Ignoring her, he tightened his grip around his brother’s throat and raised his voice so the females of the family knew he was talking to them, too. “She will not be harmed, not by anyone. Is that understood? Gabriella is mine, and I will bring hellfire down on anyone who dares touch her. Is. That. Understood?”
Mattia’s black eyes spat their own hellfire, but the jerk of his reddening face told Tommaso that he, at least, understood. Tommaso let him go. Immediately, his brother started coughing.
As cool as a cucumber, their mother handed her firstborn a glass of water before looking at Tommaso. “I think you have made your point.”
“Good.” Folding his arms across his chest, he took a long, deep breath and cast his gaze over his family.
Siena was still seated, absorbing everything with uncharacteristic silence. Her cheeks had paled, although whether at the revelation that their father had killed his best friend all those years ago or that their mother had known it or because of Tommaso choking Mattia, he didn’t know. Maybe it was all those things. His mother, for all her coolness, had lost some colour too. Only Mattia, once he’d stopped coughing, looked unruffled, but then Mattia had always had their mother’s temperament, and it was Mattia who now took charge.
“If we agree to let the rat live, you know we can’t let you step into our father’s shoes, right? There is no room for sentimentality in the role.”
Tommaso jutted his chin the way he’d seen Gabriella do so many times, the dim thought in his head that he finally understood why Rico had walked away from it all for the sake of a woman. “If you agree to leave Gabriella alone, I am prepared to let you three decide the new head of our family. Whoever you choose will have my full loyalty and support, just as our father always had.”
“You withdraw?” Mattia clarified.
“I withdraw on the condition you all agree to leave Gabriella alone. She never asked to be born into this world and has suffered enough at the hands of this family.”
“And you will guarantee her silence?”
“Yes.” But he would do nothing to guarantee it. The physical proof she’d gathered was locked away in Tommaso’s cellar, still waiting for him to go through it. Her verbal testimony, if she chose to go to the authorities, would not be worth the paper it was written on, but could make life difficult for them. He no longer believed she would do even that.
“Then I agree to your condition.”
Tommaso looked at his sister. She closed her eyes and nodded.
His mother’s cool stare was intense. “If you were not my son, I would cast you out. But you are my son, and as your father always said, family comes first.” Her face softening, she wrapped her arms around his waist. “And I always say it too. Gabriella will suffer no harm from me.”
With a deep sigh of relief, he returned the embrace and kissed the top of his mother’s head. Catching his brother’s eye, they exchanged a look of understanding, and when his motherfinally unwrapped her arms from him, he embraced his brother and felt more deep relief when it was affectionately returned.
“I will leave you three to make the choice,” he said after exchanging a tight embrace with his sister. “Let me know when it’s been decided.”
He’d reached the door when Siena called after him. “Who do you think it should go to?”
He mustered a smile. “Whichever one of you gets it, the family will be in safe hands.”
Tommaso had lived alone in his villa for three years. In all those years, he’d never felt lonely, not even on the few nights he’d spent alone. Walking through the front door that night was to walk into loneliness. In the short weeks Gabriella had lived under his roof, her presence had filled every crevice. More, her presence had filled him.
All those years, his feelings for her slowly and subtly changing. Old-fashioned lust deepening to need.
He’d needed her the night of his father’s death. Gabriella would never know that it had been her suite he’d gone to first. It had been Gabriella he’d needed, Gabriella he’d sought. Like a blind man, he’d felt his way to her, and when he’d found her in his mother’s suite, a speck of the grief that had knotted his chest so unbearably had loosened. There had been no way to make sense of the feeling that Gabriella was home to him.
Their eyes had locked together. Without speaking a word, he’d laid his head on her lap and fed on the gentle comfort she’d given. He’d needed her love that night, and she’d given it freely. As much love as she could give to an Esposito.
Would things have turned out differently if he’d stopped for a moment at the start to askwhyshe’d worked so hard to betray them? Maybe. Probably. For the better or the worse, he couldn’t know, knew only that he should have stopped to ask. He should have remembered the compassion that had shone on her face when he’d staggered into his mother’s suite seeking only her.
Gabriella hated him too much to ever allow herself to love him. If he’d ever had a chance with her, his actions since Niccolo had uttered her name had killed it. Madness at her betrayal had swallowed him and seen him treat her like she was subhuman, and it was only now, as he looked back on those terrible, terrible days that he realised his fury hadn’t been tied to her betrayal of his family but what his subconscious had perceived as her betrayal of him. Of them. Of the future he’d only just admitted to wanting with her.
In his games room, he helped himself to a bottle of whisky and carried it to the juke box, intending to burst his eardrums with some heavy rock music. The last thing he expected to find was the last song to have been played on it the song he’d danced with Gabriella to at his thirtieth birthday party.
For an age he stared blankly at the song title and artist, his head too full of memories to properly see. This was the damned song that had started it all. The song that had set him on the road to falling in love with her. The song that had set him on the path to the most unimaginable pain.
With a guttural roar that felt dredged from his very soul, Tommaso slammed the bottle down on the juke box.
Tommaso woke on a leather sofa. His head was pounding, his throat drier than the Sahara. Peering through bleary eyes, hisfirst vague thought was that a bunch of chimpanzees had broken in and trashed the place.
And then he remembered.
Sickness rising, he sat up and surveyed the destruction of his games room…and saw Katya standing in the doorway, horror written all over her face.
