2. Lorenzo
CHAPTER 2
Lorenzo
T he universe was punishing me. It was the only explanation that I had for why this woman had my wife’s face. When Damian had come to me about Isabella Rossi—her father, Santino, owed us an astounding amount of money—I didn’t believe him when he said she could be Sienna’s twin. My v icecapo pressed the subject, though, so I agreed to come with them to grab her.
When she’d walked into the exam room, it had taken everything in me to remain calm. How fucking dare she look like Sienna? When she’d smiled at me, let her eyes drag over me, I had fantasized about breaking her face. Reshaping it so that I didn’t see a ghost looking back at me.
“Lorenzo.”
My cousin, Elio, was in the backseat. “What?”
“Can we stop and get coffee? Amalia only lets me have decaf at home.”
From the driver’s seat, Damian scoffed. “You let your wife decide what you can eat and drink, El?”
“Are you married, stronzo ?” Elio shot back. “I like getting my dick wet, and if that means smiling and drinking decaf in the mornings, I’ll do it. Lorenzo, coffee, yes?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “We have a woman tied up in the backseat, cugino . I think Starbucks can wait.”
Elio groaned and flopped back into the seat. “Fine,” he said, sullen. “You couldn’t have come easily, huh?” He was addressing Isabella now.
Anger bubbled in my gut. “Don’t talk to her.”
He let out another frustrated groan. “Fucking Mondays.”
Fucking Mondays, indeed .
Thirty minutes later, Damian pulled into the parking garage of the Palazzo, and then we wound up the six floors to the employee level. Once he pulled into my designated spot near the elevator, I pushed open my door and grabbed for the handle of hers.
Isabella spilled out onto the pavement, ripping at the fabric Elio had tied around her mouth. Even in the dimmed lighting of the parking garage, I could see that her cheeks were rubbed red and raw. “Can you walk into my hotel without me having to drag you?” I asked.
Tears had made Isabella’s face wet, and I noticed the spider webbing of a scar that started on her cheek and curled down her neck and disappeared into her scrub top. It made her just different enough from Sienna that I could latch onto it. “I’ll walk,” she mumbled, and I freed her wrists.
“ Brava piccola .” Isabella’s honey-brown eyes widened and then dropped to her feet. My cock twitched beneath the fly of my pants, and I gnashed my teeth together. I couldn’t ignore her beauty, the curves of her body that her ugly scrubs did nothing to hide, and it only made me angrier. “Follow me,” I ground out. I looked back at Damian and Elio. “Go get him coffee. Come back for me later.”
Elio grinned. “Thanks, boss man.”
“Yeah, thanks.” Damian sighed. He hated playing chauffeur, but he would never refuse a direct order. “Want anything?”
I turned down the offer and then I led Isabella into the hotel. My office was two floors up, and when we stepped onto the elevator, she backed into a corner, as if making herself as small as possible could stop me from doing whatever I wanted to her.
I kept my eyes on her but didn’t say anything. Instead, I waited for the elevator to stop and gestured for her to get off. My office was in a corner of the building, and walking inside, the two outer walls were all glass. We weren’t up high enough to have an impressive view, but it flooded the space with natural light, and there were trees and greenery around. It made a good contrast to the sleek, modern design.
“Sit,” I said, indicating the seat in front of the large glass and metal desk. Isabella sat, and I continued to stare out at the view. “Do you know who I am?”
“You’re Lorenzo Vitali,” she murmured.
I hummed. “Do you know why you’re here?” She didn’t answer, and it made me look at her. She was staring at her own hands, clutching them as if she was trying to make herself stop from shaking, but it wasn’t just in her hands. I could see her whole body trembling. “You must know,” I insisted, and she shook her head.
“I really don’t.” But her voice was flat, detached.
I went behind my desk and opened a file on my computer before turning the screen to face her. “Press play.”
She sank her teeth into her bottom lip. “I don’t?—”
“Do it.”
Isabella lifted a trembling finger and dropped it against the space bar. The video that I’d pulled up began to play. Her father, Santino Rossi, came into focus. He was seated at a blackjack table in the casino that the Vitali family had run for decades. “My daughter can cover this,” he was saying to the dealer who had cut him off. He was drunk and wobbling on his chair. “She takes care of me. She'll pay for this.”
I reached over and pressed the space bar again, cutting the video off. Isabella looked at me. “What does he owe you?” she asked in the same flat tone.
“Nine hundred grand for the blackjack,” I said. “Another two hundred for cocaine and the girl he did lines off.”
Isabella's mouth dropped open. Her honey eyes blinked over and over. “One-point-one million?” she breathed. “ Dollars ?”
I chuckled, and even to me, it was a cruel sound. “Well, I would take euros if you had that instead, but that's where I draw the line.”
Panic twisted her features. “I don't have that,” she said and wheezed. “I don't have anything even close to that.”
Surprising absolutely no one . “I thought as much.” I crossed my arms over my chest and stared down at her. “So, what are we going to do?”
Isabella's chest rose and fell hard and harder. She was panicking. “I'm in school,” she said. “I can't…I have nothing .”
I clicked my tongue against my teeth. “That’s a problem,” I said. “Your father assured us that you'd take care of his debts.”
She let out a laugh that was bordering on hysterical. “Why would you extend any kind of credit to him in the first place?”
I shrugged. “Why would it matter to me if he ran up his debt? He kept bragging about his job as a top defense attorney; I figured, at the very least, I could make him useful to me if he couldn’t pay.”
“My father was disbarred years ago,” she said, almost petulant now. “Anyone who did the tiniest bit of Googling could figure that out.” You fucking moron was left unsaid, but I heard it, nonetheless.
It was almost a relief to realize that she was nothing like Sienna. She knew better than to talk to me like that. That made things easier going forward. “Do you think I do searches on my clientele, Ms. Rossi?” I asked, placing my hands flat on my desk now. I loomed over her, and something inside of me crowed to see her cowing beneath me. “As long as they follow my rules and pay what they owe, I don’t give a fuck who comes through the doors.”
“But he can’t pay.”
“And when I found out just how useless he was to me, I had planned on pulling every one of his molars from his skull and making him eat them, but then he told me that you could pay for him, and if you’re telling me that you can’t, then we have a big problem.”
The panicked breathing was back. “Are you—” She swallowed hard. “Are you going to kill me?”
Death wasn’t really what I had in mind when I went to pick her up: healthy, young woman who took care of herself? I could get what I was owed back and more by selling her. Death would be the more merciful option. Get rid of Sienna’s living ghost and go back to my life.
But when I opened my mouth, neither of those options came out: “Give me a reason not to.”
“What?” she asked.
I went to cross my arms over my chest but stopped when I remembered that she’d cut me. “Give me a reason to keep you around, Isabella,” I commanded.
I watched as she racked her brains for a reason: I could literally see the cogs turning in her mind. Then her eyes landed on my arm. “You need stitches.”
I scoffed. “I don’t.” The bandage that I’d slapped on in the car was sufficient. Amalia could glue the edges back together when I got home.
“Are you a medical professional?” she asked, raising an eyebrow in question. The fire in her honey eyes called to me. Fucking hell . When was the last time I had a woman? Too long, maybe…but no one I’d fucked since Sienna could compare.
Maybe it was time to take one of the minor families up on their offers to send their daughters for a “trial run.” I didn’t have to pick anyone, obviously, but I could have a little fun. Anything to not imagine what this facsimile would look like spread across my bed. Or bent over my desk.
“What good is a medical professional who can only point out a problem and not fix it?”
Isabella sighed. “Get me something to sew you up with.”
Fuck. That. “You think I’m going to let you near me with sharp objects? After you stabbed me?”
Isabella squared her shoulders. “You told me to give you a reason not to kill me, and I’m giving you one. I can be useful to your…organization.” She swallowed hard, nervous. “Let me prove it.”
I stared at her for a long time, considering. If she tried anything, I’d break her neck and be done with it. So, really, this was a win-win scenario either way. “Fine,” I said. “We’ll see what use you can be.”