Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
"Get in the vent!"
Isabella's voice is low and urgent and completely insane.
I look at her, then at the air vent above the dressing room, then back at her.
Fuck, no.
"You're joking," I whisper.
"Do I look like I'm joking?" She's already buttoning her jeans with shaking hands, her hair still a mess, her lips swollen from my mouth. "He's right outside. If he finds you in here we're both dead."
"Isabella—"
"Please." The word comes out desperate. "Please just get in the vent and I'll get him out of here."
Vittorio's voice comes again, closer now. "Isabella? Are you in the dressing rooms?"
I look at the vent, which is approximately two feet square and held on by screws I could probably break with my bare hands, and I feel my dignity preparing to die.
"This is ridiculous," I mutter, but I'm already climbing onto the bench.
"I know. I'm sorry. Just—" She reaches up and helps me push the vent cover aside. "Just stay quiet."
I pull myself up into the space above the ceiling, which is exactly as cramped and uncomfortable as it looks, and I'm a six-foot-two man folding myself into an area designed for air circulation and possibly small rodents.
Isabella slides the vent cover back into place just as the door handle rattles again.
"Isabella?"
"One second!" Her voice comes out bright and cheerful, nothing like the panic I just saw in her face. "I'm almost done!"
I hear her take a breath, smooth her hair, and then the door opens and I can see through the slats of the vent as she steps out.
Vittorio is standing there with a smile that makes me want to punch through the ceiling.
"There you are," he says. "I've been looking everywhere for you."
"Sorry. I was just—" She gestures vaguely at the dressing room. "Trying things on."
He looks past her into the empty room, taking in the scattered clothes, the scarf on the bench, and I watch his eyes narrow slightly.
"Where's your guard?"
"Enzo?" She sounds genuinely confused, which is impressive given that I'm currently above her head trying not to breathe too loudly. "He's around somewhere. Probably checking the perimeter or something. You know how he is."
"I do know how he is." Vittorio's voice has an edge to it. "Which is why I'm surprised he's not standing directly outside this dressing room."
"I told him I needed privacy."
"Privacy." He says the word like he's testing it. "In a closed mall. With no one else here."
"I didn't want him watching me try on clothes." She crosses her arms, defensive. "Is that a problem?"
"No problem. Just seems like poor security protocol." He reaches out and touches her hair, his fingers catching on a tangle, and I watch her force herself not to flinch. "Your hair is a mess."
"It's the style." She pulls away slightly, casual and natural. "Come on. I'm done here. Let's go find something to eat."
She takes his arm and starts walking him out of the store, chattering about nothing, about the stores she visited, about ridiculous throw pillows shaped like cactus, and I listen to her voice get fainter as they move away.
I wait thirty seconds after they're gone, then push the vent cover aside and drop down into the dressing room with significantly less grace than I went up.
My phone buzzes.
A text from Isabella, from the burner phone Matteo gave her when we got back to the mansion: Coast clear. Meet you at the food court in 5.
I look around the dressing room one more time, at the scarf still on the bench, at the evidence of what we just did, and I feel something dark and furious settling in my chest.
Vittorio touched her hair.
Put his hand on her arm.
Walked away with her like he had every right.
And in days he's going to have every right, legally and socially and in every way that matters to the world outside this mall.
I pick up the scarf and shove it in my pocket and leave before I put my fist through the mirror.
I find them at the food court ten minutes later.
Isabella is sitting at a table with Vittorio across from her, and she's smiling at something he's saying, and I know it's fake, can see the tension in her shoulders, can read the careful distance she's maintaining, but Vittorio can't.
Or doesn't care.
He sees me approaching and his expression shifts into something I don't like.
"Bianchi." He doesn't stand. "Nice of you to join us."
"I was checking the perimeter."
"For twenty minutes?"
"Security takes time."
"Apparently." He leans back in his chair, casual and assessing. "You know, I've been thinking. After the wedding, Isabella's security needs will change. She'll be living in De Luca territory. We have our own people." His eyes meet mine. "We probably won't need your services anymore."
The words land exactly how he intended them to.
"That's Matteo's decision," I say evenly.
"Of course. But I'll be making recommendations. And my recommendation will be that my wife doesn't need to be followed around by men who can't be bothered to stay within sight of her in an empty building." He smiles. "No offense."
Every word out of his mouth is designed to provoke, to establish dominance, to remind me that he's the one who gets to decide what happens to her after Saturday.
"None taken," I say, and my voice is flat and cold.
Isabella is looking at her phone, pretending not to hear this conversation, but I can see her jaw is tight.
Vittorio stands and puts his hand on her shoulder. "We should go. I have meetings this afternoon."
She stands and doesn't look at me as she walks past, and I watch them leave together, his hand on her lower back, as usual, possessive and certain.
I stand in the food court alone and I think about that air vent and Vittorio's hand in her hair and something in me goes very cold and very quiet.
The club is loud and dark and full of people I don't want to be around.
Rafael insisted. Said I needed to get out of the house, needed to stop thinking for a few hours, needed to remember what it felt like to exist as something other than Isabella's guard.
What he meant was he was worried I was going to do something catastrophically stupid if left alone with my thoughts for another night.
He wasn't wrong.
Isabella was in the sitting room when we left — Matteo and Alessia on one couch, Dante and Bianca on the other, all of them around her. Safe. I told myself that was enough.
So here I am at some private club that Matteo uses for meetings that aren't officially meetings, surrounded by music that's too loud and liquor that's too expensive and men who are pretending this is pleasure when it's all just business wearing a different mask.
There are women everywhere. Dancers on platforms, servers in scant clothing, a whole section of private rooms where the entertainment gets significantly more private.
Rafael appears beside me with a drink. "Relax. You look like you're planning a murder."
"I might be."
"Of who? Vittorio? Because that would solve some problems and create significantly more." He hands me the drink. "Drink. Stop thinking. Try to have fun."
"I don't want to be here."
"I know. But you need to be here. Because if you go back to that house tonight, you're going to do something you'll regret." He pauses. "Or something Matteo will make you regret."
A woman approaches, tall and beautiful and completely uninterested in anything except the money that exchanges hands in places like this.
She smiles at me. "Can I get you anything?"
"No."
Rafael kicks my ankle under the table. "He's fine. Thank you."
She leaves and he looks at me with exasperation.
"You're going to have to pretend to be human for at least a few hours."
"I'm not interested in…" I gesture vaguely at the room, "… any of this."
"I know what you're interested in. Everyone knows what you're interested in. That's the problem." He leans forward. "You need to clear your head. You need to stop thinking about her for five minutes. You need to remember that there are other women in the world."
"I don't fucking want other women."
"I know. But you can't have the one you do want, so you need to figure out how to deal with that."
Another woman approaches the table, this one sent purposely because she's more persistent, more professional, settling into the booth beside me with practiced ease.
"You look tense," she says, her hand landing on my thigh. "I could help with that."
I look at her hand, then at her face, and all I can see is the wrong face, wrong hair, wrong everything.
"I'm fine," I snap.
"Are you sure? Because we have private rooms upstairs and I'm very good at helping men relax."
Her hand slides higher and I catch her wrist.
"I said I'm fine."
Something in my voice makes her pull back, and the smile drops slightly.
"Okay. No problem." She stands and leaves quickly, and Rafael is watching me with an expression I can't read.
"You're in deep," he says quietly.
"Don’t I fucking know it."
"Like, catastrophically deep. Like, there's no coming back from this deep."
"Fuck you."
He's quiet for a moment, just looking at me in the dim light of the club with music pounding around us and people laughing and moving and existing in ways I can't seem to manage right now.
"What are you going to do?" he asks.
"I don't know."
"You have just a couple of days left."
"I know that too."
"And then she marries him and this becomes permanent. Whatever you're going to do, whatever move you're going to make, it has to be now."
I don't answer because there's nothing to say that isn't an admission of exactly how far gone I am, exactly how willing I would be to burn down everything I've built for a woman I can't have.
I stand up.
"Where are you going?" Rafael asks.
"Home."
"Enzo—"
"I need to see her."
"That's a bad idea."
"I don't care."
I'm already walking, pushing through the crowd, ignoring the looks and the offers and the attempts to pull me back into the noise.
I get in my car and drive back to the compound, my mind full of her, always her, every thought circling back to the same place.
I have two days to change her mind.
I have just a few measly days to find a way to make her see that marrying Vittorio is not the only option, that sacrificing herself for duty is not the answer, that we could find another way if she'd just let me.
I pull into the compound and park and sit there in the dark for a moment.
Then I get out and head inside. I'm telling Matteo tomorrow.
Before she walks down that aisle, before she becomes someone else's wife, before I lose my chance completely.
I'm telling him everything.
And whatever happens after that, at least I'll know I tried.