“What’s going on?” I ask, forcing myself to relegate my feelings to the back burner.
“Gregorio.” Gio’s face is devoid of its usual humor. He shivers, eyeing the mountains with contempt. “Word is he’s planning to make a move. Soon.”
My numbers are good, and I’m well stocked. But if he’s planning to attack in person with even a fraction of his resources? I’m fucked. We’re all fucked.
“Look,” Gio says. “You know Fyodor Rostov? The Russian living in Naples?”
I know the name. Word is he joined Gregorio’s ranks this time last year, after the attempted coup that killed my brother. “One of Gregorio’s guys.”
“No. The deal never went through. Fyodor didn’t like the way Gregorio did his business, so he deferred. He’s got men though. A lot of them, and not just Russian. Italians too. I spoke to him last week, and talked him into a meeting with you. But it will have to be in person, and it will have to be now—before Gregorio shows up here and takes the whole fucking castle right out from under you.”
I bristle, pacing away. Sleet catches on my shoulders, clings to my lashes. The cold has turned black and punishing, and all I want is to go inside. To lock Dani in my bedroom, to make love to her the way she wants me to, the way she deserves. She’s weathered me at my worst, shut down and guarded and cold as black ice. I want to give her something more of myself. Something honest and open.
Now I have to leave her again?
If I don’t go now, if Gregorio takes the castle, it won’t fucking matter.She’ll die. He’ll kill her. Or worse—take her. For his own wife, his own womb.
The rage that clouds my mind at the thought is almost enough to paralyze me.
“We’ll leave first thing in the morning,” I tell Gio. “I have some things I need to prepare before we go.”
Gio nods, and I don’t mistake the fear in his face, as well as Dario’s.
“That motherfucker isn’t setting foot in this castle again,” I tell them, and their fear corrodes into an anger that matches my own. Anger for Vittorio—hunger for revenge. I picture Dani, shivering, cheeks touched with pink, eyes wide and vivid and vulnerable. I lost everything, once. I didn’t think I’d ever find something else to possess, to care for. Somehow, I have. Dani is a windfall. Something I don’t deserve. Something I can’t afford to lose. Something, finally, to fight for. “Never again.”
* * *
“Is everything OK?”
She’s pacing outside my bedroom door. I take her by the wrist, pulling her inside. The maids have already started a fire, and it burns vividly in the hearth, casting tall, furtive shadows.
“I have to leave.” I’m already stripping off my wet clothes.
Dani’s eyes widen. She’s changed already, Sabine having dressed her in a warm sweater and woolen leggings. Her long hair hangs in a curling braid over one shoulder. All I want is to twist it in my fist, to pull her into my bed. Not to fuck her, or dominate her the way that I have. I want something more, I realize. I crave it.Shemakes me crave it.
“Already?” she asks softly, hands twisted together in front of her. “Something’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing for you to worry about.” It’s true, there’s nothing she can do. Nothing but stay here, where I know she is safe and protected. I peel off my shirt, my trousers. Dani’s lips part at the sight of me, almost naked in the firelight. I go to her, take her hands in mine. I press her back against the door and kiss her hard, surprised at the give of her mouth, of her cool palms against my chest. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Santo.” She catches my arm as I turn away. She pulls me back, and I let her. “You’ll be safe. Won’t you?”
Why is she asking about me, and not after herself? Could it be that the softness in her is no show at all? That deep down, Dani is warmth and honey and daring?
I brush a hand over her cheek. Her eyes, boring into mine, seem to pierce right through me. “I’ll be safe.”
“I know,” she whispers, and tears well in her eyes, “about what happened last year.”
I draw back from her, snapping my hand free of her grip. I don’t say anything, rage and fear hammering against my ribs. I don’t trust myself to speak.
“I know about your brother.” A tear cuts down her cheek. For Vittorio. For me. Strangers, and yet she feels for them. Us.How? Just who is this girl, really?“I know how angry you must be—”
“No,” I say, biting the word out. “You have no idea.”
“I don’t want you to be reckless,” she says quickly, eyes bright, mouth set. “I want—Santo, I want you to come back.”
She sees me far more clearly than I could have imagined. She knows that my rage has driven me to recklessness, that my hunger for revenge outweighs even the value of my own life. For a year, I’ve staked everything on that balance—the idea that I don’t have anything to live for, but I would happily die to avenge my brother.
“I came here as a transaction,” Dani says, and there’s a certain steel in her voice, the same steel I heard that first night by the fire. “But I won’t stay if that’s all you have to offer me.”
