Chapter 12
Giana jolted back to the present. She was sitting on the bed in her room, her good hand clenched in the silk duvet and her breathing ragged.
You are a queen in chains.
"Damn him," she muttered, pressing the heel of her good hand against her forehead.
That moment had been the beginning of her becoming something more than Gabriella's broken toy. He had given her what she needed to fight back and carve out a sliver of autonomy within her prison.
Rodrigo knew precisely what she would do with the access he provided.
Without those tools, without the skills she honed in secret, she never would have been able to steal Gabriella's money.
She would probably be dead by her own hand, if not Gabriella's, by now if he hadn't given her that damn laptop.
It had all been going to plan, and then Gabriella had died before Giana could rub it in her face that she had won her own freedom.
Fucking Gabriella.
Rodrigo had wanted Giana to take her down, and she needed to know why.
Giana remembered the feel of his lips on her palm earlier. The way his expression had softened when she laughed during the photoshoot was a look so unlike the Rodrigo she knew.
And then, what he had done to the wall. The raw, bloody-knuckled fury unleashed by Vincenzo's taunt. The violence had been terrifying, but the source of his anger wasn't about territory or money. It was about her.
He came for me. He had stormed that hellhole, drenched in blood, carving a path to her cage.
Her last conscious thought during the chloroform abduction had been a desperate plea, and he had answered with fire and blood and severed hands.
The hatred she clung to, the convenient shield against this confusing tangle of feelings, crumbling piece by piece. Undone by memories of secret gifts, by the heat in his eyes, by the terrifying vulnerability beneath his rage.
Just how much had Rodrigo protected her over the years, not just from the other mafia families but from Gabriella?
Giana's stomach clenched as she questioned everything she had always thought she knew.
A soft chime echoed from the laptop on the desk, and she recognized it as the secure internal comm system Leo had integrated.
Giana flinched. She didn't want to talk to anyone, certainly not Rodrigo, when she was feeling like this.
Giana forced herself to stand, ignoring the protest from her ribs and her throbbing hand. She reached the desk and tapped a key. The screen lit up, showing an incoming message from Athena.
Cage is prepped. Charges set. Kon says it's 'artfully menacing'. Fred wants to know if we should add a sign that says, 'Welcome, Vincenzo, you cock face.' Thoughts?
P.s. Dario just tripped over a toolbox. Again. It was hilarious. Wished you'd seen it. Your fiancé did, and he still didn't laugh. He looks like he wants to fight the walls. Or Falcone. Probably both.
Giana stared at the message and laughed.
The dark humor was a grim counterpoint to the tension coiling in the villa.
She could picture the delicate, gilded birdcage wired to explode, hanging like a grotesque trophy over the main gate.
She could almost hear Dario's muttered curses and Frederica's laughter.
She read the last line again, and an image of Rodrigo, his knuckles raw and bloody, flashed in her mind. She had never seen him out of control, not once. Was it just because he saw her as a Colleoni possession that someone had dared to touch?
The recollection of him in the corridor two years ago surfaced again.
The gift of the laptop. The defiance of his mother.
None of that had felt like simple possession.
It had felt like recognition. Like he saw her, the person beneath the pawn.
He had chosen, in his own twisted way, to arm her rather than break her.
Why risk Gabriella's wrath? Why give her the means to potentially hurt his family? Why come for her in Izmir? Why the rage at the birdcage? Why the softness when he looked at her? All the unanswered questions were going to drive her insane.
"Shut up, brain," she groaned in frustration.
Her shield of hatred was a flimsy defense against the confusing storm of feelings swirling inside her. There was fear, gratitude, a treacherous flicker of something warm and dangerously like attraction. Affection? She shoved that thought down violently.
No. Not that. Not ever.
He was Rodrigo Colleoni. His family had destroyed hers. He had watched her, controlled her, and manipulated her freedom.
He had also come to rescue her and looked at her as if she were something precious. Something worth breaking his own hand over.
"Fuck. I hate him. I do," she whispered it like a mantra, but the conviction was gone. The words tasted like a lie she was telling herself because the truth was too complicated, too dangerous.
She couldn't like Rodrigo. It was absurd. Yet, the feeling of his lips on her palm, the warmth in his eyes when he smiled…it didn't feel monstrous. Flawed and dangerous. More than a little fucked up. But it was also real.
A sharp knock at her door echoed, shattering her spiraling thoughts.
Giana froze, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. Every instinct screamed at her to stay silent, to pretend she was asleep to buy herself more time to unravel the impossible knot of her feelings.
The knock came again.
"Giana." Rodrigo's voice resonated through the heavy wood. Not angry. Not demanding. Just waiting.
Taking a shuddering breath, Giana walked toward the door, each step feeling like a surrender and a leap into the unknown. Her good hand hovered over the brass handle.
Can I do this? The question wasn't about the war with Vincenzo anymore. It was about the man on the other side of the door, who made her feel things she absolutely, categorically, should not feel.
Maybe she was as fucked up as he was, because her fingers closed around the cool metal, and she turned the handle.