CHAPTER ONE #6
"Jiana! Stop! Breathe!" Vincent’s command cracked like thunder across the marble lobby, cutting her off instantly. "Listen to me. She's here."
A dead, stunned silence hung over the line.
"What?" Jiana choked out, her voice trembling. "What did you say?"
"She's in New York. She is standing right in front of me in the lobby on Fifty-Second," Vincent said, his voice softening just a fraction, though the tension in his shoulders remained rigid as iron. "She's completely unharmed, Jiana. She's safe. She's with me."
A broken, weeping sob of sheer relief echoed through the phone. "Oh God... oh thank God. Put her on. Let me talk to her—"
"Not yet," Vincent said firmly. "I'm handling it. Stay in the house, lock the gates, and wait for my call. I'm taking care of this right now."
He hung up without giving her a chance to argue, shoving the phone back into his pocket. When he turned back to me, the relief in his eyes had been completely replaced by an authoritarian wall of steel.
"We're leaving," Vincent stated, reaching down to grab the strap of my heavy duffle bag. "I'm having my driver take us straight to Teterboro. I'll have a private charter waiting on the tarmac to fly you back to Ohio before dinner."
The words hit me like a physical blow.
"What?" I stepped back, jerking my duffle bag out of his reach. "No! Did you not hear a single word I just told you? I'm not getting on a plane!"
"Guilietta, this is not a negotiation," Vincent snapped, his voice dropping into a harsh, commanding tone that brooked no defiance.
"You cannot be here. You have no idea what this city is.
It is dangerous, it is unstable, and you are completely exposed.
You are getting on that plane, you are going back to your mother, and we will handle the situation in Cleveland from there. "
"Handle the situation?" I laughed, a bitter, hysterical sound that drew the nervous stares of the security guards.
"You mean send me right back to the house where Joshua is stalking the driveway?
Send me back to the campus where everyone knows my best friend was fucking my boyfriend behind my back? "
"Guilietta, watch your language—"
"I don't care about my language!" Tears of pure fury burned in my eyes as eleven years of resentment boiled over.
"You never tell me anything! You keep me locked away in Ohio like some fragile secret, you fly in for thirty-six hours a few times a month, and the second my life falls apart and I come to my own father for help, you treat me like a biohazard and try to ship me back across the country! "
"You don't understand what's at stake here!
" Vincent grabbed my shoulder, his grip tight, his eyes wide with a frantic, protective desperation.
"My world is not safe for you, baby. There are people in this city who would use you to destroy everything I've built.
I kept you in Cleveland to keep you alive! Now let me take you home."
"No!" I yanked myself out of his grasp with all the strength I had.
Beside us, Giuseppe shifted. He didn't reach for a weapon, and he didn't raise his voice, but his large frame subtly stepped between Vincent and me, his presence creating a barrier that forced my father to pause.
"Vincent," Giuseppe said quietly, his dark eyes flicking to mine with an unreadable, intense heat. "Let her speak."
"Stay out of this, Giuseppe," Vincent warned between clenched teeth. "This is my daughter."
"I know who she is," Giuseppe murmured, never breaking eye contact with me.
I looked at my father, seeing the stubborn, uncompromising authority written across every line of his face.
He wasn't going to let me stay. He was going to put me in a car, lock me on a plane, and drag me right back into the suffocating humiliation I had just escaped.
He thought he could manage my life like a balance sheet.
Not anymore.
"I'm nineteen years old," I said, my voice dropping into a low, icy clarity that made both men stare at me. "I am an adult. You don't own me, Dad, and you can't force me onto a plane."
"Guilietta, don't do this—" Vincent reached for my arm again.
"I am never going back to that apartment, I am never going back to Joshua, and I am not leaving New York!" I shouted, the words echoing off the granite walls. "If you won't give me a place to stay, I will figure it out myself! Without you. Nothing new about that."
Before my father could react, before the security guards could process what was happening, I snatched my duffle bag from the floor, spun on my heel, and bolted.
"Guilietta! Stop!" Vincent’s roar shook the lobby.
I didn't look back. I sprinted past the turnstiles, ducked under the outstretched hand of a stunned security guard, and threw my entire weight against the heavy glass revolving door.
I hit the roaring, crowded sidewalk of Park Avenue at a dead run, plunging into the Manhattan autumn wind with my heart hammering in my throat and the dark, piercing image of Giuseppe Silvestri’s eyes burned indelibly into my mind.
Under the Veil