‘It leaves me with staging your death and perhaps organising you a new identity.’ He shrugs. ‘I’d hoped to avoid more bloodshed, but your father has chosen his path. He will come to regret it, I assure you.’
I should feel regret myself at this, but regret is hard to come by now my father has decided my life isn’t worth as much as his pride. ‘You’ll have to find yourself another wife,’ I say.
He tilts his head. ‘Do I? A pity. You’re starting to grow on me.’
Another wave of warmth rushes through me, and my cheeks heat. I’m not sure why I’m blushing. What do I care if I’m starting to grow on him or not? He kidnapped me and forced me to marry him, and regardless of that strange electricity between us, I shouldn’tlikethat he likes me, right?
Except he’s beautiful and powerful, and very dangerous, and something wild in me is pleased I’ve managed to affect him. The girl even her own father abandoned has somehow managed to make this powerful head of acosa nostrafamily like her.
The air around us thickens, tension gathering, the force of his gaze like a hurricane wind, and my mind blanks. All I can see are his eyes and the silver flames in them, and all I can hear is my heart beating faster and faster.
I remember the light touch of his fingers as he straightened my tiara at our wedding ceremony, and the brush of his fingertip on my ear as he pushed a strand of hair behind it. The prickle of electricity that chased over my skin. The press of his mouth on my forehead, a feather-light kiss that I can still feel burning even now. And I’m looking at his mouth and the fullness of his bottom lip, and how it curves. Cruel and beautiful at the same time.
What would a real kiss from him be like?
The thought blazes in my head and now it’s occurred to me, I can’t stop thinking about it. That mouth not on my forehead, but on my lips. My first kiss. Would it feel as hot? What would he taste like? I remember the way he picked me up in the church earlier, throwing me over his shoulder like I weighed nothing. He was so hard, like stone, and yet warm, too.
Yet more heat steals through my cheeks, and I can’t stop it, and suddenly this all feels too much. The danger in our conversation, my own honesty, the tears in my eyes that I know he saw, and him, sitting there, seeing my blush and knowing why. Because of course he’d know why.
I can’t deal with it, not now, so I push myself to my feet, say ‘excuse me’ in a breathless voice, then I flee the terrace.
Chapter Ten
Vincenzo
I’MHALF OUTof my chair to stop her before I know what I’m doing. But when I realise, I force myself to sit back down. I’ve never chased a woman before and I’m not about to start now, but still, my blood is running hot and my muscles are tense.
I’m disappointed she’s gone, though perhaps not surprised.
She’s sheltered, clearly a virgin, and that moment of sexual tension between us must have been disturbing for her. Interesting how she displayed nothing but courage up until that point, all bravado as she challenged my threat to kill her if her father didn’t swear his loyalty to me before sundown.
She can look death in the face, but the moment our chemistry lights up the night, she blushes and flees.
And there were you, almost going after her.
I shove back my chair and pace over to the stone balustrade that bounds the terrace. Leaning on my hands, I look out over the sea and take a breath, trying to calm myself the fuck down.
Yes, I did want to go after her. I wanted to continue our conversation. I wanted to hear more about her childhood and how difficult it was. About her father and why there were tears in her eyes when she realised he wasn’t going to call me to save her, even though his treatment of her was terrible.
Did she love him? And if so, why? It seemed he didn’t give a shit about her and the thought makes me burn with unexpected fury. It drags up old memories I’d thought long buried, of how my own father hated my mother’s care of me, telling her it was making me ‘weak’. After her death, he took my upbringing in hand to make me stronger. Hardening me to death and violence in the way of the families.
The torture session with a suspected mole that one of the other families had planted in our household, was the first. My father did the torturing along with hisconsiglieriand I was made to watch. If I protested or cried, or turned away, I was struck across the face. In the end, theconsiglieriheld me by the scruff of my neck, my mouth bleeding, one of my eyes swelling shut, and forced me to watch. I was twelve years old.
Before my mother lost herself, I was a boy who rescued baby birds from fallen nests in the garden, and once a kitten that I found on a riverbank, all wrapped up in a pillowcase after someone had tried to drown it. I helped Maria pick herbs from the garden for dinner, and for my mother, I picked roses. I loved my parents wholeheartedly and my favourite thing to do was go for walks on the beach with my mother.
But my father didn’t allow such softness. There was no room for mercy as the head of the family and no room for kindness. No room for care. He beat all that care and kindness out of me, leaving me little more than a killing machine.
Until that night I rescued Caterina, and discovered in myself that there were some shreds of kindness and care still there. Scraps of mercy, too.
I’d given up at that stage, thrown myself into my father’s world because with my mother gone, it was the only world I knew. But Caterina made me see that parts of the boy I once was still remained, and that I could choose something different.
By then I had no love left for my father, not one iota. And I knew right from the start that if I wanted to keep those scraps of kindness and care, if I wanted to remain at least somewhat whole, he’d have to go. I’d have to end him myself, since I couldn’t trust anyone else to do it. So, one night when he called me into his study to issue some order or other, I took my gun with me and shot him in the head.
And I didn’t regret it. Not a single fucking shred.
Caterina has more of a conscience than I do, judging from the way her own father’s betrayal cut her so deeply. She must care more than she thinks, which is obvious since she’s been nothing but furious since she arrived here.
My fingers grip tightly to the stone as I remember the hurt in her eyes as it sunk in that her father hadn’t contacted me, and my anger burns hotter at how he discarded his only daughter so carelessly.
