Giana.
The photo had been taken at Gabriella's funeral only weeks ago, but it felt like an eternity.
He had chosen to give her freedom. It was the only just thing to do after the way she had been treated for the last six years.
Rodrigo had dismantled the surveillance network that had been his eyes on her, pulled his men from their covert posts, and wiped the servers clean of every moment of her life that the Colleoni family had stolen from her.
He had thought he would feel better for it, but it had carved him out, leaving him more hollow than ever.
Rodrigo's thumb traced the rim of the glass, the motion hypnotic. He should delete the file, burn the entire fucking server rack, and salt the earth where it stood. Instead, he leaned closer, his own reflection a ghost against hers.
Giana stood beside a mercenary he didn't know, who had come to pay his respects to Rodrigo's mother. Everyone around her looked sad, but Giana? She was glowing like a fucking supernova in a sea of dying stars.
She had been dressed in a sheath of black wool that should have been modest but clung to the roundness of her hips and the swell of her breasts. Her dark hair was pulled back in a bun, revealing the elegant line of her throat.
A throat Rodrigo had watched her touch a thousand times in moments of stress, a throat he ached to bracket with his hands. Not to harm.Neverto harm. Just to hold and feel the frantic pulse of her life beating against his palm.
As beautiful as Giana was, it was her eyes that undid him every time. Dark and depthless, they were fixed on Gabriella's casket as it was lowered into the Colleoni family plot.
There was no fear in them. No sorrow. Only a cold, burning resolve that screamed she was there not as a mourner, but as a survivor. The last Sorrentino, standing on the graves of her enemies, looking like a queen surveying her conquered lands.
A low growl rumbled in his chest. His want of her was so sharp, it was like a hook under his ribs. His knuckles were white where he gripped the glass.
My beautiful Giana.
He had watched over her, a protective god standing in her shadows. He had seen her sleep and the way her brow furrowed in her dreams. He had seen her study, her tongue caughtbetween her teeth in concentration. He had seen her weep, and every sob had been a lash against his own skin.
Rodrigo was the worst kind of voyeur, cataloging every flicker and frown. Heknewthat. He had curated a museum of her life, and he was its sole, obsessive patron. He had to fight his mother just to let Giana return to university, and she had agreed only on the condition that it be in Florence, not back in Paris.
Still, Giana had fought them every moment to have a normal life, and he loved that about her too.
When a boy at her university had tried to take her virginity, Rodrigo had stopped it because Gabriella would have killed her. Instead of being embarrassed about the intrusion, what had Giana done? She had spat in Rodrigo's face, walked to the nearest sex shop, and bought a vibrator, determined to get the job done.
Rodrigo had followed her back to her apartment, wanting to make sure the little fucker of a boyfriend didn't follow her home. He had no intention of staying until she had whirled on him, all fury and stunning arrogance.
"You are so determined to rob me of every second of happiness, so you might as well watch this too. You have to make sure Gabriella knows that it wasn't some nobody boy who took my precious virginity, right?" she had snarled at him, unboxing the toy.
Rodrigo had stood at the end of her bed, watched her fumbling hands unwrap it, and lift her skirts. He should have told her to stop. Should have looked away, like any decent person would.
He wasn't decent. He had wanted to call her bluff, and Giana had refused to back down.
Rodrigo had watched her gasp and arch, her face a mask of shocked pleasure and pain. She had never looked away from him. Her eyes burned into his the whole time, making sure hesaw every moment. His hands had bent the flimsy steel bar of the footboard, wanting to touch her so badly that it had torn him apart.
When Giana was done, sweaty and panting, pretty tears tracking down her cheeks, had he said sorry that her life was being ruined by his family?No.
He had taken the crisp white handkerchief from his pocket and gently cleaned away her virgin blood and come before putting it back in his pocket and leaving the apartment without a word.
After that, Giana had stopped trying to date anyone. He didn't feel sorry or guilty about that either. Ammunition was expensive, and it had saved him a lot of bullets.
Rodrigo's gaze flickered through the door of his office to where his walk-in wardrobe was. Inside a hidden safe, beside bearer bonds, untraceable pistols, and blackmail material, lay a lacquered box. Inside it was a square of a handkerchief, carefully folded. The faded crimson stain at its center was the holiest relic in his barren life. Proof of a moment that was a dark intimacy they had shared.
Il Mostro.The nickname used to annoy him, but only because it was the truth. Hewasa monster. His mother may have turned him into a cold-hearted killer, but it was Giana who had made him into this possessive creature.
Rodrigo's finger moved from the glass to the screen, the pad of his index finger hovering a millimeter from the image of her face. He could almost feel the warmth of her skin, the impossible softness.
He remembered the night she had first been brought in front of Gabriella, the only survivor of the massacre of the Sorrentino family that his mother had ordered. His brother Leo had been the one to squeeze the triggers that ended them, and then,because Gabriella was crueler than all of them, she had told Giana that she was going to marry Leo or die with her family.
Rodrigo had many, many reasons to despise his mother, but he had never wanted to kill her until that moment. Giana would never belong to Leo, because in that same second, Rodrigo had fallen in love with her, in all her tear-streaked fury when she had spat at Gabriella's feet.
