Chapter 3 #2
She was standing with her mother now, accepting a glass of water from one of the servers, and I watched her fingers curl around it. Delicate hands. Short, unpainted nails. No rings except a small garnet on her right hand that caught the light when she moved.
There was something in the way she held herself.
A tension that ran through her like a wire pulled too tight.
She smiled at something her mother said, and the smile didn't reach her eyes.
She nodded at a woman who approached to offer condolences, and her body language was perfect—warm, gracious, appropriately sorrowful—but underneath it was a stillness that felt practiced. Performed.
She was playing a role. The same way I was.
The recognition hit me like a fist to the chest.
I knew that performance. Knew it in my bones, in my blood, in every carefully constructed mask I'd worn since I was old enough to understand what was expected of me.
She was doing what I did every day: holding herself together, projecting calm, giving the world exactly what it demanded while keeping the real self locked away somewhere safe.
Except she looked exhausted.
It was in the shadows under her eyes that makeup couldn't quite conceal. In the way her shoulders were held just slightly too high, carrying tension she probably didn't even notice anymore. In the almost imperceptible tremor at the corner of her mouth when she thought no one was watching.
Someone should be taking care of her. The thought surfaced before I could stop it. Someone should be making sure she eats. Making sure she sleeps. Taking some of that weight off her shoulders before it crushes her.
I didn't know where the thought came from. I barely knew this woman—a handful of photographs, a childhood memory of a stammering girl, a name on an alliance document. But I couldn't shake the certainty that settled into my chest like something that had always been there, just waiting to be noticed.
She wasn't fragile. Looking at her, reading the way she carried herself, I could see the steel underneath the softness. Whatever had made her this way—this careful, this contained, this exhausted—she'd survived it. She was still surviving it.
But strength and invulnerability weren't the same thing. You could be strong and still need someone to lean on. You could be resilient and still deserve rest.
She needed someone to tell her she was safe.
The realization should have been absurd.
I was a mafia don standing at my father's funeral, surrounded by enemies and uncertain alliances, with a hidden ledger burning a hole in my conscience and a dozen plots to untangle.
I didn't have time for whatever this was—this unexpected, unwanted awareness of a woman I was supposed to marry for strategy, not sentiment.
But I couldn't look away from her. Couldn't stop cataloging the small details—the freckle beside her left eye, the way her lower lip was slightly fuller than the upper, the almost imperceptible rhythm of her breathing.
Across the room, Gemma Moretti lifted her honey-colored eyes and met mine.
For a single heartbeat, we stared at each other.
Then she looked away, and the moment shattered like glass.
I turned back to the endless parade of handshakes and murmured condolences, the work of being a don even while my father's body was barely cold. But my awareness of her stayed fixed like a compass needle finding north.
She moved to the refreshment table with her mother.
I tracked her in my peripheral vision while shaking hands with one of my father's oldest soldiers.
She accepted a cup of coffee she didn't drink.
I cataloged the way she held the cup—both hands wrapped around it, seeking warmth even in the stuffy reception hall.
She spoke briefly with the Gambetti matriarch.
I noted how she tilted her head when she listened, how she made the old woman smile despite the somber occasion.
"The family's in good hands," the soldier was saying. I'd missed half his sentence. "Your father would be proud."
"Thank you, Sal." I gripped his shoulder. "Your loyalty means everything."
I moved through the room, and she moved through the room, and we never looked at each other again, but I knew exactly where she was at every moment. It was ridiculous. Distracting. Exactly the kind of vulnerability I'd sworn I would never allow myself.
I couldn't seem to stop.
Then the temperature dropped.
It wasn't literal—the reception hall was still too warm, still thick with bodies and conversation and the cloying smell of funeral flowers. But something changed. A ripple of awareness that moved through the crowd like wind through tall grass.
I turned toward the main entrance.
Enzo Valenti.
He stood in the doorway for a moment, framed by the afternoon light, letting the room register his presence before he deigned to enter.
Even from across the hall, I could see the careful arrangement of his features: solemn, respectful, touched with just the right amount of grief.
A performance so polished it could have been lacquered.
He wore a charcoal suit, cut to emphasize his height, his leanness, the predatory elegance he'd cultivated over fifty-some years of being the most dangerous man in half the rooms he entered. Silver at the temples. Face that gave nothing away. Eyes the color of dirty ice.
His entourage fanned out behind him—two bodyguards who pretended to be assistants, his underboss Gino hovering at his shoulder like a faithful dog. They moved into the room with the practiced coordination of men who had done this a hundred times before.
I watched Enzo work the crowd.
He was good. Better than good—masterful.
He clasped hands with the Gambettis, exchanging quiet words that made the old man nod gravely.
He embraced Aunt Teresa, who accepted it with the stiff politeness of someone who didn't trust him but couldn't afford to show it.
He made his way toward the Rossinis, the DeLucas, pausing to acknowledge each important face with exactly the right degree of attention.
Every movement calculated. Every word measured. A machine wearing human skin, going through the motions of sympathy he'd never felt.
He was moving toward the Morettis now. I tracked his trajectory the way I'd track an incoming threat, my body tensing without my permission.
Tomasso saw him coming and squared his shoulders. The two men embraced like old friends—backs thumped, words murmured too low to hear from across the room. Whatever history lay between them, it was long and complicated and probably involved debts I didn't know about.
Enzo's wife had died a few years back. Elena, her name was.
Tragic accident. He'd never remarried, never even been seen with another woman since.
Some people said it was devotion. Looking at him now—the precision of his performance, the absence of anything warm behind his eyes—I doubted he was capable of devotion to anything but power.
He was talking to Tomasso's wife now. Gracious. Charming. Making her smile despite the circumstances.
Then his gaze slid sideways.
To Gemma.
And something shifted in his face.
It was fast—so fast that most people wouldn't have caught it. A flicker of expression beneath the careful mask, there and gone in the space between heartbeats. But I was watching. I was always watching. And I saw it.
Hunger.
Not lust, exactly. Something older. Something that looked like ownership. Like he was counting inventory, checking to make sure a possession he'd misplaced was still where he expected it to be.
His eyes moved down her body slowly. Deliberately. Taking their time. The black dress, the pale skin, the careful composure that suddenly looked less like strength and more like armor.
I knew that look. I'd seen it on men who thought they could take whatever they wanted, who saw other people as objects to be acquired and used and discarded.
I'd never seen it directed at something that belonged to me.
She doesn't belong to you yet, said the rational part of my brain. She barely knows your name.
But the rational part was losing the argument.
Gemma had gone white.
I watched the color drain from her face like water from a sink. Her hand trembled against the coffee cup she still hadn't touched—a fine tremor, almost invisible, but I caught it because I was cataloging every detail of her whether I wanted to or not.
She wasn't looking at Enzo. That was what struck me hardest. She'd been watching him approach, I'd seen her tense when he entered the room, but now that he was looking at her—now that his predator's gaze had found her—she'd fixed her eyes on some point past his shoulder.
Refusing to meet his stare. Refusing to acknowledge what was happening.
Her throat moved as she swallowed.
Her mother said something to her. Gemma nodded without hearing it.
She looked like prey.
The thought hit me like a sucker punch, knocking something loose in my chest that I hadn't known was there. She looked like a rabbit frozen in the presence of a wolf, holding perfectly still and hoping the stillness would save her.
But she wasn't running. Wasn't crying. Wasn't doing any of the things a frightened person might do in a room full of potential witnesses. She was holding her ground, holding her composure, holding that perfect mask in place even though I could see it was costing her everything.
Whatever was between them, it was old. It was ugly. And she was terrified.
The fury that rose in my chest was absurd. Irrational. She was a stranger—a name on an alliance document, a face I'd been staring at for less than an hour. I had no right to feel protective of her. No claim to make, no territory to defend.
But I wanted to cross the room and put myself between her and Enzo Valenti. I wanted to make him look at me instead, force those pale eyes to meet mine, let him see what would happen if he ever looked at her like that again.