"I need to take a bath," she says, half to herself. Then she straightens and looks down the hall. "I'll find Carla, I need help with the?—"
"I'll do it," I say.
She turns around and stares at me.
There's genuine shock on her face, unguarded, her eyes wide and her mouth open slightly, and then: "You'll—I mean Carla is right downstairs, she won't mind, it's literally her job, I can just call her up and it'll take two minutes and you don't have to?—"
"Gia."
She stops.
"Turn around."
The two words land in the hallway. I have decided how this is going and am not interested in giving her an alternative. I watch her process it — the slight parting of her lips, the moment where she could push back and doesn't.
She huffs under her breath and turns around.
"Good," I say, and move toward her.
We go into the bedroom.
She enters the bedroom, crosses to the foot of the bed and stands with her back to me, and I come to stand behind her and find the first hook at the top of the dress. I start working through them, one by one, unhurried, and she goes still under my hands in a way that is nothing like the wedding night, not braced, not guarded. Just still.
The room holds its breath.
Each hook gives way and the fabric shifts and her back opens to me slowly, her spine and the line of her shoulder blades and the soft curve at the base of her neck where a few loose strands of hair have fallen, and her skin in the low light of the room is exactly as soft as it looked in that church when I first put my hand on her jaw and decided I was going to take my time.
Then her scent reaches me.
Warm skin, jasmine from whatever she put on before the evening.
I want to put my mouth on her neck. Right there at the base where the hair has fallen. I want to find out if she'd stay still or if she'd make that sound again, the one from the church that went straight through me, I want?—
My phone rings.
Her shoulders move, a small involuntary flinch.
I look at the screen.
Enzo.
I step back from her, the dress half open down her back, and she reaches up to hold the front of the dress against herself. The absence of her warmth is immediate and specific.
I answer the call and step into the hall, pulling the door shut behind me, and I stand there for one second before I speak, with the warmth of her skin still sitting on my hands like it lives there.
Thirty-five minutes later I'm in Matteo's study and the mood in the room tells me everything before anyone opens their mouth. Dante is standing, which he only does when he's too wound up to sit. Enzo holds a drink he isn't touching, which means something is genuinely wrong.
Matteo doesn't wait for me to settle.
"O'Rourke men," he says. "Three of them, east boundary. Castellano's crew picked them up on camera an hour ago. Standing in plain sight, no attempt to conceal, no movement in or out."
I pull out a chair and sit. "He wanted us to see them."
"Yes. He wanted us to see them," Matteo confirms. " This is Killian telling us something and we haven't figured out what it is yet."
"Three weeks of silence," Enzo says, staring at his glass. "I said it then and I'll say it again, that man doesn't go quiet unless he's moving. We were looking at the wrong thing."
"What's on the east boundary worth his attention," Dante says.
