Chapter 2
The Colleoni villa was silent. It wasn't the peaceful quiet of a country night, but a dead, hollow silence that resonated from the ancient stone walls. It was the sound of absence because it was a world without her in it.
Rodrigo stared at the screen in front of him, a glass of red wine by his hand. He hadn't noticed the name of the vintage. He had just grabbed the closest bottle and started drinking.
Giana.
The photo had been taken at Gabriella's funeral only weeks ago, but it felt like an eternity.
He had chosen to give her freedom. It was the only just thing to do after the way she had been treated for the last six years.
Rodrigo had dismantled the surveillance network that had been his eyes on her, pulled his men from their covert posts, and wiped the servers clean of every moment of her life that the Colleoni family had stolen from her.
He had thought he would feel better for it, but it had carved him out, leaving him more hollow than ever.
Rodrigo's thumb traced the rim of the glass, the motion hypnotic. He should delete the file, burn the entire fucking server rack, and salt the earth where it stood. Instead, he leaned closer, his own reflection a ghost against hers.
Giana stood beside a mercenary he didn't know, who had come to pay his respects to Rodrigo's mother. Everyone around her looked sad, but Giana? She was glowing like a fucking supernova in a sea of dying stars.
She had been dressed in a sheath of black wool that should have been modest but clung to the roundness of her hips and the swell of her breasts. Her dark hair was pulled back in a bun, revealing the elegant line of her throat.
A throat Rodrigo had watched her touch a thousand times in moments of stress, a throat he ached to bracket with his hands. Not to harm. Never to harm. Just to hold and feel the frantic pulse of her life beating against his palm.
As beautiful as Giana was, it was her eyes that undid him every time. Dark and depthless, they were fixed on Gabriella's casket as it was lowered into the Colleoni family plot.
There was no fear in them. No sorrow. Only a cold, burning resolve that screamed she was there not as a mourner, but as a survivor. The last Sorrentino, standing on the graves of her enemies, looking like a queen surveying her conquered lands.
A low growl rumbled in his chest. His want of her was so sharp, it was like a hook under his ribs. His knuckles were white where he gripped the glass.
My beautiful Giana.
He had watched over her, a protective god standing in her shadows. He had seen her sleep and the way her brow furrowed in her dreams. He had seen her study, her tongue caught between her teeth in concentration. He had seen her weep, and every sob had been a lash against his own skin.
Rodrigo was the worst kind of voyeur, cataloging every flicker and frown.
He knew that. He had curated a museum of her life, and he was its sole, obsessive patron.
He had to fight his mother just to let Giana return to university, and she had agreed only on the condition that it be in Florence, not back in Paris.
Still, Giana had fought them every moment to have a normal life, and he loved that about her too.
When a boy at her university had tried to take her virginity, Rodrigo had stopped it because Gabriella would have killed her.
Instead of being embarrassed about the intrusion, what had Giana done?
She had spat in Rodrigo's face, walked to the nearest sex shop, and bought a vibrator, determined to get the job done.
Rodrigo had followed her back to her apartment, wanting to make sure the little fucker of a boyfriend didn't follow her home. He had no intention of staying until she had whirled on him, all fury and stunning arrogance.
"You are so determined to rob me of every second of happiness, so you might as well watch this too. You have to make sure Gabriella knows that it wasn't some nobody boy who took my precious virginity, right?" she had snarled at him, unboxing the toy.
Rodrigo had stood at the end of her bed, watched her fumbling hands unwrap it, and lift her skirts. He should have told her to stop. Should have looked away, like any decent person would.
He wasn't decent. He had wanted to call her bluff, and Giana had refused to back down.
Rodrigo had watched her gasp and arch, her face a mask of shocked pleasure and pain.
She had never looked away from him. Her eyes burned into his the whole time, making sure he saw every moment.
His hands had bent the flimsy steel bar of the footboard, wanting to touch her so badly that it had torn him apart.
When Giana was done, sweaty and panting, pretty tears tracking down her cheeks, had he said sorry that her life was being ruined by his family? No.
He had taken the crisp white handkerchief from his pocket and gently cleaned away her virgin blood and come before putting it back in his pocket and leaving the apartment without a word.
After that, Giana had stopped trying to date anyone. He didn't feel sorry or guilty about that either. Ammunition was expensive, and it had saved him a lot of bullets.
Rodrigo's gaze flickered through the door of his office to where his walk-in wardrobe was.
Inside a hidden safe, beside bearer bonds, untraceable pistols, and blackmail material, lay a lacquered box.
Inside it was a square of a handkerchief, carefully folded.
The faded crimson stain at its center was the holiest relic in his barren life.
Proof of a moment that was a dark intimacy they had shared.
Il Mostro. The nickname used to annoy him, but only because it was the truth. He was a monster. His mother may have turned him into a cold-hearted killer, but it was Giana who had made him into this possessive creature.
Rodrigo's finger moved from the glass to the screen, the pad of his index finger hovering a millimeter from the image of her face. He could almost feel the warmth of her skin, the impossible softness.
He remembered the night she had first been brought in front of Gabriella, the only survivor of the massacre of the Sorrentino family that his mother had ordered.
His brother Leo had been the one to squeeze the triggers that ended them, and then, because Gabriella was crueler than all of them, she had told Giana that she was going to marry Leo or die with her family.
Rodrigo had many, many reasons to despise his mother, but he had never wanted to kill her until that moment. Giana would never belong to Leo, because in that same second, Rodrigo had fallen in love with her, in all her tear-streaked fury when she had spat at Gabriella's feet.
He loved her now with a destructive, all-consuming hunger that defied logic and morality. His mother had wanted Giana submissive or dead because she was the last loose thread in their bloody revenge.
And for years, Rodrigo had played the part of the dutiful son, agreeing in principle while ensuring Giana was the most protected woman in the world, caged in a fortress of his design. Now Gabriella was in the ground. The threat was gone, and the cage was open. Wasn't it?
The Sorrentino name alone made her a target for ordinary criminals, but Rodrigo's mind went darker.
Since Gabriella's death and Serapis's assumed death, there had been whispers.
Old Aurora contacts were going silent. There were strange movements in their networks.
If someone was rebuilding what Serapis had destroyed…
Rodrigo shook his head. No. Giana was nothing to the Aurora and people like them.
The Sorrentino fortune had nothing they would want.
No relics or artifacts or anything else that even whiffed of magic.
Rodrigo knew it was paranoia playing games with him, just like it had been since Giana had left him.
Where are you, Giana?
The question was a constant, agonizing hum beneath the surface of Rodrigo's thoughts. He knew where she would have gone. Not because he was tracking her. He had kept his promise, no matter how hard it was, but because he knew her.
Giana would go to a sea somewhere, to a place of sun and salt and anonymity.
She craved freedom like a drowning woman craved air, and he had seen paintings of the water she had done in university.
He knew she had stuck images of turquoise water and white-washed villages on her fridge.
Wherever she chose, it would be far from Italy.
Far from him.
Weeks of not knowing whether she was safe. Was she happy? Had some other man put his hands on her? The thought was a white-hot poker to the gut. His jaw clenched so tight, a molar groaned in protest.
You made the right choice.
Giana deserved autonomy. She deserved a life, even if it wasn't with him, and the thought of her building that life with someone else made him want to burn the world to ash.
This was his penance. For his family's sins. For his own. To love her was to release her.
But Gesù Cristo, the silence was killing him. The lack of her was a phantom limb, an ache for something that was no longer there. Every instinct, honed by years of strategy and violence, screamed at him.
He fought it down every minute of every day, a constant, brutal war waged within the confines of his own skull. He was a predator who had willingly let go of his prey, and his teeth ached with the need to hunt and reclaim her.
The wine glass was empty. He set it down on the polished mahogany desk with a sharp click that echoed in the oppressive quiet. His fingers twitched. One call. That was all it would take. One call and a satellite would pivot, a drone would launch, and a man on the ground would report in.
He wouldn't. He couldn't. He had to be stronger than his own demons.
As if summoned by the thought, his phone vibrated against the desk. The screen lit up with a single name. Dario.
Rodrigo's blood went cold. His brother wouldn't be calling him at this time of night if something wasn't wrong.
"What is it now? I thought you were meant to be going to see Leo in Istanbul for a few days."
"I fucking was, and then I might have, maybe, got a call from someone," Dario said, sounding guilty.
Rodrigo pinched the bridge of his nose. He loved his brother, but sometimes he wished he would stop fucking about and grow up. "Spit it out, Dario, I don't have time for your nonsense riddles."
"I may have kept a tab on Giana. Just a little one," Dario admitted quickly. "Don't be mad."
Rodrigo stilled. "Say that again? Because I said she was free. I promised her, Dario."
"But I didn't! Fuck, Rodrigo, we ruined her life. She has no family to protect her because of Mama. It felt too much like throwing a lamb to the slaughter!"
Rodrigo flinched. "I taught her to look after herself. Her father did too."
"So what? She's one girl, and all the old families want her name and money. I knew they wouldn't fucking leave her be, and I was right."
A knot of pure, black dread tightened in Rodrigo's stomach. "What happened, Dario?"
His brother let out a rush of breath. "Giana… She was snatched from a café in Bodrum an hour ago."
Rodrigo hung up the phone. Leo was in Istanbul and was the closest to her. He hit his contact number. No answer.
"Porca puttana!" he snarled and then found Kon's number. Only Giana could make him dare to call the Basty of Istanbul.
"You'd better have a good excuse for calling!" a woman's sharp voice answered instead of Kon. Altun Baruk. Just fucking perfect.
"Someone kidnapped Giana in Bodrum. Tell Leo to get his tongue out of Dante's mouth and fucking call me!" Rodrigo snapped and hung up.
An hour was a lifetime in a kidnapping. Was it just a mafia family after her, or something else? If it were the latter, he would need to apologize to Altun. The sorceress owed them nothing, but if there was any chance this kidnapping was connected to the Aurora's remnants, she needed to know.
Rodrigo went into his wardrobe, pulled his holster of guns over his shoulders, and headed for the door.
He never should have let Giana go. He never should have tried to be a good person. It wasn't who he was. He was a monster, and someone had just been stupid enough to break his chains.