Colour drains from her face and her breathtaking eyes grow wide, almost beseeching. But the time to hold back, pull my punches is over. “And while they were manoeuvring,” I finish, “I delayed dismantling them.”
“Why?” she whispers.
Because of you.
I don’t say it despite the words landing heavy as an anvil between us. She’s far from stupid.
Instead, I go with another unfortunate but inescapable truth. “Because I would not move against them until you were under my protection again. I couldn’t risk you falling into their hands if they found you first, playing bartender on the beach while calling yourself Lucy.”
Her breath rattles in and out, her mouth working for a few seconds before she speaks. “So you’re saying this is my fault?” she breathes.
“No,” I snap. “This is their fault. But it is now your danger.”
Her voice trembles. “What are they going to do?”
I sit back. Shrug. “For now, they’re deciding,” I reply calmly, “whether removing you will be enough to bring me to heel. Or if it’ll make me an even more dangerous opponent.”
Silence stretches. Deadly and absolute.
“And you think I should just… what?” she whispers. “Fall back into your arms and play mafia wife while men debate killing me?”
I meet her gaze unflinchingly.
“Yes.”
6
LUCIA
My mind is spinning.
Firing a million questions at once, none of them polite or calm, and all of them screaming to be answered now.
Before I can get a single one past my teeth, Giovanni cuts in.
“Before you start debating options with me,” he says coolly, “know that there is only one. You really have no choice in this matter, Lucia.”
Something inside me detonates.
I don’t scream. I want to scream. I want to claw at the walls, rake my nails down something solid until my hands ache, until I bleed, until he understands what those words do to me.
No choice.
The phrase scrapes against every nerve I possess.
“I don’t have a choice?” I snarl. “Newsflash, caro. You don’t get to decide that for me. You don’t get to stand there and?—”
“This isn’t a discussion,” he interrupts. “It’s a directive.”
I laugh. It’s sharp and ugly and entirely without humour. “Oh, that’s rich,” I fire back. “A directive. From my husbandwho just casually informed me that men are discussing whether killing me will improve their confidence in his leadership.”
He doesn’t flinch.
That might be the worst part.
“This is not about control,” Giovanni says evenly. “This is about survival.”
“You keep telling yourself that,” I snap. “It sounds much nobler than what it actually is.”
