Her face, which had been determinedly looking out of the darkened window the entire drive, finally turned to him. “You’re not coming in too?”
He soaked in her beautiful features and felt her poison trickle through his veins. He could break this woman if he wanted. Maybe he would.
Bringing his face close to hers, he spoke in a soft but deadly tone. “I have my father’s wake to attend – you remember him? The man you pretended to see as a father, too? The man who treated you as a child of his blood from the moment of your birth? The man you cried tears for during his funeral service only hours ago? I’m going to join the rest of my family in mourning his death and celebrating his life, and while I’m there, I’m going to have to explain why my hands are not soaked in your treacherous blood. I’ll be back when I’m back.” He leaned away from her and held out his hand. “Before you leave, your phone.”
She threw him a baleful stare before pulling her phone out of her jacket pocket and practically slapping it onto his open palm.
He brought his face back to hers, close enough that he could feel her poisonous breath on his face; the breath she was only making through his benevolence. “As much as I love a woman with spirit, I will not tolerate dissent or disrespect from you. When I return, I will go through the ground rules, but understand now that the top rule is compliance in all things, and that your compliance will be given with good grace. Understood?”
Her chin lifted, plump lips pulling into a tight line. “Perfectly.”
“Good. Wait up for me.”
By the time Edoardo had turned the car around, Gabriella had been swallowed into Tommaso’s home.
Tommaso’s villa was exactly as Gabriella remembered it from her one visit three years earlier, and for the blink of a moment, she could hear the blaring music and smell the alcohol and smoke. See, too, the parade of beautiful scantily-dressed women all desperate to be the one – or one of the ones – to share Tommaso’s bed that night. He’d taken one of them by the hand for a tour of his cellar and had made sure to catch Gabriella’s eye and smirk a wink before disappearing into it.
She’d hated herself for how that had made her feel and made her hate him even more. At every social situation she found herself in where Tommaso was present, he always made a point of flaunting his latest lover to her. It was as if he could smellthe burn of jealousy sluicing through her veins, and revelled in making her squirm.
She hated herself for that jealousy. Hated that she’d never been able to control it. Hated even more that he’d known it, and it made her heart smash painfully to know she was now at his mercy.
The vast home once filled with noise now echoed in silence. Dario, Tommaso’s right-hand man, was someone Gabriella had known all her life, as much a part of the fabric of the Esposito empire as anyone. The usual grin and wisecrack she received in greeting from him were stark by their absence.
He knew, she thought with a shiver. Did that mean everyone knew? Either things were kept tight inside the Esposito inner circle, a place Gabriella had held until that very afternoon, or they were deliberately leaked to the wider circle. Dario, with his lifelong impeccable loyalty, was one of the very few in the inner circle.
Arms folded over her breasts, she followed him through the main reception room. The gun in his back pocket reminded her of the weapon she’d stashed away in the foam of her mattress. Everything she owned was in her apartment. She’d had no opportunity to get the gun or anything else. Tommaso had not let her bring any of her possessions. No clothes. No keepsakes. No makeup. Nothing that was hers because now, nothingwashers. Her life belonged to Tommaso, and the palatial home she remembered being filled with raucous noise was silent with Dario’s loathing.
“Where do I wait?” she asked.
Dario’s shrug suggested she could wait in a cupboard for all he cared. “Coffee?”
“Don’t you need to get to the wake?”
The stare he gave her was only marginally less frightening than the loathing that had blazed from Tommaso’s black eyes. “I’m to stay here until he gets back.”
She held the stare. “I’m sorry.” As an old friend of Tommaso’s and part of the Espositos’ inner circle, Dario should have been crowding into Valeria’s magnificent home with the other mourners to pay the final homage to Italy’s most powerful man.
His lips curved in a sneer. “Sure you are. Did you want that coffee or not?”
“Coffee would be good.” She hadn’t eaten or drunk anything since leaving for the funeral.
The kitchen was as masculinely modern as the rest of the villa but mercifully free of the erotic artwork that featured so prominently throughout the rest of the ground floor.
“Where are the staff?” All the Espositos had household staff to keep their homes running in perfect order.
“Done for the day.”
“They don’t live in?”
“Tommaso likes his privacy.”
A coil of ice slithered up her spine. She just bet he did.
“You have lost your fucking mind.” The expected furiously delivered words came from Tommaso’s sister. “You should have let Mattia take care of her. She’s a fucking rat.”
They were in their father’s study. Everything was exactly as it had been before they’d left for Accardiano except for the great man himself.
Their mother, the grieving widow who’d just been filled in on Gabriella’s betrayal, was looking at Tommaso with eyes so narrowed her forehead was fighting against its regular dose of Botox to form a groove. As usual, it was Mattia, the oldest of the Esposito siblings, whose facial expressions gave the least away.
