Everything I’m not.
She moves deeper into the garden, fury radiating off her in waves. Even from this distance, I can see her hands are shaking. Rage, not fear. The kind of anger that comes from wounded pride.
Then she spots me and her trajectory changes instantly. One moment she’s stalking toward the house; the next she’s cutting across the gravel path straight for me.
I straighten from the tree. Something in my gut saysdon’t let her catch you cowering.
She stops three feet away, close enough that her perfume hits me, expensive and aggressive, the kind designed to dominate a room before the woman wearing it says a word. Close enough that I can see the fury twisting her beautiful features into something considerably less so.
Her eyes move over me in a single sweep, taking in the jeans and the worn vest and the callused hands and the hair I couldn’t be bothered to style, and contempt settles across her face like she’s made up her mind about me already.
“Questo è quello per cui mi ha buttato via?” Her voice drips venom. “Una troia rossa del cazzo?”
I don’t speak Italian. But I catch enough. The tone. The body language. The way she spitstroia rossalike it tastes foul in her mouth.
Red-headed whore.
Ah. So this must be Gabriella Rossi.
“My Italian isn’t great,” I say flatly. “But I got the gist.”
Her eyes narrow, and then she switches to English, accented but fluent.
“Good. Then you’ll understand this.” She steps closer. Into my space. “You’re a mistake. A distraction. A pathetic American he’ll tire of in a week.”
“And you’re the woman who got dumped via text message.” The words come out before I can stop them. Boston accent bleeding through. “Must’ve been quite a blow to the ego.”
Her face goes white. Then red.
“You think you know him?” She laughs. The sound is sharp and brittle. “You think you’re special because he fucked you?”
The word hits like a slap, not because it’s crude. I’ve heard worse in South Boston dive bars before I was old enough to drink in them. It’s the smile that follows that does it, slow and deliberate, the smile of a woman who has been waiting for exactly this moment.
“I’ve fucked him too,puttana.” The cruelty in it is almost elegant. “So many times. On a bed. In an office. On a desk while his guards stood outside the door.”
My stomach drops.
“He always comes back to me.” She’s enjoying this now. Watching my face for the crack. “No matter how many little distractions catch his eye. He gets bored. They all do. And when he does—” She leans in. “—I’ll be there. Waiting. Like I always am.”
The image slams into me before I can block it.
Gabriella. In his bed. Her dark hair spread across his pillow. Her nails raking down his back. Her mouth on his skin. Her legs wrapped around?—
Stop.
I force the image away. But the damage is done.
Heat coils in my chest, vicious and possessive. A feeling I have no right to. He kidnapped me. Kept me prisoner. I shouldn’t care who he’s slept with. Shouldn’t care if he’s fucked every woman in Sicily.
But the thought of her hands on him.
How dare she touch my monster.
The anger floods my veins. Possessive. Primal. Completely irrational.
Mymonster.
Notthemonster. Not Elio.
