The silence in the tiny apartment would have been deafening if his ears weren’t filled with the hot, rabid pulse of his fury.
Gabriella Romano’s compassion had been fake like everything else about her. She was a rat, and there was only one price exacted for treason – life.
As if she could read his mind, she moistened her delicious, plump lips, lifted her pretty little chin, and cleared her throat. “Are you going to tell me why you’re here and waving that thing at me?”
He leaned forward and smiled cruelly. “Why don’t you tell me why you left my father’s wake so early?”
Her throat moved.
“Was it anything to do with the phone call you received when we were leaving for the funeral?” Her flinch at this was barely noticeable, but he noticed it. When it came to Gabriella, Tommaso noticedeverything. His smile widened as the rage barely contained to a simmer in his veins turned up a notch. “Niccolo warning you he was about to sell you out?”
She moistened her lips a second time. “I don’t know what you’re…”
The cobra struck. In less time than it took to blink, he was on his feet with her face in his hand, his thumb and fingers pressing into her cheeks. “Don’t play games with me, you treacherous bitch,” he snarled. “Today I laid my father to rest, and then I learned the woman he thought of as a second daughter is a rat who’s been working to destroy us all.”
She tried to wrench her face from his hold. “You’re hurting me.”
He brought his face directly to hers. “Consider yourself lucky that it’s me who came to deal with you. If it had been Mattia, you’d be dead already.”
Her eyes blazed with fire and defiance, but fear was tinged in the mixture too, and it was a fear his rage fed on with a gluttonous greed. “At least if it was Mattia, my death would be clean,” she hissed. “If you’re going to kill me, get it over with.”
Aware that a little more pressure from his thumb and fingers would do some serious damage, he released her face with an oath, now furious with himself for even caring that he might cause her pain. The hatred he felt for her was beyond anything.Anything.
“Get up.” When she didn’t move, he aimed the gun directly at her face. “I said get up.”
Her beautiful features a contortion of the same defiance and fear blazing from her eyes, she gripped the side of the armchair for support and hauled herself to her feet. It sickened him to see her wearing the black of mourning. A simple black shirtdress and smart black leather jacket with knee-high boots, she looked as sexy as sin, and he despised her for it. Despised himself for all the years he’d fantasised about breaching her defences and possessing her. Despised himself for having thought she could be his future.
“Do it,” she whispered shakily, lifting her chin.
“Youwantto die?”
Her head jerked in a shake. Her jutted chin was wobbling, her whole body trembling. The pulse on the left side of her neck was visibly throbbing, and he imagined her heart and the strength of its beats, imagined it pumping as hard as his own. How easily he could stop it beating. One pull of his finger, and the vivid, beautiful life standing before him would be no more. Her lungs would never again fill with air. Her clever brain would never think another thought or store another memory. It would all be gone. Her body would be nothing but a rotting shell, just like his father’s.
Only five days ago, Tommaso had watched the life leech from his father. The bright eyes that never missed anything had become blank; the essence of life that had sparked in them extinguished, and as he gazed into the dark eyes of the woman so bravely refusing to turn her stare away from his and imagined the spark of life extinguishing from them, he felt everything inside him contract painfully.
“You know the rules, Gabriella,” he reminded her harshly. “The price for treason is life.”
Her lips were wobbling as frantically as her chin. A solitary tear rolled down her cheek.
One press of his finger and no tears would ever fall from those eyes again. One press of his finger on the trigger it rested on, and those eyes would never again fire her contempt at him. Her lips would never tell another lie.
“I have to take your life. You know that.”
Her eyes closed. She swayed, but didn’t fall. Even in the face of death, her bravery defined her.
Why did it have to beher,he thought with agonised fury. Because she was right, if he’d let Mattia deal with her as Mattia had wanted, the essence of Gabriella’s life would already beextinguished. She would be a corpse on the floor. It was the price she had to pay, the price of life that was demanded…
“But life doesn’t have to mean death.” He spoke the words slowly as they came to him.
Her beautiful dark brown eyes flew back open and locked on his. The essence of life still burned brightly in them.
“You can save yourself.”
She swallowed before choking out, “How?”
He stared at her, the alternate path revealing itself to him wrapped in such perfection he could laugh. “You told me once that you would rather die than come to bed with me… Now is the time to decide if that still holds true. I’ll spare you your life if you give me your life.”
Her eyes were as wide as he’d ever seen them. “You…” Her throat moved, plump lips pulling in. “You want me to…have sex with you?”
