There was no hesitation from him. “I’m sorry, Enzo. But you must.” He paused and took a breath, turning slightly toward me and speaking so softly only I could hear him. “I know where your head is, my friend. But you can’t live your life afraid, Enzo. You have to agree to this arrangement, for yourself and for the good of the family.”
My guts twisted, and my heart began to pound. To refuse his order would be a true test of his love. To see if my lifetime of friendship and loyalty meant more to him than his position in the family and his revenge against his father. I could save my sanity. I could watch as some other man took her as his wife and filled her belly with his children. Because it would happen. It didn’t matter if she was no longer a virgin. One look at that face, one touch of her skin, one night with his cock inside that sweet pussy, and any man would be her slave for the rest of his natural life…and maybe beyond.
I clenched my shaking fists at my sides as a red haze of jealousy and fury edged the corners of my vision.
But the way I felt didn’t matter.
That man would not be me.
That man could NOT be me.
“I cannot.”
Luca turned his back to Ciro completely. “Enzo, if you refuse him, it could start a war. One we cannot afford right now.”
“Let him take her.” Even as I said the words, every cell in my body screamed in pain. “Let him take her back. He’s running drugs from Mexico. He’s a competitor. We’ll cut his supply lines and contaminate his product until he has no choice but to beg for your forgiveness.”
Luca’s blue eyes were filled with disbelief. “She will hate you.”
Yes. She would.
I stepped around Luca. “I will not be forced into marrying your daughter. Go ahead and take her if you think you can get anything for her.”
Unable to stay in that room with her a moment longer, I walked to the elevator and got inside.
But I couldn’t resist one last look at her perfect, tear-stained face right before the elevator doors closed tight, as did the wall around my heart.
CHAPTER22
Enzo
Sera had been gone for two weeks when we got the invitation in the mail for a Christmas Eve wedding.
I was in Luca’s office going over some last-minute changes for a shipment we had coming in when Lisa brought it in to him. When he opened the envelope and saw the telltale stationary, he stopped. His blue eyes found mine as I rose from my chair and approached his desk.
“Go ahead,” I told him.
The room blurred around me as he pulled out the invitation and opened it. “It’s not her,” he told me. I barely heard him over the blood rushing through my ears.
“It’s for my father. ‘You and a guest are cordially invited to the wedding of Luigi Morelli and his bride to be on December 24th…’” He didn’t bother with the rest. “It’s not her,” he said again. “My father is marrying Linda.” There was a note of disbelief in his voice, and I knew why. Luigi had never remarried after Luca’s mother. He would move them in. Abuse them however he saw fit to punish them for not being the one he really wanted. But he never, ever married them.
Maybe he was starting to feel his age and decided what the hell. Or maybe Linda had somehow cracked open his cold heart. Either way, I didn’t really care. What he did with his life was no concern of mine.
I sank back down onto the couch and scrubbed my face with my hands. I wasn’t in the mood for a wedding. Or being around people. Or anything for that matter.
From what I’d been told by Luca and Tristan, after I left the meeting, Ciro commanded his men to grab Sera and took her with him back to Dallas. No one had any idea what he’d done to her after that. We assumed she was once again locked in her room as he tried to find someone who would take a slightly used bride.
The thought made me sick to my stomach. But she was better off away from me. I was getting far too attached. People died when I got too attached. And I thought that once she was gone, this crazy need I had to possess her would fade.
I was wrong.
Instead, it ate away at my insides until I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep. I spent hours in the gym until I was so exhausted I could barely walk, and still I would go back to the hotel and lie there in bed with my eyes wide open, listening for the soft sounds of her breathing and hoping to catch the lingering scent of flowers and coconuts on my sheets, despite the fact that housecleaning had changed the linens while I was gone.
The only thing I had left of her was the money I’d locked away in my safe. I’d told her the truth when I said I wouldn’t give it to her father. She’d worked hard to save up to start a better life, and I knew that, someday, I would get a phone call. My heart stuttered in my chest every time someone knocked on my door, only to be crushed again under the weight of disappointment when it wasn’t her.
As the days went by, she never contacted me to demand I return her money. I never heard anything about her, and neither did Luca. There was nothing at all. It was like she’d never been here in my life, and I’d dreamed her gap-toothed smile and soft, soft skin.
“I suppose we have to make an appearance,” Luca muttered as he stared down at the invite. “It would make my father even more suspicious if we didn’t.”
