Chapter 6
Enzo
After leaving the opera house, I went straight to my luxury condo, ready to give my father a status report.
Though all of our phones and devices were encrypted, we weren’t fucking fools.
We didn’t leave our communications to chance.
Anything remotely illegal, we discussed face-to-face.
No paper or digital trail. But I could discuss most of the night’s events with my old man over the phone. A wedding wasn’t illegal.
Inside the condo, I shrugged off my jacket, tossed it onto leather sofa, and then headed over to the bar separating the spacious living room from the open concept kitchen. I grabbed a glass and reached for a bottle of the nearest liquor. Vodka. Good enough.
I emptied the glass, thought about having another, but decided to forgo it.
I’d already had three drinks at the opera house.
While I could hold my liquor better than anybody, risking another drink was pushing it.
I wanted to be buzzed enough to take the edge of the night off, not wind up stone fucking drunk when talking to my father.
Shoving the empty glass aside, I retrieved my cell phone and took a seat in front of the granite top bar.
The vodka wasn’t working. I was wired and brain felt overstimulated.
This wasn’t the kind of early buzz that made me feel good while putting me in a relaxed state.
This was the opposite of a good buzz. It was like that shot of vodka had been as potent as a shot of adrenaline.
And I could now feel that adrenaline rushing through my veins, an electrical charge through my body, ten thousand volts straight to my chest.
It took me a moment to realize that what I was feeling wasn’t the effect of four drinks.
This was all her. Valentina. Right now, my heart was racing like a getaway car.
My temples throbbed. My whole body felt like a fucking live wire.
Meeting Valentina had put me in a state that I hadn’t experienced in a long time.
Hell, maybe I’d never experienced it because I had no reference for this.
I couldn’t compare this to anything. Just thinking about her felt like a thrill.
This wasn’t what my usual day to day was like.
My family’s line of work probably sounded exciting to outsiders, but after attaining the second-in-command position, I fucking knew better.
It was an obligation. A duty to be endured.
There was nothing to the life that made me eager to get out of bed.
As my father’s right hand, I did everything out of loyalty, nothing more.
Which was what the engagement to Valentina was supposed to be.
Just another obligation. A responsibility that I use for my own ends surely, but I was following through on the plan out of familial duty.
No matter how much I resented the Romanos for almost killing me, this was not an arrangement I could get out of.
I was a loyal De Luca and my father was too powerful for me to reject a direct order.
But then, I had finally met Valentina tonight. And while the wedding was a burden that would weigh me down for life, sparring with Valentina tonight wasn’t like that. Our verbal skirmish had been electrifying. I hadn’t been bored once with her. Nothing about our battle had felt routine.
She’d pissed me off and turned me on at the same time.
Every part of me had wanted her, signaling the danger that this could end up being more than lust if I wasn’t on my guard at all times.
I hadn’t expected it, but tonight, Valentina had managed to arouse not just my cock but my fucking brain as well.
I was fascinated by her. I also found her enraging.
She was impossible to handle because every word out of her gorgeous mouth seemed devised to provoke me.
She’d managed to get under my skin. Truthfully, I hated her and yet, I couldn’t get enough of her.
Thinking back to our meeting, I discovered that for the first time in years, I felt fucking alive.
I didn’t like it. For one thing, she was a Romano, which made her my enemy.
For another, the surge of adrenaline was making me suspicious.
Of her, of her family, of whatever they were plotting.
Because they had to be plotting. None of this was on the up and up.
Even though the engagement had turned out to be real tonight, the Romanos had their own motives beyond mere peace.
Their own motives the same as everybody else.
Everybody had an angle, especially that family.
Life was a con. They were definitely running one.
Which meant that Valentina was scheming.
Hell, she’d practically pulled a gun on me.
I’d never be able to sleep with both eyes closed around her.
I’d be watching my back in my own home for the rest of my fucking life with a woman like her.
The fact that I could never trust her, or this lust rushing through me, put me in a foul enough mood to finally dial my father.
My old man answered on the first ring.
“How did it go?” he asked without bothering with a greeting.
If he had worried that I’d get myself killed, or if he was relieved I was still standing, he didn’t show it.
We didn’t have that kind of father and son relationship anyway.
We were closer to business partners than anything else.
Whatever fatherly feelings my old man possessed, he kept those bottled up.
“Don Romano is serious about the engagement as expected,” I answered. “The daughter, however, did not take it well.”
“You have to change her mind,” my father said, his Italian accent lacing his forceful words. “The family is counting on you to make this worth our while. We cannot afford to waste you on a pointless marriage.”
“I’m aware,” I said, jaw clenching. “But this was our first encounter. A rivalry like the one we’ve had with the Romanos isn’t going to vanish overnight.”
“True,” my father conceded, forcing me to brace myself.
He rarely conceded anything, and when he did, there was always a price to pay for it.
In my father’s case what the right hand gave, the left hand took away.
Nothing was free, not even his concessions.
“But you have done the impossible before. That is how you became my second-in-command. You are the right hand I did not want, and yet, here you are. You can achieve the impossible again.”
“Well, you’re right about this girl being impossible,” I muttered, ignoring that for the hundredth time he was reminding me of how much he hadn’t wanted me for the role of second-in-command.
But I’d fought my way up so ruthlessly that not even my old man could deny it, despite wanting his eldest son for the job.
“Speed things up,” my father ordered. “Now that this engagement is in motion, time is running out. Work on changing the girl’s mind. Push her to truly want this engagement. Do not let me down, Enzo.”
“Have I ever failed you?” I countered, subtly reminding him of my loyalty.
“No, but you treat this life like a chore. You go through motions,” my father said. “Not like your older brother, who is enthusiastic for our work. He lives for this. He is hungry. Remember that I made you my right hand despite my misgivings.”
And if you displease me, I could just as easily unmake you, was the threat in those words.
My father could always tell that I had fought my way to the top of the De Luca hierarchy not for bragging rights but as an insurance policy.
A policy that made sure I had a say in our family’s dealings.
That kind of leverage meant that I was able to protect my brothers and our operations from my father when he got too reckless.
I was the only one with the guts to question his decisions if his orders went too far.
While my old man hadn’t crossed a Rubicon in my mind, his recent choices had been made to increase his power while diminishing everyone else’s.
Like the engagement. Forcing me to marry Valentina was my father’s way of trying to keep me in line.
Once married, I’d be too committed to the Romanos to have as much say with the De Luca side of the alliance.
My father saw me as a potential rival for power and the arranged marriage would get me out of his way.
Though he knew I’d never be insane enough to challenge him outright, I could temper him when he went overboard.
That was the sort of control that my old man didn’t like.
Still, even though he was pushing the engagement for selfish reasons to get me out of the way, my old man did want to stop the escalation between the families and prevent all-out war in the streets.
Getting my uncle’s severed hand gift wrapped in the mail had shown my father just how far the Romanos were willing to do.
While the Romanos hadn’t killed my uncle, there had been a bone-chilling insanity to the way they’d treated him that finally gave my father pause.
Peace would be a win-win for both families, even if it decreased my influence on my father.
That was why I planned on seeing this marriage through.
To end the utter depravity of the war. A war even I thought was spiraling into barbaric anarchy.
But ending the war wasn’t my sole motive for going along with the marriage and neither was my loyalty, which was complete and total no matter how much I questioned my old man.
What my father didn’t realize was that despite my deference to his authority, I wasn’t going to relinquish my own power that easily.
Much as I resented this setup, I intended to use the marriage to increase my power and influence, not diminish it.
While my father played his own game, I was playing mine.
“You’ll forgive me for finding wedding plans tedious,” I finally said.