He was moving toward the Morettis now. I tracked his trajectory the way I'd track an incoming threat, my body tensing without my permission.
Tomasso saw him coming and squared his shoulders. The two men embraced like old friends—backs thumped, words murmured too low to hear from across the room. Whatever history lay between them, it was long and complicated and probably involved debts I didn't know about.
Enzo's wife had died a few years back. Elena, her name was. Tragic accident. He'd never remarried, never even been seen with another woman since. Some people said it was devotion. Looking at him now—the precision of his performance, the absence of anything warm behind his eyes—I doubted he was capable of devotion to anything but power.
He was talking to Tomasso's wife now. Gracious. Charming. Making her smile despite the circumstances.
Then his gaze slid sideways.
To Gemma.
And something shifted in his face.
It was fast—so fast that most people wouldn't have caught it. A flicker of expression beneath the careful mask, there and gone in the space between heartbeats. But I was watching. I was always watching. And I saw it.
Hunger.
Not lust, exactly. Something older. Something that looked like ownership. Like he was counting inventory, checking to make sure a possession he'd misplaced was still where he expected it to be.
His eyes moved down her body slowly. Deliberately. Taking their time. The black dress, the pale skin, the careful composure that suddenly looked less like strength and more like armor.
I knew that look. I'd seen it on men who thought they could take whatever they wanted, who saw other people as objects to be acquired and used and discarded.
I'd never seen it directed at something that belonged to me.
She doesn't belong to you yet, said the rational part of my brain.She barely knows your name.
But the rational part was losing the argument.
Gemma had gone white.
I watched the color drain from her face like water from a sink. Her hand trembled against the coffee cup she still hadn't touched—a fine tremor, almost invisible, but I caught it because I was cataloging every detail of her whether I wanted to or not.
She wasn't looking at Enzo. That was what struck me hardest. She'd been watching him approach, I'd seen her tense when he entered the room, but now that he was looking at her—now that his predator's gaze had found her—she'd fixed her eyes on some point past his shoulder. Refusing to meet his stare. Refusing to acknowledge what was happening.
Her throat moved as she swallowed.
Her mother said something to her. Gemma nodded without hearing it.
She looked like prey.
The thought hit me like a sucker punch, knocking something loose in my chest that I hadn't known was there. She looked like a rabbit frozen in the presence of a wolf, holding perfectly still and hoping the stillness would save her.
But she wasn't running. Wasn't crying. Wasn't doing any of the things a frightened person might do in a room full of potential witnesses. She was holding her ground, holding her composure, holding that perfect mask in place even though I could see it was costing her everything.
Whatever was between them, it was old. It was ugly. And she was terrified.
The fury that rose in my chest was absurd. Irrational. She was a stranger—a name on an alliance document, a face I'd been staring at for less than an hour. I had no right to feel protective of her. No claim to make, no territory to defend.
But I wanted to cross the room and put myself between her and Enzo Valenti. I wanted to make him look at me instead, force those pale eyes to meet mine, let him see what would happen if he ever looked at her like that again.
I wanted to break something with my hands.
Instead, I stayed where I was. Watched Enzo's attention drift away from Gemma as Tomasso reclaimed his focus with some comment about business. Watched the color slowly return to her face. Watched her take a breath, then another, the way someone does when they're counting down from terror.
She didn't know I was watching. Didn't know anyone had seen.
But I had. And I wouldn't forget.
