“Tore’s well aware of what’ll happen if he or anyone at this table tries.” I covered Boyan’s ears with my hands, even as he struggled to force them down. “I’ll happily take a scalpel to every set of balls involved.”
“Anzy,” Nonna scolded, her pitch too high and gentle to be taken seriously.
I had a lot of respect for Ruid D’Amico, the man who asked me call him Nannu—a Sicilian nickname for grandpa—within days after his son Salvatore adopted the three of us, but he was old school. To him, women belonged at home, in the kitchen, with the kids, with little else on their minds but chores, getting married, raising kids, and supporting their husbands. He’d fought tooth and nail against my going to medical school two years ago. He tried coddling and spoiling me as much as he tried toughening up Boyan. It never worked. I thought he’d given up.
Boyan tore my hands off his head. “Seriously, I’m old enough to hear all this.”
“You’re lacking discipline, young lady.” Nannu slammed his fist against the table. “You owe it to the family for taking you in.”
“I’ve already stitched up knife fights and mended broken bones. Once I’m a doctor, I’ll more than make up for what I owe. But I will never, ever sell my body and life so that someone other than me gains from it.”
“What about us, Nannu?” Boyan asked. “You think we’d let someone take our sister away? I’ll shoot him first.” He waved at Lou to speak up.
“I…I guess I’d stick him with my heels,” she said in that blasé tone of hers.
Tore chuckled. “You won’t win this one, Papa. Can’t you see Anzy’d chew and spit out any man you tried to set her up with?Best to leave her be. Anzy knows what she wants in life. I’d wager she’ll find a man worthy of her.”
“And should he betray her trust, we’ll be here to cut him, limb by limb,” Jac added, digging into his plate.
“And what of the debt you owed prior?” Renzo drawled, his tone caustic, almost inhuman.
“I’d argue that debt has already been paid. Tenfold.”
“Remember what I told you. I decide when it’s paid off. Not one. Moment. Before.”
My mask dropped, my eyes shutting just for a second to collect myself. They prickled with pooling tears needing release, as if that would change anything. He wasn’t the man I’d built him up to be. The kind words were all in my head. Or maybe they weren’t, and they had been just another tactic for him to manipulate the end result: him out of prison. If that was the case, he won. I’d fallen for it—hook, line, and sinker.
I forced a smile. “Anybody want some tea? I’m going to have Isa boil some water.”
Chapter 32
Itwasher.Itwas fucking her, and it was rattling my calm. The moans from the woman last night looped in my head. The memory of the tight, warm throb of her pussy around my cock was making me hard. It shouldn’t have been her. I never meant to have her. Because now, not only did I want her beneath me again, I wanted what I knew I couldn’t have. Damn her.
I knew the people at the table—their names, their origins, their purpose. I understood what they said and why they said it, but I couldn’t relate the way I once did. I didn’t care to. None of the frivolous bullshit spoken at that table mattered to me. It went in one ear, out the other. It was barely noise, except for when she spoke. Her voice broke the monotony. Not calm. Not rash. She was strong and resilient, just like I remembered…just like the voice I envisioned whenever I read her letters.Mia piccola rompiscatole. Mia civetta.My minx.
My eyes trailed her as she left. I excused myself from the table and followed Ainsley through the den and into Tore’s study. There she stood, in the middle of the room, staring at the landscape portrait of the Ancient Roman ruins at Taormina, with the mountains and its cities in the background. The painting wasbright and sunny, almost effervescent, yet calming, with whiffs of white clouds streaking the sky.
In her baggy clothes, the figure of her lower half was practically invisible compared to her defined waist and the tight lining of her shirt around her back and shoulders.
“Does the painting speak to you?”
She startled. Her discomposure lasted only a few seconds, but that lack of attention would’ve cost her life in prison, with a shiv to the gut.
“Why’d you follow me?”
“Is this the painting you bought for Tore during that trip to Sicily?”
“Yes.” She side-eyed me.
“Tasteful. Why look at it now?”
“Why talk to me now?”
“Simpler.”
“Same.”
I stepped closer. Her eyes, a mix of wood and copper, glared up at me, her chin tipped up. “Shy now?”
