Tommaso folded his arms across his chest and pulled himself to his full intimidating height. “The price for being a rat is life, and that is what I’m taking from her.”
Siena might have inherited their father’s height, but she could stand tall too, and having been raised with three older brothers was a force all of her own. Being jilted at the altar and witnessing the death of their father within minutes of each other had fed her core of steel. “You’re thinking with your cock. You’ve had a thing for that bitch for years.”
“That ‘bitch’ has been your best friend since you were babies.”
“Which makes her treachery even more despicable,” she snapped.
“Which makes her punishment more fitting. She belongs to me now – herlifebelongs to me.”
“Thentakeit if you own it!”
“What do you think will happen if she just disappears?” he demanded, holding onto his temper by a thread. It infuriated him to know Siena’s fury was justified, that his own justifications had come after he’d decided to let Gabriella choose whether she lived or died. “You think people won’t notice?”
“Who cares what people think?” she seethed.
“We do,” Mattia reminded her slowly. “Our father spent twenty years legitimising us. We keep below the authorities’ radar, remember? The parts of the media we don’t control are already recycling the old stories and rumours about our past.” A past that had begun with their father as a low-life drug dealer.
Siena rounded on him. “Then we buy the outlets we don’t control and cut the fingers and tongues off those who slander us, and I don’t remember either of you showing this kind of concern about publicity when you put that million euro bounty on Niccolo’s head.”
“That was different,” Mattia said, his face tightening. “Niccolo dishonoured and humiliated us to the world.”
“And Tommaso’s traded his life in exchange for Gabriella’s, and she was working to betray us,” she spat. “I thought of that bitch as a sister. I trusted her. We all did. She was one of us, but all along she hated us and was working to bring us down.”
“And she will pay for that,” Tommaso cut in. “Gabriella will pay for what she’s done every day for the rest of her life.”
“You make sure she does,” their mother said icily, speaking for the first time. “Make her wish every day that she’d chosen death.”
“Believe me, I will.”
“How confident are you that she didn’t have an accomplice?”
“Niccolo said she was working alone – he knows the consequences if we discover he was lying to us. To give us certainty, I’ve got my team putting all her devices through a forensic examination. Stefano’s searching her apartment. If shewas working with anyone or in contact with anyone in authority, we will know by the morning.”
“Give me five minutes with the bitch, and I’ll find out if she was working with anyone,” Siena spat.
Tommaso rounded on his sister with a stare that had been known to make grown men wet themselves. “You will never touch her. Gabriella belongs to me now, and you all know I’m possessive about what’s mine. No one touches her but me.” He eyed all the Espositos surrounding him in turn. “Understood?”
His brother and mother both looked at him a long time before nodding their consent. Siena, though, looked even longer before shaking her head in disbelief. “I can see I’m outvoted even if I get Rico in here to cast a vote, so I will go along with the majority decision, but I want it on the record that I think your judgment’s screwed, which Iwillremember when we decide who steps into our father’s shoes.” Her pretty face twisted into a smile. “Understood?”
Gabriella’s heart jumped to see the glare of headlights cut through the window.
She glanced at Dario. Without looking at her, he muted the old game of football they were watching and left the living room.
Hugging herself tightly, she tried her hardest to keep breathing, to keep her features neutral and not betray a hint of the fear that had been building during the long hours of Tommaso’s absence.
It was almost one in the morning.
A door opened and closed. Muffled male voices in conversation.
She hugged herself even tighter. One of those voices was Tommaso’s unmistakable deep gravel.
A door closed. A beat later, Tommaso’s huge frame came through the living room door.
His hateful, wild black eyes locked straight onto her.
It wasn’t just his eyes that were wild. The thick black hair he wore ear-length and swept back looked as if hands had been pulling through it, strands falling over his forehead and cheeks, the thick beard somehow even bushier. The black suit jacket and tie had been discarded. His black shirt was rumpled, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows revealing muscular arms covered in more thick dark hair; the top three buttons undone, giving a glimpse of a deeply tanned, muscular chest with a smattering of finer dark hair.
It was like being stared at by a giant, grizzly bear, the eyes fixed on her telling her unequivocally that she was to be the meal he would take chunks out of.
