I was shaking so hard my teeth were chattering.
The funeral had ended three hours ago.
It had been torture.
Three hours of holding myself together, of smiling at the right people, of saying the right things in the right tone with the right expression. Three hours of being the perfect Moretti daughter,the valuable asset, the bloodline wrapped in an acceptable package.
And three hours of feeling Enzo Valenti's eyes on me like hands.
I'd known he would be there. Of course I'd known. The Valentis were one of the five families; they would never miss a don's funeral, not when there was power to be assessed and weakness to be exploited.
I'd prepared myself. Practiced my composure in the hotel mirror that morning, rehearsed the blank expression I would wear if he approached, the polite nothings I would say.
None of it had mattered.
The moment he'd walked through that door, my body had remembered before my mind could catch up. The prickling awareness at the back of my neck. The animal instinct to freeze, to hide, to make myself small and still and invisible.
And then he'd looked at me.
That slow, proprietary gaze. Like I was something he owned. Like the years between us—ten years of therapy, of rebuilding, of learning to be a person again after he'd hollowed me out—meant nothing. Like I was still that stupid, desperate sixteen-year-old who believed a powerful man when he said she was special.
I turned on the cold water. Pressed a wet cloth to my face. Forced myself to breathe.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
The memory wouldn't fade.
His eyes moving down my body. Slowly. Deliberately. Like he was taking inventory of something that belonged to him.
I pressed the cloth harder against my eyes until colors burst behind my lids.
I'd built myself back from nothing. I'd learned to set boundaries, to recognize manipulation, to trust my own perceptions again.
And one look from him across a crowded room had reduced me to rubble.
The fury came then, hot and clean, burning through the fear like a brush fire through dead wood. I welcomed it. Fury was better than fear. Fury was fuel.
I set down the cloth and stared at my reflection. Pale face. Red-rimmed eyes. Smudged mascara I hadn't bothered to fix.
This woman had survived him once. She would survive him again.
But beneath the fury, beneath the fear, there was something else. Something that confused me more than Enzo's presence had terrified me.
Dante Caruso.
I'd prepared myself for him too. Different preparations—not the armor against a predator, but the resignation of a woman meeting her jailer. I'd expected polite disinterest. The assessing gaze of a man evaluating his purchase, checking to make sure the goods matched the description. Cool. Transactional. The look my father gave me when he was calculating my usefulness.
Instead, he'd looked at me like I'd struck him.
I replayed the moment in my mind, trying to make sense of it. The way his dark eyes had gone wide when our gazes met. The tightening of his jaw. The rough edge to his voice when he'd finally spoken, like the words were being dragged out of him against his will.
"Thank you. I appreciate you coming."
That was it. No warmth, no welcome, no hint that he saw me as anything other than an obligation he was enduring. The response you'd give a stranger you couldn't be bothered with. A dismissal disguised as courtesy.
I should be relieved.
A disinterested husband would be easier to hide from. Easier to manage. If he didn't care about me, he wouldn't look tooclosely, wouldn't push past the walls I'd spent a decade building. I could be the perfect wife on the surface—gracious, compliant, invisible—and keep the real Gemma locked away where no one could touch her.
