Chapter Twenty-Three CHIARA #2
His smile faded.A little crack in the performance. He stood and walked toward the windows, slipping one hand into his pocket. “Because Leo has had everything handed to him since birth. Name. Power. Fear. The whole city bending at his feet.”
“That has nothing to do with me,” I reminded him.
“It has everything to do with you.”
I stood slowly. “I want to leave.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “You just got here.”
“I made a mistake,” I whispered.
“Yes,” he said softly. “You did. But not the one you think.”
Fear crept up the back of my neck. The suite door opened behind me. I spun so fast pain shot through my ankle. An older man stepped inside.
For one horrible second, I didn’t understand what I was seeing.
My mind refused to put the pieces together.
The broad, heavy body wrapped in an expensive suit.
The thinning silver hair slicked back from a sweating forehead.
The thick fingers, jeweled with rings. The mouth curled into something that wanted to be a smile and became a leer instead. Then I knew.
Edoardo Moretti. Leo’s uncle. The man Angelo had mentioned at the wedding. The man my father would have handed me to if Leo had not claimed me first. My stomach turned so violently I almost gagged.
“Ah,” Edoardo said, his gaze dragging over me. “So this is the little bride.”
I stepped back. Angelo did not move to protect me. That was when the last fragile piece of hope inside me broke.
“No,” I whispered.
Edoardo laughed. It was a wet, unpleasant sound. “No? That is not a very grateful greeting.”
I looked at Angelo. He watched me with an expression almost like apology. Almost.
“You said you would help me,” I said.
“I am helping you,” Angelo replied.
“By bringing me to him?” I bit out.
“By getting you away from Leo.”
Edoardo moved deeper into the room, his shoes whispering over the rug. “My nephew has always been greedy. Even as a boy. If he saw something beautiful, he took it apart to see why it shone.”
My skin crawled as his gaze dropped to my legs.
“He does not appreciate delicate things.” He smirked.
“I am not a thing,” I said.
Both men looked amused. That frightened me more than anger would have.
“No,” Angelo said softly. “You’re leverage.”
The word went through me like a blade.
Edoardo poured himself a drink from the bar. “The marriage can be challenged.”
My blood went cold. “What?”
“The Moretti heir married a girl under fraudulent circumstances,” Edoardo said, swirling amber liquid in his glass. “A frightened child coerced by reputation, force, and family pressure. It is ugly. Very ugly.”
“You don’t care about that,” I reminded him.
“No,” he said pleasantly. “I don’t.”
Angelo came closer, stopping just out of reach. “Leo needs you. More than he should. More than he knows how to hide.”
“He needs an heir,” I said, and the words tasted like blood.
“Yes,” Angelo said. “But not only that.”
I shook my head. “You’re lying.”
“Am I?” His gaze flicked to my hand. “Why are you still wearing his ring?”
I looked down. The diamond burned on my finger. I hated myself for not taking it off.
Edoardo’s smile widened. “Sentimental already.”
I yanked at the ring. It didn’t move easily. My fingers were too swollen from cold, panic, and all the running. The harder I pulled, the more desperate I looked. Angelo caught my wrist. I froze. His grip wasn’t painful. That somehow made it worse.
“Careful,” he said. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
“Let go of me,” I bit out. For one second, he didn’t. His thumb brushed the inside of my wrist, right over my frantic pulse.
“I understand why he lost his mind over you,” he murmured. My stomach dropped. There it was. The thing beneath his charm. Rotten. Hungry. Entitled.
I twisted hard, ripping my wrist free. “Don’t touch me.”
Something sharpened in his face. Edoardo chuckled from the bar. “She has spirit.”
“She has more than that,” Angelo said.
The way he looked at me made my lungs shrink. I backed toward the door.
“No one is annulling my marriage,” I said, though my voice shook. “No one is giving me to you. Or him. Or anyone.”
Edoardo took a slow sip. “Little girls make such dramatic declarations.”
“I’m not a little girl,” I reminded him.
“No,” he agreed, his eyes dropping again. “Clearly not.”
Bile rose in my throat. For the first time since I had run from Leo’s penthouse, I understood something with brutal clarity.
Leo had been a monster. But he had never looked at me like that.
Not like merchandise. Not like meat. Not like a prize passed between men while I stood in the room listening.
He had wanted to own me. These men wanted to use me until there was nothing left.
“I want to go back,” I said.
Angelo’s face changed. Just slightly. But I saw it. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do,” I said fervently.
“To Leo?” he asked, voice soft with disbelief.
My throat tightened. Did I? I saw Leo’s hands. His mouth. His fury. His coldness. His heat. His lies. His ring. His face when I said I hated him. I saw my father in a hospital bed. I saw Angelo smiling while Edoardo walked into the room.
“I want to leave,” I said instead.
“You are not leaving,” Edoardo said.
The words cracked through the suite. Final. My hand found the door handle behind me. I pulled. Locked. Of course. My breath started coming too fast.
Angelo sighed. “Chiara.”
“Don’t say my name,” I yelped.
“Stop panicking.”
“I am not panicking,” I said, trying to regain some sense of composure.
“You are,” he said, almost gently. “And Leo will be here soon.”
My heart stopped. “What?”
Angelo smiled then. Not charming. Not beautiful. Cruel.
“You think we didn’t know he would track you?” he asked. “You think Sergio’s phone was the only thing you stole?”
I went cold all over. “What did you do?”
“I gave you an escape,” he said. “A believable one. Enough rope to hang him with.”
Edoardo laughed again. “Leonardo will come in wild. Emotional. Violent. In front of witnesses, if we are lucky.”
My pulse roared. No. No, no, no. “You used me to bait him.”
Angelo’s eyes glittered. “Finally.”
The room tilted around me. All of it. Every call. Every soft word. Every warning. Every promise of escape. A trap. Not for me. For Leo. And I had walked straight into it. My throat burned.
“He’ll kill you,” I whispered.
Angelo’s smile faltered. Just a little. Good.
“He will try,” Edoardo said. “That is the point.”
I looked between them, terror giving way to something sharper. Rage. Not the wild kind that made me reckless. The cold kind. The kind Leo carried so effortlessly.
“You’re afraid of him,” I said. Angelo’s jaw tightened.
I laughed once, breathless and ugly. “You are. Both of you. That’s why you needed me. That’s why you didn’t face him yourselves.”
“Careful,” Angelo said.
“No.” I stepped away from the door. “You’re cowards.”
Edoardo’s face darkened. Angelo moved first, crossing the space between us fast enough that I barely had time to react. His hand closed around my arm. Hard now. Pain sparked beneath his fingers. I gasped, but I didn’t cry out.
“You should learn when to stop talking,” he said.
I looked up at him. “And you should learn not to touch another man’s wife.”
Silence. The words left me before I understood them. Another man’s wife. Leo’s wife. Angelo stared at me. Then he smiled.
“There it is,” he whispered. “That’s what I wanted to know.”
My stomach hollowed. I had given something away. Something I hadn’t even admitted to myself. A sound came from somewhere beyond the suite. Low. Distant. Not thunder. Not the city. A shout. Then another.
Angelo released me and turned toward the door. Edoardo set down his glass. The air changed. I felt it before I heard anything else. A pressure in the room. A violence gathering outside the walls. My breath caught, and every inch of my skin seemed to wake at once.
Leo. I knew it was him. I knew it with a certainty so deep it terrified me. The first gunshot shattered the silence. I screamed. The lights flickered.
Angelo swore and grabbed me again, dragging me back from the door as more noise erupted outside. Heavy footsteps. Men shouting. Another shot. Glass breaking somewhere far too close.
Edoardo pulled a gun from inside his jacket. My blood turned to ice.
“No,” I breathed. The door shook. Once. Twice.
Then Leo’s voice came through from the other side, low and lethal enough to strip the room bare. “Open the door.”
Angelo’s grip tightened on me. The door shook again. Edoardo raised the gun. I couldn’t breathe.
Angelo leaned close to my ear, his voice a whisper. “Now you get to see what your husband really is.”
The lock exploded. The door flew inward so hard it hit the wall. And Leo stepped through the smoke and splintered wood like something dragged out of hell. His suit was black. His eyes were worse.
Blood streaked one side of his jaw, not all of it his. A gun hung loose in his hand. Behind him, men moved in shadows, but I barely saw them. I saw only Leo.
He looked at Angelo’s hand on my arm. Then at my face. Something in him broke. Not loudly. Not visibly. But I felt it. The whole room did.
“Take your hand off my wife,” Leo said.
Angelo smiled. And Leo raised the gun.