even if that something is a six-foot-whatever Russian with control issues and a stalking habit."
I grab my clutch from the vanity. Black satin. Small enough to hold my phone, my lipstick, and the tiny knife I always carry. "I'm leaving now."
"Have fun!" Amanda calls after me. "Use protection! Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"
"That leaves the field pretty open," I mutter, stepping into the hallway.
Dante waits at the top of the stairs. His dark eyes find me immediately, and something complicated moves through his expression.
Dante isn't much of a talker. He nods and walks.
I follow him down the stairs.
Outside, the night air hits my bare shoulders. Cool. Crisp. The black SUV idles at the curb, engine purring.
Dante opens the back door for me.
I pause, one hand on the frame.
This is just strategy. Playing his game. Nothing more.
I slide into the darkness of the backseat, and the door closes behind me.
Elio drives. Dante sits in the passenger seat.
Neither of them speaks.
This is normal. Dante Castellani doesn't do conversation. He does silence. He does presence. He does the kind of quiet that makes other men nervous because they can't figure out what he's thinking.
I've known Dante my entire life. He's been part of our family since before I could walk. Lorenzo's shadow. My father's most trusted soldier.
And I know absolutely nothing about him.
If someone asked me today—tell me about Dante Castellani—I'd have nothing. No family stories. No childhood memories. No favorite food or music or place he'd rather be. The man is a vault. Sealed tight. Combination known only to himself and maybe, maybe, Lorenzo.
I watch the back of his head as the city lights slide past the windows. Dark hair, perfectly trimmed. Broad shoulders that fill the seat. He's handsome in an objective way. Sharp jaw. The kind of face that belongs in magazines or movies, except there's no warmth behind it.
Robot. That's what Amanda called him once.
She wasn't wrong.
Dmitri
She's late.
Twenty-three minutes late, to be exact. I've counted every one of them.
The waiter approaches for the third time. I wave him off without looking, my eyes fixed on the entrance. Celestine caters to Chicago's elite. Politicians, businessmen, the occasional celebrity seeking privacy. Tonight, every table is full except the four surrounding mine.
I bought them all.
Twenty-four minutes now.
She thinks she's clever. Thinks arriving late will rattle me, throw me off balance, give her some advantage in whatever game she believes we're playing.
Solnyshko, you have no idea who you're dealing with.
I've waited long enough. I can wait twenty-four more minutes.
The sommelier hovers nearby, a bottle of Barolo breathing on the table. I chose it specifically. The 2015 vintage from her family's own vineyard in Tuscany. A small detail. A message. I know everything about you.
Twenty-six minutes.
The front door opens.
Dante Castellani walks in first, his dark eyes scanning the room with the practiced efficiency of a man who's killed in places like this. He spots me immediately.
Then she appears behind him.
Bozhe moy.
The air leaves my lungs.
The dress she wears cuts low across her chest, revealing her collarbone, the soft shadow between her breasts. Gold drips from her ears, circles her throat, catches at her wrist. Her dark hair falls in waves past her shoulders, and her lips—
Those lips are painted the color of sin.
I stand.
She moves like she owns this room. Like she owns every room she enters. Her chin lifted, her shoulders back, her eyes fixed on mine with a challenge that makes my cock twitch against my zipper.
She dressed like this for me.
She dressed like this to destroy me.
The ma?tre d' guides her to my table. Dante takes position near the wall, close enough to intervene, far enough to give us privacy. His presence irritates me, but I expected it. Pietro Sartori protects what's his.
Soon, she'll be mine to protect.
I extend my hand toward her.
She pauses. Just a heartbeat. Then her fingers slide across my palm. I want to lick her wrist. I want to trace my tongue up her arm, across her shoulder, down the valley between her breasts. I want to taste every inch of her until she's trembling and crying my name.
Instead, I lift her hand to my lips.
I press a kiss to her knuckles. My eyes never leave hers.
Her pulse jumps beneath my thumb.
There you are, solnyshko.
She sits without speaking. The waiter materializes to adjust her chair, pour her wine, recite the evening's specials. She ignores him completely, her gaze locked on mine across the candlelit table.
I sit.
Silence stretches between us.
The waiter retreats. Conversations murmur around us. Somewhere, a woman laughs. None of it matters. Nothing exists except this woman and the electricity crackling in the space between us.
She thinks she's started a game.
She thinks her silence will unnerve me, force me to speak first, give her the upper hand.
Moya krasotka. My beautiful girl. You don't understand patience. You don't understand what it means to want something so badly you'd burn the world to possess it, then wait years for the perfect moment to strike.
I've built empires on patience.
I've destroyed men with it.
I pick up my wine glass. Take a slow sip. Set it down.
Her eyes track every movement.
The candlelight plays across her features—the sharp line of her jaw, the full curve of her lower lip, the intelligence burning in those dark eyes. She's calculating. Trying to find my weakness.
She doesn't realize she's already found it.
She is my weakness.
The silence holds. One minute. Two. The waiter glances our way nervously, uncertain whether to approach. I give him nothing.
Her fingers curl around the stem of her wine glass. She hasn't drunk yet. Testing me. Waiting for me to speak, to break, to give her ammunition.
I won't.
I've interrogated men for hours without speaking a single word. I've sat in rooms thick with blood and screaming, my face perfectly blank, my breathing perfectly even, until my targets broke from the silence alone.
Vittoria Sartori is magnificent.
But she is not stronger than me.
"Why do you want to marry me?"
Direct. No games. No pretense. Just those dark eyes fixed on mine, demanding truth.
I admire that.
I set down my wine glass. "I need a wife. You need a husband. We can make that happen."
She picks up her own glass and takes a slow sip. The Barolo stains her lips darker.
"That doesn't sound like an answer." She sets the glass down with deliberate care. "That sounds like a business transaction."
"It is a business transaction."
"Then why me specifically?" She leans forward slightly.
The candlelight catches the gold at her throat, the shadows between her breasts.
"There are dozens of women from connected families who would marry you tomorrow.
Women who would actually want this arrangement.
Why pursue someone who's made it clear she's not interested? "
Because every time I close my eyes, I see your face.
I can't say that. Not yet.
Instead, I reach for my wine. Take a long drink. Let the silence stretch between us again.
"I will marry you," I say finally, "because no one else will."
Her eyebrow arches. A perfect curve of skepticism. "Excuse me?"
"Every man who gets close to you." I set my glass down. "Every man who tries to court you. Every man who thinks he might marry the Sartori princess." I hold her gaze. "They will end up dead."
She doesn't flinch.
Most women would. Most women would push back from the table, signal their guard, flee into the night. But Vittoria Sartori sits perfectly still, her dark eyes searching my face for something. Truth, maybe. Or madness.
Her throat moves as she swallows.
"You're threatening to kill anyone who wants to marry me."
"Not threatening." I let the corner of my mouth lift. "Promising."
"That's insane."
"Perhaps."
"That's possessive."
"Definitely."
She stares at me for a long moment. The restaurant continues around us. None of it touches us. We exist in our own bubble of tension and heat.
"Let me make sure I understand." Her voice has gone quiet. Controlled. "You expect me to agree to marry a man who would murder anyone else who tried to have me. A man who admits—openly, at dinner, in a public restaurant—that he's willing to kill to make me his."
I lean back in my chair. "Yes."
"Why would I agree to that?"
I smile.
"That," I say softly, "is exactly why you'll agree."
Her breath catches. Just barely. Just enough for me to notice.
Silence.
The candle flame dances between us.
Then, slowly, impossibly, the corner of her mouth curves upward.
"You're absolutely insane," she says.
"Yes."
"You've been stalking me for a month."
"Longer than that."
"You just admitted you'd commit murder to keep other men away from me."
"Multiple murders, if necessary."
She picks up her wine glass. Takes a long sip. Sets it down.
"Tell me something, Dmitri Baganov." She leans forward, and I catch a hint of her perfume. I can smell a flower that makes me want to bury my face in her neck and breathe her in until she's all I can smell. "If I'm going to marry a monster... what exactly do I get out of it?"
My smile widens.
There she is.