I lifted so fast, we almost butted heads. I pulled the covers above my breasts for some reason. “You’re taking me with you to the hospital?”
“Sì.”He placed his pointer finger in the middle of my forehead and slowly pushed me back down to the pillow. He coaxed the blanket from my strangling fingers. “Aristide will meet us there. You will wait with him until my meeting is over.”
He kissed each of my nipples, then swirled his tongue around each one, before he started to suck. My uterus contracted, and I sighed out a breath.
He spoke in soft Italian before he released me from his hold. “Sleep now. Dawn is not far off.”
I closed my eyes, but sleep was as distant as the night.
TWENTY-FOUR
AVA
As timeusually does when something unpleasant is looming, it flew.
One minute I was wrapped in Naz’s arms.
A minute after he was inside of me again.
A minute after that it was time to get dressed.
Then we were on the road, headed to the hospital for him to have a meeting with his father.
The longest parts of the night were the times we spent locked into each other. Those moments passed by in a slow, romantic haze, but the others…a fast-moving blur.
He took my hand over the console and brought it to his lips, kissing every finger. “You are nervous.”
“No,” I breathed. “Just…a little anxious. The last time I saw your father, he was walking into the event in Venice.”
“You were not nervous then.”
“No.”
“Why now?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Hospitals make me nervous—I always feel like if I go in, I might never come out. Not ready for that day yet. And…even though I know this is how things are done in your family, I hated to see it come to what it did between your dad and Luca. Even though Ed predicted this.”
His eyes snapped to mine.
“Ed as inEdna. You probably know this already, but she owns Vice City and has always been a mentor to me. She’s been in love with your grandfather since she was young. No other way to put it. She’s infatuated with him.”
He dark eyebrows drew down. “You mean obsessed.”
“Yeah, and that’s a lame term for it. She has never gotten over him.”
“The only woman my grandfather loved, romantically, was my grandmother. You could say he was obsessed with her, and she the same with him.”
“Grazia Angeli, your grandmother, was a beautiful woman.”
Grazia had been a young actress in Italy at the time she met Marzio. She was also an heiress to a luxury Italian race car brand. Her film career was just getting started. After she met Marzio, she gave it up to marry him and have a family.
“Sì.She was also intelligent, talented, and sharp—when it came to family business. My grandmother was just as protective over my grandfather as he was over her.”
Was that a dig at me? He thought I wouldn’t protect his secrets?
That was fair, but…we’d shared so much. I couldn’t see how he could trust me in a relationship, no matter what the label of it was, and not with his secrets. Maybe he’d keep family business to a different side of him, but sooner or later, he would have to trust someone.
Maybe he thought Elettra, being his wife, would be more trustworthy. But we were pitted against each other, and in my view, both of us had the capability, and ammo, to try and wound him through his family.
