17. Vivi
VIVI
For a second I can’t move. Then, slowly, I turn to face my husband—and barely manage to stop myself from gasping out loud.
Oh…my…gosh. I’ve never seen so much male skin in my entire life.
Giovanni is shirtless and barefoot. His six-foot-four frame is wrapped in nothing but well-defined muscles, elaborate tattoos, a healthy dusting of dark chest hair, and a pair of pants that are unbuttoned at the waist and resting precariously low on his hips.
His expression is a mixture of curiosity and frustration. His salt and pepper hair is wet, droplets escaping the closely-cropped strands to trail down his neck.
I watch, stupefied, as they catch on his collarbone before diving lower, traversing the hard planes of his chest before they go lower still, trickling over more stomach muscles than I realized any one human could have.
The most persistent droplets dance around his belly button before following the dark line of hair down to his fly, slipping behind the gaping fabric before vanishing completely.
Above my head, Giovanni grumbles something deep in his throat.
“Hmm?” My voice sounds like it’s coming from very far away. “What did you say?”
A finger slides under my chin, forcing my gaze up from his naked torso. “My eyes are up here, Viviana.”
A blush explodes across my cheeks. I step out of reach, my lower back hitting the table behind me. I hear the picture frame wobble, settle.
Giovanni crosses his arms across his chest. Veins pop against the muscles of his forearms. My temperature spikes another degree. “Well?” he says.
“Well…what?”
“I’m waiting.”
“For...?”
He cranes his neck, angling to see behind my back. “For you to stab me with a concealed knife. Or knock me over the head with a vase. I’m waiting for you to attack me, Viviana. To be the murderous little vixen I know you to be.”
I gape at him. “Murderous? I’m not…” My voice trails off, silencing me before I catch myself in a lie.
I am a murderer, but that was a long time ago. I never expected anyone to die, and I’ve paid the price for that monumental error in judgment. It will never happen again.
Giovanni is oblivious to the mental quicksand his comment has dropped me in. “Isn’t that why you’re here?” he continues, eyes oddly bright. “To attack your husband and try to escape?”
“No.”
The abruptness of my answer surprises him. He frowns. “No?”
“No,” I repeat. “I can’t escape, remember? Not if I want my sister to stay alive.”
“Ah. Yes. Your sister. I wasn’t sure that threat would work.”
I blink, taken aback. “Why not?”
He shrugs. “I wasn’t sure you’d care.”
My hand is flying before I know what’s happening. I’ve never been physically violent toward anyone in my life. Not intentionally. I’ve definitely never tried to hit someone. But Gio’s comment strikes a nerve, and I’m lashing out before I think twice.
He catches my wrist before I make contact, uses his grip to tug me forward until we’re chest to chest. “And just like that, you prove my point.”
Breathless, I have to angle my chin high before I can meet his eyes. “What point is that?”
“That all that softness and silence and compliance is a facade concealing a different woman entirely. That you, Viviana, have a violent streak.”
I yank my arm. He doesn’t let go. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know the first thing about me.”
“I know more than you think.”
Despite the brittle gleam in his eye, Giovanni says it so calmly, so confidently, and the patronizing tone makes me angrier than I’ve been in a very long time.
“How lucky for you,” I hiss, vibrating with barely-leashed emotion.
“You know everything. You’re in charge of everything.
In control of everything. Aren’t you so freaking special. ”
“And aren’t you feisty when you aren’t pretending to be someone you’re not?”
“I’m not pretending anything! What you see is what you get.”
“Oh? And what is that?”
I glare up at him, only vaguely aware that he’s started to sweat.
“Me. Viviana. The woman you dragged to your ridiculous island. I’m here.
Following your rules, doing everything I’m supposed to do, all so that I can keep my sister safe.
Those were the terms of the agreement you made with my father, right?
So here I am. As ordered. The dutiful daughter. The dutiful wife.”
There’s so much hatred in that one word, but it breaks against the wall that is my husband. Shatters against him, benign, useless.
“I wonder…” Giovanni’s eyes have gone slightly out of focus, and I catch a whiff of something astringent on his breath. Alcohol from lunch. “Is that what you would’ve been for Tino Valori? A dutiful little wife?”
I hate that he says Tino’s name. I hate that it stabs a raw part inside of me. Pulse thundering, I ignore his question. “At least I wanted to marry him.”
Giovanni is still manacling my wrist in one hand. He lifts his other, touching a single finger to my temple, capturing a loose wisp of hair. “Which just proves that in addition to being violent, you have horrible taste in men.”
I’m surrounded by his body, his chest a slab of heat in front of me, his fingers dancing across my temple, pressing against my inner wrist, and I’ve never felt so hot—so trapped—in my life. “You know even less about Tino than you do about me.”
“I think you’d be surprised.” His voice has dropped an octave, his words liquid against my ears.
I hate it. Hate whatever sensations he’s stirring inside me. Hate the knowing smirk on his lips. The hypnotic weave of the ink on his chest. Hate that I can’t stop myself from taking the bait. “Tell me. What do you know about him that I don’t?”
“Hmm, how about… Do you know how he spent the morning of your intended wedding?”
Easy. “He was at the church. Getting ready.”
“Wrong. He was at his apartment. Fucking his girlfriend.”
“You’re lying.”
The fingers around my wrist flex. “I’m not.”
“Fine. Prove it. Prove you’re not lying.”
“Happily.” Giovanni steps away, sweat forming a sheen across his skin. He turns to head in the direction of the bathroom. That’s when I see what’s affecting him so much. The reason for the sweating. The glassy eyes.
There’s a huge gash running along the back of his ribs, rivulets of blood trailing down to his waist. This entire time, Giovanni has been sliced open and bleeding and didn’t say a word.
I can feel how wide my eyes are when he returns holding his phone. “You’re injured.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Not the first time,” he says dismissively. “Won’t be the last.”
“But…”
He holds up a hand. “Stop. It’s nothing.” He swipes through his phone until he finds what he’s looking for. He holds it up for me.
It’s a crystal-clear photograph of an apartment I’ve never seen before, with a woman I’ve never seen before, naked and sprawled out across furniture I’ve never seen before.
The only thing I have seen before is the man, who is staring at the naked woman with greedy eyes and a carnivorous smile as he undoes his pants.
The humiliation is instant. I want to look away but can’t. I scramble for any rational explanation I can think of, even as cold reality calcifies my stomach. “That’s Tino,” I confirm. “But how do you know that’s his girlfriend? H-how do you know they’re going to fu-fu…”
Big breath, Viviana. It’s the word you’re looking for. Just say it. “How do you know they’re going to fuck?”
Giovanni swipes to the next screen, his eyes never leaving my face. I don’t blink, don’t turn away. The whole bottom half of my body goes cold as my embarrassment burns twice as hot.
A video is playing on his phone. There’s no sound, thank goodness, but there doesn’t need to be.
Tino and the woman are a tangle of naked limbs on a sofa.
His mouth moves on one of her breasts, one hand squeezing the other.
Her head rocks from side to side, her eyes squeezed tight as she tugs his hair.
I watch, mortified and humiliatingly naive, as Tino rocks his groin into hers, his penis disappearing into the cavern between her thighs, her feet locking behind his back as he pushes into her over and over and over again.
“Enough, that’s enough.” My voice is paper-thin. “Stop. I get it. That’s enough.” Tears burn behind my eyelids, and I have to swallow several times before I can dislodge the lump in my throat. “Where did you get this?”
“Valori’s home surveillance system.”
Ah. “So, they were…fucking,” I concede. “How do I know that was our wedding day?”
Giovanni’s expression has gone carefully blank. “Does it matter?”
Does it? Does the specific day Tino chose to have sex with this woman make any difference now? As far as Tino is concerned, no. I didn’t know him. I can acknowledge that now. He was a stranger to me, as good as a figment of my imagination, and now he’s gone. Permanently.
But where Gio is concerned, it matters very much. “Yes. You could be lying. This could’ve been taken years ago, long before he and I got engaged. So, yes, the date matters.”
Something that looks like respect flits across his face. “You won’t take my word for it?”
“No. Blindly believing other people hasn’t worked well for me, has it? So I think it’s time I start requiring proof.” I feel calmer, more self-assured. “Show me.”
“Va bene.” He pauses the video and enlarges the still image, tweaking the focus until a digital clock comes into view.
It’s severe, modern, like the rest of the apartment, and shows the time and date clearly.
Exactly three hours and thirty-four minutes before Tino and I were scheduled to exchange vows.
In one breath, the energy drains out of me. Right along with any remnants of positive feelings I ever had for Tino Valori.
“How do you know it’s his girlfriend?”
Giovanni tucks his phone away. “They lived together.”
I flinch, eyes officially dry. “Wow. I wonder what his explanation was going to be when I showed up.”
“He wasn’t going to need one,” Giovanni says, watching me carefully. “You were going to live in the Valori compound. The apartment was?—”
“For her. I get it.”
Giovanni looks like he wants to say something else, but I shake my head, preemptively cutting him off. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” I point at his torso. “Let me take a look at your back.”
“You don’t need to.”
“I know I don’t. I’m offering. It needs cleaning, bandaging. And you can’t reach it yourself.”
He considers my offer for a moment, then nods. “Fine. Follow me.”