“Satisfied?” She heard Gino say, his tone as taut as Mattia’s had been. “The clock is ticking. Remember that.”
Only when a long passage of silence passed did she lift her face.
His arms were folded over his chest, his phone gripped in his hand. The expression in his eyes was, for once, unreadable.
“How was all that?” When he made no response, she said, “Would you have preferred I played it a different way?”
His eyes narrowed to a point. “That was all fake? The tears?”
“Apart from the bit where I asked them not to tell my parents. I don’t want them upset.” She didn’t care that they deserved a bit of upset for going behind her back to marry her off, and to a man who thought her virginity a prize. They would be suffering enough.
A pulse ticked on Gino’s jawline, visible even through his beard.
“I have no doubt my cousins believe you will harm me if your demands aren’t met,” she said, thinking on her feet…well, her bottom. She couldn’t tell him why she’d had to play it the way she had. She didn’t want to bring that awful vision back to her mind’s eye, not ever. “I just thought it would be more convincing if they thoughtIbelieved it too.”
“You don’t?”
She didn’t drop her stare. “No.”
“Then you need to start believing it, because this isn’t a game, Miss Marino,” he bit out.
“I am well aware of what this is,” she stated calmly, even as her heart thumped hard against her ribs. “You’re gambling with your life. You should be thanking me – if my cousins weren’t working flat out to comply with your demands, my little performance should have gone some way into focusing their minds, and on the subject of gambling, you now have to teach me how to play poker.”
A host of emotions punched through him. Gino had put his phone in front of Francesca without a clue of how she was going to act for her cousins. Whatever way she acted would make no difference to anything because she was his hostage and had not a single mark on her, inside or out.
The last thing he’d expected was tears. He’d watched them pour down her face, unable to believe them but unable not to believe what he was seeing. Even as he’d watched them fall and heard the sob in her voice, even as he’d felt his guts twist sharply in response, there had been a real sense of unreality about it all.
His instinct had been right. Francesca’s tears had been fake. But her cousins had believed them.
He shook his head. “You are unbelievable.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Do you understand that your performance means you’ve gone against your family?”
She smiled. It was the first smile he’d seen from her that didn’t meet her eyes, and when she spoke, the cheeriness in her voice sounded forced. “Not at all. For all the fun I’m having here with you, I do want to go home, and I’d prefer if that could happen without any bloodshed. Maybe I’m being foolish, but I don’t believe you’ll hurt me. I dobelieve, though, that you willgo after my cousins if they fail to comply – you wouldn’t have a choice, I see that.” She swallowed, her smile fading. “If things don’t go according to your plan, therewillbe bloodshed, so, in what I believe is a gambling term, I’ve stacked the odds more in your favour. When it comes to not spilling blood, I’ve stacked the odds in everyone’s favour.” The smile gone, her voice lowered to a whisper. “But I don’t believe the odds will stay in your favour, Mr Vicario. You will probably win the game, but they will never let you claim your winnings.” Her eyes clouded and then widened a touch, an almost minuscule hitch forming in her voice. “They will kill you for this.”
For the first time in all the long hours they’d spent together, Gino sensed genuine distress from his hostage, and it was as disarming as everything else about her. “The future will take care of itself.”
“Do you value your life so little?”
“Not at all. I value my life greatly.”
“Then why risk it in a gamble you can’t win?”
“Every gamble comes with a chance of winning. I’ve never rolled the dice on a gamble that hasn’t come in, and I’ve played all the odds.”
“Every winning streak comes to an end.”
“Says who?”
“Logic?”
“Even if logic does dictate that, it doesn’t mean my winning streak is going to come to an end with this gamble. I take risks – great risks – but I also take precautions, and I never roll the dice if I’m not confident of success.”
Her throat moved. “I hope for your sake that your confidence pays off.”
“Because you care what happens to me, Miss Marino?” he mocked. She was his hostage. It was beyond the realms ofpossibility, even where Francesca was concerned, that she could give two fucks about his future.
