“Exactly.” I reach for the zipper of her dress. “So stop arguing and get naked. The sooner we’re changed, the sooner we can get this stupid wedding over with.”
***
She looks gorgeous.
Gorgeous.
My Beda sits across the room beside Luciano’s bride, one leg crossed over the other, a half-empty champagne flute balanced in her hand while she says something that makes the bride laugh. The gold in Ayla’s dress catches every low light in the room. Her hair spills over one bare shoulder in dark waves, she’s…stunning.
Sharp mouth. Sharp eyes. Sharp enough to cut a man open in the middle of a wedding and probably ruin the flowers.
Fuck.
I sound like an Amato.
“We got intel Sarkisian’s been spotted,” Angelo says, taking the seat beside me like he owns the air around him.
I don’t look at him right away. I take a slow sip of my drink, still watching Ayla.
“Close enough to move?” I ask.
“Close enough to watch,” he says. “Not close enough to strike.”
That gets my eyes on him.
Angelo leans back in the chair, one ankle over the opposite knee, looking too calm for the kind of conversation we’re having. Typical. The room around us is thinning out slowly now. Music lower. Guests peeling off in clusters. Staff clearing glasses from tables. A wedding dying by inches.
“Where?” I ask.
“One of the outer points,” he says. “Could be him circling. Could be bait.”
“Could be stupidity.”
His mouth twitches. “That too.”
I glance back toward Ayla. She’s smiling again, listening now while Luciano’s bride talks. There’s something easy in the way she sits tonight. Different. Looser. Like for one fucking night she let herself breathe.
“You think he wants to be seen?” I ask.
Angelo follows my line of sight for half a second before looking back at me. “I think he wants us wondering why.”
My jaw ticks.
Before I can answer, Adriana appears at Angelo’s shoulder, one hand settling there lightly.
Radiant.
Pregnancy softens nothing about her except maybe the edges of the light around her. Seven maybe eight by now, and still carrying herself like she was born to make every room shift when she enters it.
“Amor,” she says softly.
Angelo’s entire focus changes on a dime. It’s almost irritating to watch.
He tips his head back to look at her. “You okay?”
She gives him that tired, beautiful look women only seem to get away with when they’re carrying a whole person inside them. “I want to go home.”
That’s it.
