"Love," she snorted. "Sure."
Silas looked sideways at her, his expression deadly serious. "You can be naive about a lot of things given your life in the last six years, but not that. I saw how he kissed you last night, and how he looks at you like a dying man. You've had the boy whipped since you came into his life. If you don't believe me, ask yourself why he hasn't already married. You seriously think Gabriella wasn't trying to stud him out?"
"Fucking bitch." Giana scowled at the thought, hot jealousy seething through her.
Silas's serious face cracked into a smile. "Yeah, as I thought." He patted her on the shoulder once before standing. "Maybe think about that reaction, and all of his, before you start saying that he doesn't love you, kiddo."
Silas left Giana alone in the gym, staring after him. She drank some more water and tried to make sense of what he had just said.
Did Rodrigo love her in his own fucked-up way? Could people like them ever risk loving anyone?
Giana put her head in her hands with a frustrated groan.
She is mine to love, and mine to protect, and always has been.
Rodrigo's words during the meeting were like a bucket of cold water over her head.
Giana didn't know what to think anymore, or what to do either. So she did the only thing she could. She got up and started hitting the bag again.
27
The door clicked shut behind Giana, leaving Rodrigo alone in the sudden, ringing silence of his office. His cock still throbbed faintly, a dull echo of the furious release he forced her to witness.
Giana hadn't told him to stop, and in the end, she had taken from him what he had taken from her.
Now we are even.Her words, snarled against his lips, echoed with the finality of a cell door slamming. She had his seed smeared on silk tucked against her skin now.
"Fuck." Rodrigo slumped back in his chair. His gaze drifted to the shattered monitor on the floor, the wood box lying nearby where Giana had thrown it.
A jagged laugh scraped his throat.Insurance. That was what he'd called the handkerchief. It had been a shield against his mother's inevitable, vicious wrath. Proof he could use and say, 'I took her. She's mine like she was always meant to be. Punish me. Make her marry me instead.'
Staring at the wreckage of the monitor, the heat of Giana's fury still radiating from the space she had occupied, Rodrigo was gutted, cut straight to the bone.
All the progress he had made with Giana was ruined.
She had seen the monster beneath the armor, but worse, she had seen the desperate man. The one who just jerked off in front of her like a fucking animal to prove… what? That he could be as vulnerable as she had been that night in Florence?
Get up. Get clean. Find her. Make it right, he told himself and forced his feet to move.
Thirty minutes and a scalding shower later, Rodrigo had changed out of his soiled clothes and sat on the end of his bed, holding the cursed wooden box, staring at the photo of Venice. On days when he felt out of control, it helped to look at the picture. It kept him centered and reminded him of who he was.
All he felt now was hollow. He needed to go apologize to Giana, but he didn't know where to start.
Rodrigo thought he was doing what he had to do in order to keep Giana safe, but she was right. He knew what it felt like to be a pawn of his family, but he had never felt powerless as she had. He had fucked everything up and then made it worse.
God, he really was a monster. If she pulled a gun on him, he wouldn't blame her for pulling the trigger.
His bedroom door opened, and he didn't look up. He had expected one of his brothers to come and lecture him, so he waited for it. The bed dipped beside him.
"Can I ask, why this picture?" Giana said softly. He didn't dare look at her in case he scared her away. "All your walls are empty in here except for this. Why?"
Rodrigo swallowed hard. He had never told anyone.
"A few days after my father was killed, I took this photo from the roof of his house in Venice, the only normal place we really had growing up. The storm rolled in, matching everything I was feeling. Only my father could get through to Gabriella when she was in a rage and make her see sense. He was the only thing she really loved. She didn't even love my brothers or me like that. Hewas her whole world," he said, his voice heavy with the hurt child that still lingered inside him.
"I knew that I was going to have to become someone else. Hide all my emotions from her and the world, and become the cold one who stood between her and my brothers. I loved photography, but this was the last picture I took. I made sure there was nothing for her to use as ammunition against me. If she knew I loved something, she would have taken it from me. So I put the picture up to remind me of that day, of everything I felt and that I could still feel if I let myself." Rodrigo still didn't look at Giana. He wouldn't be able to without breaking. "I was always Gabriella's good little soldier…except when it came to you."
Rodrigo offered her the box. "Take it. Burn it. Do whatever you need to. It was never mine to hold onto. I'm sorry, Giana. I… I really did think I was doing the right thing at the time."
