It took all her strength to keep her voice steady enough to ask, “Where’s Dario?”
“Gone.”
She tried not to flinch. All the hours Dario had babysat her had been spent in cold silence watching old football games, breaking only to eat a delivered pizza. Gabriella’s tight, knotted stomach had managed only one slice. For all his loathing, though, she’d not felt any sort of threat from him, not like she was feeling now. Even when Tommaso turned away and strode to the bar in the corner of the vast room, she felt the menace oozing from him.
She heard the sound of glasses clinking and liquid splashing, and then he was walking back towards her with two crystal glasses of what she assumed was his preferred drink of whiskey.
She hated that she knew whiskey was his preferred drink. She could use the excuse that she’d known him her whole life,but she’d also known Rico and Mattia her whole life and didn’t have a clue what their drinks of choice were.
It was only when he thrust the glass with ice in it at her and she caught the aroma that she realised he’d poured her a dark rum.
Her own drink of choice.
Feeling her neck flush that he’d paid such close attention to her, she looked away in embarrassment at her own reaction and shook her head. “I don’t want anything.”
“Remember the ground rule about compliance? You do what I say, when I say, and I say you drink, so take the glass and drink.”
She could do nothing to stop her hand from shaking as she obeyed. Do nothing to stop the shiver of electricity that danced through her skin when her finger brushed against his.
“To us.”
She darted her stare back up to him.
He was looking down at her, a mocking smile on his lips. “It is customary to repeat a toast when one is made.”
“You want me to say it?”
His smile widened. “I want you to say it.”
She had to dredge the words out. “To us.”
He tapped his glass to hers and, without taking his eyes from her, took a large drink of his whisky. She suspected it followed many other whiskies that night and felt another pang of emotion at the pain she knew he was enduring to have said his final goodbye to his father. Lorenzo Esposito had been the biggest monster of them all, but he’d been Tommaso’s father, and his death had devastated him.
Saying goodbye to her mother had been the hardest day of Gabriella’s life, and remembering it smothered the pang. The Espositos hadn’t killed her mother directly like they had her father, but she held them just as responsible for it. Tommasomight have been a child himself when her father had been killed, but he was built of the same deadly mould as the rest of them and didn’t deserve an ounce of her compassion.
Followed his lead, her mouth filled with a spicy, caramel flavour that was the smoothest rum she’d ever tasted.
“Well done,” he mocked. Turning again, he headed to a deep, plush leather armchair and lowered his huge frame into it. The wild, black eyes fixed back onto hers. His strong nostrils flared. “On your feet. Clothes off.”
This time, she was unable to hide her flinch.
He took another drink of his whisky. The hardness of his stare was all the proof she needed that he meant business.
Tommaso was laying down his marker. His dominance and degradation of her was to start immediately, with her stripping naked for him right there under the living room’s bright lights as if she were nothing but a common whore.
Chapter Three
Tommaso watchedthe war Gabriella was fighting with herself through the contortion of emotions flickering over her despicably beautiful face, and felt a similar contortion of hot, rancid emotions knot and pulse inside his chest.
She deserved no mercy. That he’d let her live was all the mercy he would ever show her.
“Do I need to repeat myself?” he asked in curt warning.
Neck and cheeks flaming, she put her glass on the hard floor and got unsteadily to her bare feet. Standing, the woman working to destroy him faced him with her chin jutted and her hands fisted at her sides.
He beckoned her with a crook of a finger.
Only the smallest beat of hesitation before she moved towards him in the same disjointed way she’d walked in her apartment. When she was a couple of feet away, he held his palm up as an instruction to go no further. “I want to see what my benevolence has bought me.” A benevolence she would pay for the rest of her life. “Clothes off.”
