“Enzo,” I croaked, stumbling to the bathroom.
Empty.
My chest seized tightly. I snatched the comforter as I passed, only because if he left, there might be a guard on the other side of the door. The poor sap didn’t need to die—or worse, have his eyeballs plucked out—because I stumbled into my own living area, nude.
I tore open the door, my husband’s name on my lips.
His head snapped up, black hair shifting as he moved. Inky black pools locked on me. There was so much promise there. What if they’d been rendered sightless? What if the bullet had been a few inches closer to center mass? The blanket fell to the ground, and I rushed across the space.
Vincenzo turned from the computer screen, where he’d been looking at a glittering blue sea and white sandy shores. Arms open, he caught me. I wrapped myself around him. Squeezed tightly. Felt his hard, warm body connected in multiple places against my own.
He was safe.
He was here.
He was mine.
“Fiore, che successo?” the monster growled into my hair.
“Nothing,” I breathed. “It’s nothing; you’re here.”
Vincenzo rumbled. “I am.”
We sat like that for a long moment. I might be naked, and he might have a raging hard erection pulsing against me, but this very second was more than sexual. It wasthe soul’s recognition of itself in another. As my pulse steadied and my breathing evened, Vincenzo began to brush his fingers through my hair.
“I’m working hard to make sure there aren’t days like today in our future,” he explained.
I angled my head up, cheek brushing his chest, to better look at him. “Meaning?”
“Meaning—” He huffed out a breath. “Meaning, I won’t be a mobster forever. I’m taking a page out of Cristiano’s playbook and turning legit.”
I blinked hard, clearing the moisture from my vision that I didn’t remember allowing to form. “Enzo, really?”
“Really.” His jaw flexed. “I want to leave the mob.”
The implication of that statement rocked me. “Don Morelli would lose his best soldier?”
Vincenzo shrugged. “He’ll protest. But my business ventures will benefit the famiglia without direct ties. He’ll have no choice.”
My exhale whistled through my lips. “You know, you said your brother’s playbook, but isn’t he taking it from you?”
The corner of that delicious mouth quirked up. “I never told anyone else that I wanted to become a football legend so I could leave the mob. Only you.”
“Still, it was your idea first,” I protested.
Vincenzo pressed a swift kiss on my forehead. “Either way, we have our work cut out for us if we want that to be our future.”
Our future. I liked the sound of that. So freaking much.
“I didn’t mean to wake you, but I’m glad you’re up.” Vincenzo scooted in his chair, finger shifting over the mouse pad to wake the screen that had fallen asleep while we’d clung to one another. He clicked away from the gorgeous looking beach photos he’d been scrolling through, clicked into an email in another tab, and opened a new window. “Look at this.”
I shifted on his lap, not missing the way he quietly groaned as my body pressed into his stiff cock. But the idea of disobeying, of sliding to my knees and enjoying him, faded a moment later when I read what was on the laptop.
Carole had been arrested for multiple thefts at high-end luxury stores. She was also facing charges of fraud and extortion. There was no word yet as to whowould be defending her in court, since her husband—the renowned international lawyer—failed to give the reporter a comment.
“The thefts make sense,” I murmured. “But the other charges? I had no idea she was in league with Dad.”
Dad, who was a scheming, lying, manipulative sonofabitch. He tried to sell me twice, and it was due to the man who resurrected from the grave, who’d forced me to marry him, that I escaped.
