Chapter 4
Valentina
“Let’s find this would-be assassin before we get ahead of ourselves,” Enzo said.
Clearly, expecting him to choose between me and his family was kind of a tall order right now. Besides, he was right to focus on the actual problem at hand. Ultimatums and our family blood feud would come later. Catching this hitman needed our attention now.
I sighed and gave a nod. “So, you’ll help me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “That your way of asking for my help?”
Pride prevented me from asking outright. Besides, he’d already said he would without me having to ask. “You’re a witness, so I have to question you.”
“You going to question me the easy way or the hard way?” he asked slyly.
“We’ll see,” I replied, allowing a small, secretive smile to play on my lips.
Much as I was loath to admit it, there was never a dull moment with my enemy.
I used to think that there couldn’t be anything more interesting than rising to the top of the mafia hierarchy, but Enzo was far too appealing.
He could capture my attention like nothing and no one else.
Enzo leaned in closer then, placing his huge hand over mine, the warmth of it spreading through me, offsetting the coldness of the countertop beneath my palm. “You never have to ask for my help, Valentina. Plus, I’ve already agreed to help you find this son of a bitch.”
The guilt that I hadn’t allowed myself to feel started to sink in now that we were really talking. I sagged down into the chair beside him, fatigue making me bone-weary. “Even though I accused you?”
“Water under the bridge,” he said. “Trauma does crazy shit to people.”
I glanced over his shoulder to look at the living room. I’d found my father lying there, his blood spreading across the carpet.
As if reading my thoughts from my facial expression alone, Enzo quietly said, “Your father’s men gathered evidence before they cleaned up. There’s no more blood on the floor.”
I nodded, a lump forming in my throat. Emotions swirled through me, my inner turmoil setting in again.
As difficult as it was to feel them all, I had gone through such emotional extremes before.
Rage, grief, determination, anguish. I’d experienced it when the De Lucas had killed my father’s best friend.
Uncle Tony hadn’t been a blood relative, but he and Papa were so close that he was family.
My Uncle Tony who had taught me everything—how to shoot a gun, how to throw a punch, how to hold my breath without passing out.
I hadn’t been the same since my father had brought Uncle Tony’s bullet-riddled body home.
Just like I hadn’t been the same when a car bomb had almost killed my father last year.
A bomb planted by the De Lucas. That all too familiar hatred mixed with the other emotions.
I took a sip of juice then, gripping the glass so tightly that I was sure I risked shattering it.
There were very good reasons for me to wish that I didn’t have to rely on Enzo De Luca for help.
It put me at the mercy of my enemy. Only the love of my father could ever put me in such a position.
“We should get out of these clothes,” Enzo said.
I arched an eyebrow as I set the glass back down.
He laughed. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“How did you mean it?” I asked.
“We should change out of our bloodstained clothes,” he explained. “You’re free to use my shower. Mi casa es tu casa.”
“I don’t have any fresh clothes to change into.” Already I could see the danger of the domestic intimacy that lay ahead. Barely a few minutes in his kitchen and the self-loathing I’d felt over my attraction to him had melted away from the touch of his hand alone.
“Wear mine.”
The warmth of his hand was enough to tempt me.
To say nothing of his darkly dangerous good looks.
Those seductive black eyes. That wickedly arrogant mouth.
Even in the terrible state he was in, Enzo was still breathtakingly gorgeous.
Chewing my lower lip, I said, “I don’t want to overstay my welcome. ”
“You’re my fiancée, it isn’t possible for you to overstay your welcome,” he said.
I was fighting a losing battle. No matter how much I wanted to talk my body out of its reaction to him, no matter how wise it was to leave, I didn’t actually want to do any of that.
I didn’t want to go back to the clinic to see my father hooked up to all those tubes.
To see my mother crying her eyes out. And going home to my empty townhouse would probably be even worse.
I was already dreading the inevitable loneliness of walking back into my silent home.
Made all the more silent by my father’s absence.
Because Papa visited me all the time to play cards or trade war stories over a drink.
Going back to my life would just remind me that he wasn’t there right now.
Terrible that the place where he had been shot appeared to provide more solace than anywhere else.
“I’ll stay,” I finally relented.
“Good choice.” He got up, releasing his hold on me. That just made me long for more contact, as the warmth of his touch began to dissipate. “There’s a guest bedroom. I’ll show you.”
I followed him to the lavish guest room, where he pointed out the linen closet and the adjoining bathroom with other supplies. Then, he left me to it.
Alone in the luxurious amenities, I grabbed a robe and a towel, then stepped into the gleaming bathroom.
I quickly got out of my borrowed coat and the bloodied dress, then got under a hot jet of water to scrub myself clean.
Washing my father’s blood off was an agonizing process, the scarlet stream of water slowly getting cleaner and cleaner the more I scrubbed.
Finally, I was done and I got out of the shower to throw on the soft robe before brushing my teeth.
With that out of the way, I felt like something approaching human.
It was good to just do something routine and normal.
Strange as it sounded, going through the morning ritual made me feel like I was in control again.
When I stepped out of the bathroom, I was surprised to find some clothes on the bed.
Giant shirts. Picking one of them up, I caught the scent of detergent and a hint of Enzo’s aftershave.
That scent ignited a desire that got me to push past any hesitation about wearing out my welcome and I was soon wrapping myself in one of his black shirts.
Slowly, I buttoned up, the expensive Egyptian cotton fabric slithering against my skin as the shirt enveloped me.
Once I put the shirt on, I was sure I looked pretty ridiculous with the hem reaching below my knees and the sleeves extending well past my hands.
But I didn’t care. It felt so good to be cloaked in something that essentially felt like the essence of Enzo.
Dark and dangerous on appearance, yet unexpectedly protective.
With the shirt on, I grabbed my phone to make some quick phone calls.
One to my mother to get an update on my father’s condition—unchanged—and one to one of my father’s chief henchman downstairs, letting him know that the guards didn’t need to come back to Enzo’s apartment to take care of me. I could handle Enzo.
The rest of the calls were just staying on top of business. My father’s condition was still pretty much a secret from most of the organization, so I had to keep up appearances and act like everything was normal.
At last, I finished up the calls and slipped out of the guestroom to search for Enzo.
I found his bedroom with the door ajar. Suddenly my stomach quivered as I lifted my hand to knock on the door and announce myself.
I took several deep breaths, trying to remain calm.
Because inside I was the opposite of calm.
For one thing, I wasn’t exactly appropriately dressed.
Sure, I was fully covered due to Enzo’s huge shirt, but that was all I had on.
I wasn’t wearing underwear and my legs were exposed.
With the shirt’s cotton fabric sliding against my bare skin, I felt naked.
It wasn’t normal for me to be coy, and yet, here I was, blushing like a bride on her wedding night as I stood outside my fiancé’s door.
Enzo’s deep voice escaped the room, reaching me with a firm, “Come on.”
Swallowing hard, I pushed the door open to reveal Enzo in the final stages of pulling up his black jeans over his hips.
One second earlier and I would have caught a glimpse of his backside.
He turned to me then, my breath hitching as I took him in.
His dark hair was slicked back, a stray lock cresting over his prominent eyebrows.
Beneath those furrowed brows were the darkest, most intense eyes I had ever seen.
There was a hunger flashing behind them, my fiancé looking at me with a blatant animalistic longing that made me think of myself as prey in a predator’s territory.
I felt trapped, my knees going weak at his scrutiny.
His old, bloodied clothes discarded, he was dressed in jeans and a sleeveless muscle shirt that revealed his broad shoulders and strained against his abs.
Around his neck was a gold chain, the De Luca family medallion hanging down from it.
Enzo’s burning gaze left mine as he worked to zip up his jeans and button them, the movement making me look right at his crotch.
Hot damn. My face heated and I quickly looked away.
Seeing him like this shouldn’t have felt illicit.
After all, he was merely buttoning up. Meanwhile, I was just a guest in a borrowed shirt.
And yet, we were also relative strangers.
An engaged couple wouldn’t be shy about various states of undress, but we weren’t an ordinary couple.
Truth be told, we weren’t actually a real couple at all.
We barely knew each other. The arranged aspect of our sudden engagement made every normal interaction into something charged with unresolved sexual tension.
“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” I managed to stammer.
“You can come in,” he repeated, his voice smooth and inviting as velvet.
I stepped inside, keeping the door slightly ajar because I was now so embarrassed I figured I’d have to make a hasty retreat soon. “I just came to say thank you. For the shirt.”
Enzo gazed at me again, the desire in his eyes so stark that I forgot how to breathe.
It hardly seemed possible that we could still want each other so much with all this hatred between us.
And his hatred had likely grown more powerful after I accused him of murder and pointed a gun at him.
Yet he hadn’t thrown me out. Hadn’t even demanded an apology or restitution, which was within his right since I’d threatened him in his own territory.
But right now, I didn’t see hatred in his eyes. What I saw was my own yearning mirrored back to me.
“No need to thank me.” He gave me a lopsided grin that stole away some of the intensity and replaced it with something borderline mischievous. “You look good in my clothes.”
I blushed furiously at that. Everything on me was his. Both the shirt and the engagement ring on my finger. For the first time in my life, I was at a loss for words with a man. “I should head back to—”
“Sit down,” he said, jerking his head toward the bed.
My heartrate accelerated as I blurted out the words, “Thanks, but I’m not exactly wearing underwear.”
“That’s not a deterrent, Valentina.” His eyes raked up and down my body. Quick enough for me to almost miss it, but I still burned all over. “And I would have given you some of the unopened boxers I have lying around somewhere, but I didn’t know if you’d want them, or if they’d even fit.”
“That’s very generous,” I replied, blushing at the thought of wearing something that intimate. Something else that was his. “Anyway, I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours so I really should go back to—”
“All the more reason for you to lie down,” he said, gesturing to the bed again. “It’s adjustable, unlike the bed in the guestroom. It’s got a massage option.”
Common sense told me that getting into Enzo’s bed was a terrible idea. But he’d said those were magic words. Adjustable. Massage.
Funny how I hadn’t noticed how much my joints ached until now. Plus, I was utterly exhausted. My body was currently running on empty. I had no fuel left. Stifling a yawn I said, “I don’t know which one I need more—sleep or sustenance.”
“We’re Italians, so we need both,” he said with a laugh.
Eager to at least lay my head for a moment, I climbed into Enzo’s bed. The tension seeped out of me. Allowing myself to yawn this time, I grabbed one of the pillows and held it against my chest, enjoying the feel of something comfortable after twenty-four hours of chaos.
“No funny business,” I warned him. “We’re not fooling around.”
It was hard to resist temptation. Even now I was thinking about how it would feel to kiss him for real.
Enzo and I had never shared a real kiss, and yet, we had kissed.
Twice. Once as a way to hide from that politician, and the second time in front of both of our families at the engagement party.
Both times I had kissed Enzo with an audience in mind.
Now we were alone and I had to silently command my body to calm down.
Cautiously, Enzo sank down onto the opposite side of the bed, stretching out his long legs to sit propped up against the headboard. “I don’t take liberties with women, Valentina. We will only do what you want.”
I angled my head to look up at him. “I want to be held. Isn’t that foolish?”
He eased closer to me, took the pillow from my hands, and then pulled me close so that my cheek was on his muscular chest. “It’s not foolish. You’ve been through hell.”
It was foolish to be so vulnerable in my enemy’s arms, but I didn’t contradict him.
He was partially right anyway. I had been through hell and I hadn’t been able to rest. Strange that I wasn’t ill at ease in the apartment where I’d found my father the night before.
I should have been afraid to be in this place that was full of hidden dangers.
And yet, for the first time in ages, I felt some peace.
As it turned out, it wasn’t this apartment that provided solace.
It was Enzo. He made me feel safe. His presence felt like the ultimate protection.
Needing him, I wrapped my arm around his torso, the muscles flexing. He was hard against my cheek and I could hear the steady drumbeat of his heart.
“Sorry that we can’t fool around,” I whispered with a sigh.
“There’s always our wedding night,” he murmured, the rumble of his voice low and loud as thunder.
My eyes closed. I had never imagined that this was how I would spend my first time in Enzo’s bed. But once again, he was right. There was still our wedding night. And all the nights to come after that.