Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Bruno
She hung up on me.
I stare at the phone in my hand. The screen's gone dark. Call ended.
She actually hung up on me.
No one hangs up on me. Not my brothers. Not my men. Not anyone who wants to keep breathing.
And this woman just ended our conversation like I was some telemarketer she couldn't be bothered with.
I should be furious.
I am furious.
So why the hell is my mouth twitching?
I run my thumb across the dark screen. She's got nerve. I'll give her that. Most people see the wheelchair and assume I'm weak. Broken. Something to pity or dismiss.
She saw the wheelchair and decided to pick a fight anyway.
Stupid. Reckless. Naive.
Interesting.
No. Not interesting. Annoying. She's annoying.
I need to establish control. Now. Before she gets the idea that she can walk all over me.
I pull up our text thread and type.
The next time you hang up on me, you'll regret it.
I hit send. Watch the message deliver. Watch it show as read almost immediately.
Three dots appear. She's typing.
Good. Let her apologize. Let her realize she made a mistake.
The dots disappear.
Then reappear.
Then her message comes through.
Promises, promises. Goodnight, husband.
I read it twice.
Three times.
Promises, promises.
She's mocking me. She's actually fucking mocking me.
And that word. Husband. Dripping with sarcasm even through text. I can hear her voice saying it. That slight edge. That challenge.
My grip tightens on the phone until the case creaks.
She thinks this is a game. She thinks she can push me and I'll just sit here and take it. That I'm some toothless dog she can poke without consequence.
She's wrong.
I toss the phone onto the bed and grab my wheelchair's push rims. The movement is sharp. Angry. My arms burn as I propel myself toward the door.
My room is in the east wing. Hers is in the west.
I didn't choose to see her tonight.
But she's going to see me anyway.
My arms ache. I've been pushing myself too hard in physical therapy. Will warned me about overexertion. About setting back my progress.
I don't care.
The west wing stretches ahead of me. Longer than I remembered. Or maybe it just feels that way because every rotation of my wheels feeds my anger.
Promises, promises.
Who does she think she is?
She's nobody.
Her door appears at the end of the hallway. Closed. A thin strip of light glows underneath.
She's still awake.
Good.
I don't knock. Don't announce myself. Just grab the handle and push.
The door swings open.
And I freeze.
She's standing in the middle of the room with her back to me. The wedding dress pools around her waist, half-unzipped. Her shoulders are bare. Her spine curves down to where white silk bunches at her hips. She's wearing nothing underneath except a thin strip of lace.
My mouth goes dry.
"What the—" She spins around.
Her arms fly up to cover her chest. Too late. I've already seen the swell of her breasts. The soft curve of her stomach. The way her skin glows golden in the lamplight.
"Get out!" She grabs a pillow from the bed and clutches it against her body. "Are you insane? You can't just barge in here!"
I should leave.
I should apologize and wheel backward and close the door and pretend this never happened.
I don't move.
My eyes won't obey me. They trace the line of her collarbone. The hollow of her throat. The way her chest heaves with angry breaths behind that pillow.
"Bruno!" Her voice cracks like a whip. "I said get out!"
Still nothing. My hands grip the armrests of my wheelchair. Knuckles white. Every muscle locked.
"Are you deaf?" She takes a step toward me. Then another. The pillow stays pressed against her chest but her shoulders are still bare. Still catching the light. "I'm talking to you!"
She's close now. Close enough that I can see the flush spreading across her skin. Close enough to smell jasmine.
And then she's right in front of me.
And I see her face.
Really see it. Without the veil. Without the distance of the altar between us.
Her eyes are green.
Not just green. The green of summer leaves. Of emeralds. Of something alive and burning. They're too big for her face. Too bright.
Her lips are parted. Full. Pink. The bottom one slightly fuller than the top.
There's a beauty mark above the left corner of her mouth.
She's not pretty.
Pretty is the wrong word. Pretty is too small. Too ordinary.
She's—
Angel.
The word surfaces from somewhere deep. Somewhere I thought I'd buried. She looks like something that doesn't belong in my world. Something soft and bright that wandered into the darkness by mistake.
"Bruno." Her voice drops. Quieter now. Confused. "What are you doing?"
I can't answer.
I can't think.
I can't do anything except stare at her face like I've never seen a woman before. Like she's the first one. The only one.
Her brow furrows. Those green eyes search mine. Looking for something. An explanation. A reason.
I have nothing to give her.
"You need to leave." She says it slowly. Carefully. Like she's talking to someone who might not understand. "Now."
She reaches past me.
Her arm brushes my shoulder. Bare skin against my suit jacket. Electric.
And then the door slams in my face.
I blink.
Once.
Twice.
The hallway is dark. Empty. The strip of light under her door mocks me.
What the hell just happened?
I came here to establish control. To remind her who she's dealing with. To make her understand that hanging up on me has consequences.
Instead I sat there like a statue while she yelled at me. While she walked toward me half-naked. While she closed the door in my face like I was nothing.
My hands are shaking.
I look down at them. Watch them tremble against the armrests. Can't make them stop.
Green eyes.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Try to force the image away. Her face. Her lips. That beauty mark.
It doesn't work.
She's burned into my retinas. Into my brain. Into whatever part of me I thought had died two years ago.
Angel.
No.
She's not an angel. She's a transaction. A test. A means to an end.
I don't want her.
I can't want her.
I told her I'd never touch her. Meant it. Still mean it.
So why can't I stop seeing her?
I grab the push rims. Force my arms to move. The wheelchair rolls backward. Away from her door. Away from the light.
The hallway stretches ahead of me. Dark and empty and endless.
I push harder. Faster. My shoulders burn. My chest aches.
Doesn't matter.
I need distance. Need to get back to my room. Need to lock myself away and forget what just happened.
Forget the way her skin looked in the lamplight.
Forget the curve of her spine.
Forget those green eyes staring up at me like she could see straight through to my bones.
Promises, promises.
Her text echoes in my head. Mocking. Challenging.
She has no idea what she's doing. No idea who she's dealing with.
And neither do I.
Because the man who wheeled down this hallway ten minutes ago was angry. Controlled. Certain.
The man wheeling back is none of those things.
I reach my room. Slam the door behind me. Sit in the darkness and try to breathe.
My phone glows on the bed where I threw it.
I don't touch it.
Don't trust myself to.
Because if I pick it up, I'll text her. And if I text her, I'll say something I can't take back. Something that reveals how completely she just destroyed every wall I spent two years building.
Angel.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes.
This changes nothing.
She's still a transaction. Still a test. Still someone I need to keep at arm's length until Pietro is satisfied and I can take my rightful place as Don.
I don't want her.
I don't know her.
I won't want her.
I refuse to want her.
Antonella
The door rattles in its frame from how hard I slammed it.
My hands won't stop shaking.
I press my back against the wood and slide down until I'm sitting on the floor. The pillow is still clutched against my chest. My wedding dress pools around me like a white puddle.
What was that?
I've been stared at before. Men look. They always look. I learned to ignore it years ago.
But Bruno didn't just look.
He saw.
His eyes moved over my body like he was trying to learn every inch. Like he was taking inventory. And then when he looked at my face—
I shiver.
His expression didn't change. That's what unsettles me most. His face stayed frozen. Unreadable. A mask carved from stone. But his eyes...
His eyes burned.
I pull my knees up to my chest. The silk of my dress rustles against the hardwood floor. Cold seeps through the fabric.
I'm not scared.
That's the strange part. I should be scared. A man I barely know just barged into my room while I was undressing. A man who controls an empire built on violence. A man everyone in this house warned me about.
Don't cross him.
Stay out of his way.
Giulia said it when she showed me to my room. Vittoria said it in the car. Even the guards who escorted me through the compound said it with their eyes. Everyone in this house walks on eggshells around Bruno Sartori.
And I just slammed a door in his face.
A laugh bubbles up in my throat. Hysterical. Wrong. I swallow it down.
I knew what this marriage might mean. I'm not naive. I understood the implications. A wife has duties. Obligations. I prepared myself for the possibility that my husband—whoever he turned out to be—would expect things from me.
Physical things.
I've had sex before. Twice. Both times awkward and fumbling and over too quickly to mean anything. I never understood what the fuss was about. Never felt that desperate need other women described.
But I accepted that it might be part of this arrangement. That I might have to lie beneath a stranger and let him use my body to satisfy whatever urges he had. I made peace with that possibility before I ever walked down the aisle.
What I didn't prepare for was Bruno.