Chapter 21
Rodrigo stood in the cool, dim quiet of the hallway outside of the sitting area, the echoes of laughter and clinking glasses replaced by the low thrum of the villa's security systems and the frantic drumbeat of his own pulse.
Giana's perfume clung to him, tangled with the sensation of her mouth, and the desperate clutch of her fingers in his shirt. The whole night had left him raw and exposed.
The thought of facing her alone felt like walking into an ambush.
He had to remember that, on her part, it was all a performance until she told him otherwise. He couldn't afford to forget the real reason they were playing this dangerous game. They needed to catch the bastards who were after her.
Someone had been caught trying to sneak off the Colleoni property, and he needed to know who. If he couldn't make Giana safe in his home, what chance did he have anywhere else?
Rodrigo found Leo exactly where he had left him, hunched over his laptop at the dining table.
Dante sat next to him, his arm draped over the back of Leo's chair. Iz was on a nearby sofa with Silas, turning ancient-looking tarot cards and shooting him occasional looks of sympathy and amusement. He didn't dare ask.
"Anything?" Rodrigo asked, pulling out the chair opposite Leo.
Leo didn't look up immediately, still typing. "Still tracing the anomaly that Giana found. Service entrance, East Wing camera. Brief shadow."
"Giana's instincts are sharp," Rodrigo stated. "She wouldn't have flagged it had been a trick of the light."
"No," Leo agreed, his gaze returning to the screens. "She wouldn't."
He tapped a key, isolating a segment of the feed. The grainy image flickered, and the shadow was cleared to a humanoid shape, low and fast, moving from the villa toward the perimeter wall.
"Definitely someone trying to leave, not enter. Slipped through a gap in the patrol rotation, so he knew the timing."
Rodrigo's jaw tightened. Inside job again. The thought was a cold knife in his back. "Do you have an ID?"
"Working on it," Leo muttered. He zoomed in further, but the figure's face was obscured by a hood pulled low, the features lost in pixelated shadow. "Male, roughly six feet. Athletic. Moves like a soldier."
"So it's one of the mercenaries and not a servant?" Dante asked.
"Highly possible," Leo conceded grimly. He switched screens, pulling up the roster of Colleoni soldiers currently stationed at the villa.
Faces and names scrolled by. "Cross-referencing height, weight, known skills, and who had access or opportunity during the shift change near the East Wing service corridor.
I have a shortlist of three possibilities. "
He highlighted three faces on the screen: Marco Conti, Giorgio Bianchi, and Luca Moretti. All capable men who were trusted enough to patrol the inner perimeter.
Rodrigo studied the faces. Marco, a veteran with a steady gaze. Giorgio, younger, ambitious. Luca, quiet, efficient.
Any one of them could be the leak. The thought curdled in his gut. Betrayal from within always hurts the most.
"Whoever he is, we need to know where he went and who he could be meeting."
"Agreed," Leo replied, scratching at his stubble. "But if we send a team after him now we risk spooking whoever he's reporting to. We will blow the chance to trace whoever's pulling the strings."
Rodrigo nodded, the strategist in him overriding the furious impulse to hunt the traitor down immediately. "Discreet surveillance. Eyes only. We track him, see where he leads us, and extract him and whoever he is with."
"Send Dario and Fred," Dante suggested. "They will be able to get in and out without alerting anyone else in the compound that there's a leak. If we send other guys, then they could be friends with Luca and call him."
Rodrigo considered it. Dario was his best tracker, resourceful and adaptable, and Frederica was a highly paid assassin, lethal and untraceable. Their simmering antagonism might actually work in their favor, keeping them sharp.
"Do it. Tell them to maintain minimal contact until they can tranquilize him and whoever he is meeting. I want to know where he's off to and why he would risk my anger. If it's just a tryst with a lover, that's one thing, but if it's something more serious, I need to know."
Leo nodded. "Let me get a proper ID, and then I will go wake up Dario."
Rodrigo stared at the three faces on Leo's screen. The Colleoni mercenary core relied on loyalty, ruthlessly enforced. This felt like a personal failure of his leadership.
Rodrigo pushed back from the table, the chair legs scraping harshly. "Keep me updated."
"Rodrigo." Leo's voice stopped him as he turned to leave. His brother's gaze was knowing. "Your bedroom door isn't locked, you know."
Rodrigo stiffened. He didn't need Leo spelling it out.
"I have work to do," he growled, the lie tasting bitter.
Leo just raised an eyebrow, Dante hid a smile, and even Iz paused her card reading, her dark eyes flicking toward him with quiet understanding.
"She's probably asleep," Leo offered, his tone softening fractionally. "Besides, the performance includes cohabitation, remember? The hacker's probably expecting some domestic bliss on the internal feeds by now."
"Especially after that show-stopper of a pash you two had," Dante added.
Rodrigo scowled. He knew he couldn't avoid his rooms, or it would look suspicious.
"Fine," he muttered. "Wake me up if Dario finds anything."
"Go get her, tiger," Dante teased.
"Idiota." Rodrigo flipped him off, but it only made his future brother-in-law laugh like a hyena.
The walk back to his room was unnervingly short. He paused outside the door, his hand hovering over the handle.
What if she's awake and furious? What if she looks at me with disgust now that the heat of the moment has passed?
He, Rodrigo Colleoni, who faced down armies without flinching, was terrified of one beautiful woman.
He took a slow, deep breath and turned the handle. It wasn't locked after all. The door swung open silently on well-oiled hinges.
The sitting room was bathed in the soft glow of a single lamp. The fire he had lit earlier had burned down to embers, casting long, dancing shadows.
Giana was asleep, curled on the deep couch. The oversized T-shirt she wore—his T-shirt—had slipped off one shoulder, revealing the smooth curve of her collarbone. One arm was tucked around his pillow, the other resting loosely near her face, showing that she was still wearing his ring.
Her face was relaxed in sleep, the fierce intelligence smoothed away. She looked young, vulnerable, and so perfect that the sight stole the breath from his lungs.
The tension that had coiled Rodrigo's muscles tight for hours began to ease, replaced by a different kind of ache, deeper and more profound.
His gaze drifted to the coffee table, where her laptop was still open on the security cameras. Quietly, he touched the trackpad and turned the feeds off so the light of the screen wouldn't wake her.
The camera view disappeared, revealing a digital canvas.
Rodrigo stared, transfixed as his own face stared back at him. Giana had captured the angles of his jaw, the intensity in his eyes. She had drawn the watchful raven inked on his chest, the fortress-like designs coiling around his biceps. She even included the faint scar above his eyebrow.
Storms were in his eyes and the rare curve of a smile on his full lips. Beneath the harsh lines, the intricate ink, there was a rawness that he never let the world see. Except she had.
"Fuck," he whispered, unable to look away.
Rodrigo reached out, his fingers hovering over the trackpad, and carefully minimized the drawing, saving it, and shut down the laptop. The screens went dark.
Rodrigo moved silently to the cupboard near the fireplace and pulled out another soft blanket. He unfolded it with quiet care and draped it gently over Giana, tucking it around her shoulders. She murmured softly in her sleep, nestling deeper into the pillow, but didn't wake.
Rodrigo wanted to pick her up and take her to bed, but he knew better. He didn't want her to feel like he had touched her without permission.
He stood there for a long moment, watching her sleep, the fierce protectiveness warring with a tenderness that threatened to crack his ribs open.
Rodrigo thought of the gift he had been preparing for her, tucked away in a storeroom near the old stables. Maybe it was time to offer it to her so she wouldn't stay mad at him for kissing her.
Reluctantly, he forced himself to turn away and go into the bedroom. He needed distance before the urge to kneel beside the couch and bury his face in her hair became irresistible.
Giana's crimson silk dress lay on the floor, a vivid splash of color near the foot of the bed. He picked it up, lifted it to his face, and inhaled deeply.
Jasmine, and beneath it, the unique, intoxicating essence of Giana herself. Strength and defiance and a hidden softness. The scent flooded his senses, bringing back the heat of the kiss, the feel of her body pressed against his.
A low groan escaped him, muffled by the fabric. Now he was just torturing himself. He dropped the dress into the discreet hamper tucked into the walk-in wardrobe.
Get your shit together, Rodrigo.
Stripping off his suit jacket and waistcoat, he tossed them onto a chair. He got rid of the rest of his clothes, and the cool air of the room brushed his overheated skin as he pulled on some pajama pants.
He padded barefoot to the bed, pulled back the heavy duvet, and slid between the sheets.
Fucking hell, Giana's scent was everywhere. It was like lying in a cloud of her. His body tightened, blood rushing to his dick in an insistent throb.
Rodrigo closed his eyes, but it only made it worse. Images flashed behind his lids, vivid and relentless. Not just the kiss from earlier, but older images of the night in the apartment in Florence. That fucking night was seared into his memory like a brand.
Giana, defiant and furious, bathed in the light of the ensuite. He had been frozen, unable to look away, as she took the sleek, vibrating toy from its box.
The challenge in her eyes as she met his gaze, holding it while she pushed aside the lace of her panties.
The sharp hitch of her breath as she touched herself, the flush spreading across her chest, and the soft, desperate sounds she made as she brought herself to climax, her eyes locked on his the entire time, forcing him to witness her reclaiming her body, her choice.
The agonizing mix of lust, shame, and a terrifying awe had rooted Rodrigo to the spot. He wanted to push her hand away and replace it with his mouth, his fingers, his cock.
Rodrigo remembered the small smear of blood on the inside of her thigh and how he had finally been able to move to clean her with a tenderness that had shocked him.
He kept the small, stained square, folded it away like a sacred relic and an insurance policy he never wanted to use. It was a testament to her fire, and the proof of when she ruined him for all others.
Now, lying in sheets that smelled of Giana, that memory fused with the present. He imagined her here, in this bed. Touching herself now, not out of anger, but out of need. He imagined her arching into her fingers and gasping his name.
"Fucking stop," he groaned through his clenched teeth, his dick throbbing painfully.
Rodrigo shouldn't have kissed her. That reckless moment of surrender had unleashed this torrent. It had blurred every line, shattered every carefully maintained barrier.
Rodrigo rolled onto his side, punching his pillow in a futile attempt to find a cool spot. He might be a monster, but he would not jerk himself off in a bed where she usually slept, no matter how much his dick ached.
He squeezed his eyes shut again, trying to banish the image of her touching herself, trying to focus on the cold calculus of security breaches and potential traitors.
Nothing worked. Giana was a siren song he had never learned how to silence. The monster wanted his queen, and the man was terrified of what that hunger might cost them both.