The machine hummed softly, granting her access. Files unfurled on the screen including complex code, network schematics, and security protocols. Backdoors into the heart of the Colleoni fortress.
Freedom to find her own key to her current prison.
Giana had looked at the schematics, the intricate pathways laid bare. It was the key to the kingdom.
Rodrigo knew exactly what she could see, what she could touch. He had defied Gabriella to give it to her. Riskedeverything, because it was the power not just to destroy Gabriella but him too. She could bring down the whole Colleoni empire if she chose to.
"Why?" she whispered again in the darkness.
It was a question that would haunt her for years.
12
Giana jolted back to the present. She was sitting on the bed in her room, her good hand clenched in the silk duvet and her breathing ragged.
You are a queen in chains.
"Damn him," she muttered, pressing the heel of her good hand against her forehead.
That moment had been the beginning of her becoming something more than Gabriella's broken toy. He had given her what she needed to fight back and carve out a sliver of autonomy within her prison.
Rodrigo knew precisely what she would do with the access he provided. Without those tools, without the skills she honed in secret, she never would have been able to steal Gabriella's money. She would probably be dead by her own hand, if not Gabriella's, by now if he hadn't given her that damn laptop.
It had all been going to plan, and then Gabriella had died before Giana could rub it in her face that she had won her own freedom.
Fucking Gabriella.
Rodrigo had wanted Giana to take her down, and she needed to know why.
Giana remembered the feel of his lips on her palm earlier. The way his expression had softened when she laughed during the photoshoot was a look so unlike the Rodrigo she knew.
And then, what he had done to the wall. The raw, bloody-knuckled fury unleashed by Vincenzo's taunt. The violence had been terrifying, but the source of his anger wasn't about territory or money. It was about her.
He came for me.He had stormed that hellhole, drenched in blood, carving a path to her cage.
Her last conscious thought during the chloroform abduction had been a desperate plea, and he had answered with fire and blood and severed hands.
The hatred she clung to, the convenient shield against this confusing tangle of feelings, crumbling piece by piece. Undone by memories of secret gifts, by the heat in his eyes, by the terrifying vulnerability beneath his rage.
Just how much had Rodrigo protected her over the years, not just from the other mafia families but from Gabriella?
Giana's stomach clenched as she questioned everything she had always thought she knew.
A soft chime echoed from the laptop on the desk, and she recognized it as the secure internal comm system Leo had integrated.
Giana flinched. She didn't want to talk to anyone, certainly not Rodrigo, when she was feeling like this.
Giana forced herself to stand, ignoring the protest from her ribs and her throbbing hand. She reached the desk and tapped a key. The screen lit up, showing an incoming message from Athena.
Cage is prepped. Charges set. Kon says it's 'artfully menacing'. Fred wants to know if we should add asign that says, 'Welcome, Vincenzo, you cock face.' Thoughts?
P.s. Dario just tripped over a toolbox. Again. It was hilarious. Wished you'd seen it. Your fiancé did, and he still didn't laugh. He looks like he wants to fight the walls. Or Falcone. Probably both.
Giana stared at the message and laughed. The dark humor was a grim counterpoint to the tension coiling in the villa. She could picture the delicate, gilded birdcage wired to explode, hanging like a grotesque trophy over the main gate. She could almost hear Dario's muttered curses and Frederica's laughter.
She read the last line again, and an image of Rodrigo, his knuckles raw and bloody, flashed in her mind. She had never seen him out of control, not once. Was it just because he saw her as a Colleoni possession that someone had dared to touch?
The recollection of him in the corridor two years ago surfaced again. The gift of the laptop. The defiance of his mother. None of that had felt like simple possession. It had felt like recognition. Like he sawher, the person beneath the pawn. He had chosen, in his own twisted way, to arm her rather than break her.
