Chapter 9 #2
"The Caruso couple," he says, loud enough to carry, to Conti's wife but angled for the room. "Interesting alliance. Though I notice the new wife doesn't seem to stay close to her husband." A small smile. "One wonders if the arrangement is as solid as announced."
Conti's wife says nothing. A few heads turn.
I am already watching Gia.
She's heard it. I know she's heard it because the set of her shoulders changes by one degree and her eyes do a single sweep of the room, fast and assessing, the calculation happening behind her face in real time. I wait to see what she does with it.
She turns. Crosses the room toward me without being asked, without hesitation, moving through the space between us with her chin level and her expression composed, her eyes on mine the entire way.
She reaches me and steps into my side, her hand coming to my arm, and she turns to face the room the way a woman stands beside a man when she has decided that is where she belongs.
“Hey baby, enjoying yourself?” She asks in a sweet voice and even manages to smile genuinely, like a woman in love.
I raise my brow slightly, but I smile. “Of course, I’ve just really missed you all night. Stay with me.”
She smiles even more. “Of course.”
The murmur resettles. Fontana's smile goes somewhere less certain.
I look down at her. She is looking at the room. The furrow between her brows is there, brief and private, the question she is filing away for later.
I say nothing.
I cover her hand on my arm with mine, once, briefly, and I feel her exhale through her nose beside me, small and controlled, and that is all.
The watching stops.
Gia glances up at me, a small furrow between her brows, a question she's filing away for later.
On the drive home she's quiet, sitting beside me with her hands in her lap and her eyes on the window. The evening sits between us, not uncomfortably, just present.
When we get home, I get out of the car, open the door, and wait for her.
She steps out and the night air hits her face and she closes her eyes for exactly one second, just one, like she's been holding her breath since we left Conti's estate and is only now letting it go. I watch it happen and I say nothing.
She takes three steps toward the entrance and stops.
She bends down, unbuckles one heel, then the other, and straightens up with both shoes hanging from two fingers at her side.
"What are you doing? I frown.
"My legs hurt." She starts toward the entrance in bare feet on cold gravel, not flinching, not slowing. "I don't have to pretend here." Then she raises her brow warily. “Or do I?”
Without saying a word, I reach out and take the heels from her hand.
She frowns at that but doesn’t say anything.
Why am I even doing this?
Carla appears at the entrance and I hold up the heels. "The slippers Mrs. Caruso uses. Here."
Carla is gone and back in under a minute. I take the slippers and crouch down in front of her, one knee on the cold stone, and I look up at her.
Her lips part.
I lift one foot by the heel and slide the slipper on, then the other, my thumb pressing briefly against the arch of her foot where the shoe has left its mark, and I feel her weight shift, just slightly, just enough to tell me she felt it too.
I straighten up slowly and I'm close when I do, closer than I need to be, and she doesn't step back.
"Thank you," she says quietly. Like the words surprised her.
“Consider it your reward for being a good girl tonight.”
She turns to me. “What?”
“Your reward…”
“Never mind…”
We go upstairs.
"I need to take a bath," she says, half to herself. Then she straightens and looks down the hall. "I'll find Carla, I need help with the—"
"I'll do it," I say.
She turns around and stares at me.
There's genuine shock on her face, unguarded, her eyes wide and her mouth open slightly, and then: "You'll—I mean Carla is right downstairs, she won't mind, it's literally her job, I can just call her up and it'll take two minutes and you don't have to—"
"Gia."
She stops.
"Turn around."
The two words land in the hallway. I have decided how this is going and am not interested in giving her an alternative. I watch her process it — the slight parting of her lips, the moment where she could push back and doesn't.
She huffs under her breath and turns around.
"Good," I say, and move toward her.
We go into the bedroom.
She enters the bedroom, crosses to the foot of the bed and stands with her back to me, and I come to stand behind her and find the first hook at the top of the dress.
I start working through them, one by one, unhurried, and she goes still under my hands in a way that is nothing like the wedding night, not braced, not guarded. Just still.
The room holds its breath.
Each hook gives way and the fabric shifts and her back opens to me slowly, her spine and the line of her shoulder blades and the soft curve at the base of her neck where a few loose strands of hair have fallen, and her skin in the low light of the room is exactly as soft as it looked in that church when I first put my hand on her jaw and decided I was going to take my time.
Then her scent reaches me.
Warm skin, jasmine from whatever she put on before the evening.
I want to put my mouth on her neck. Right there at the base where the hair has fallen. I want to find out if she'd stay still or if she'd make that sound again, the one from the church that went straight through me, I want—
My phone rings.
Her shoulders move, a small involuntary flinch.
I look at the screen.
Enzo.
I step back from her, the dress half open down her back, and she reaches up to hold the front of the dress against herself. The absence of her warmth is immediate and specific.
I answer the call and step into the hall, pulling the door shut behind me, and I stand there for one second before I speak, with the warmth of her skin still sitting on my hands like it lives there.
Thirty-five minutes later I'm in Matteo's study and the mood in the room tells me everything before anyone opens their mouth. Dante is standing, which he only does when he's too wound up to sit. Enzo holds a drink he isn't touching, which means something is genuinely wrong.
Matteo doesn't wait for me to settle.
"O'Rourke men," he says. "Three of them, east boundary. Castellano's crew picked them up on camera an hour ago. Standing in plain sight, no attempt to conceal, no movement in or out."
I pull out a chair and sit. "He wanted us to see them."
"Yes. He wanted us to see them," Matteo confirms. " This is Killian telling us something and we haven't figured out what it is yet."
"Three weeks of silence," Enzo says, staring at his glass. "I said it then and I'll say it again, that man doesn't go quiet unless he's moving. We were looking at the wrong thing."
"What's on the east boundary worth his attention," Dante says.
"Three transit routes," I say. "The Calletti warehouse. And the Morandi compound, which we've been using for—"
"Don't finish that sentence," Matteo says, not unkindly. "Walls."
I stop.
Matteo stands at the head of the table, and the quality of his attention in this moment is the reason he runs this organization and not any of the rest of us. He isn't reacting. He's already three moves forward, running it.
"We don't move on this yet," he says. "No response, no increased visible presence on the boundary, nothing that tells him we're rattled.
" He looks at each of us. "We find out what he's actually after before we give him anything.
" He turns to Enzo. "Pull everything we have on O'Rourke movements for the last month.
Not just the east side, everything. I want the full picture. "
"Already pulling," Enzo says.
"Dante, talk to Castellano. I want eyes on that boundary round the clock, but quiet.
No uniforms, no obvious rotation." Matteo's gaze moves to me last. "Rafael.
Your house is now the closest Brotherhood asset to the De Luca alliance.
Which means if this is connected to Salvatore in any way, you're the first point of contact. "
I hold his gaze. "You think it's connected."
"I think Killian O'Rourke going quiet for three weeks and then appearing on our boundary three days after you married Salvatore De Luca's daughter is a coincidence I'm not willing to believe in," Matteo says. "Watch your house. Watch her."
The room is quiet for a moment.
Watch her.
"Understood," I say. I already am.