She hisses like an angry kitten, but she’s more lethal by far. Quicker than I’d believe possible, she whips out the knife she took from me, holding it between us. Her finger hovers over the button, but she hesitates.
I don’t.
Covering her hand with mine, I breathe in her anger and fear like an intoxicant. She’s so wild and enchanting, a goddess among mere mortals. Tension ripples off her in waves, and a different variety of tension fills me. I lean in close, dizzy… starving… all from the faint scent of peaches and those eyes like melted honey.
“Go ahead. Show me how you deploy the blade.”
With her eyes burning fiercely in challenge, she does, and I nod with approval at her handling.
“Very good. You said your father taught you. What else did he teach you about knives? Did he teach you what it’s like to cut a man? To carve him up like a pie? Do you have the stomach for that? Do you want to cut me?”I might let you.
The fire flickers, and she stares at my mouth before shaking her head. “No,” she whispers.
“No,” I repeat, pulling my own knife. Her eyes widen with terror, but I turn to face the two guards, showing them the blade. “From this night on, any man who takes this girl anywhere without my permission will lose an eye. Tell the others.”
They nod, knowing I’m serious.
“You can’t do that!” Matilde shouts from behind me, her indefatigable spirit not dampened for an instant.
I turn her chair around so she’s facing the corner. “I am Capo, and I can, and time-out means not talking,” I rasp in her ear. “Or do you require a more severe punishment?”
Her satiny cheek blazes with warmth. I long to stroke my knuckles over it and drag my fingers through her soft, thick hair, but I return my attention to Primo and the other guard.
“The war makes it necessary for me to change security arrangements and keep my children close. Their nanny will be moving into my house. Tonight.”
“I will not.”
“She will.”
Both men hurry off when I instruct them to leave. I’ll have to take her with me to fetch the children and her clothes, but I’m not going to complain about an extra hour in her company… even if she drives me crazy.
But before I can tell Matilde my plan – and probably carry her kicking and screaming to my car – the front door bursts open. I whirl around, preparing to throw the knife as Matilde screams. A millisecond of hesitation is all that prevents me from killing my own brother tonight.
Dante storms toward me, roaring like a bull, “WHERE THE FUCK IS SHE?!”
Knowing what this is about, I sheathe my knife again, but Matilde jumps up behind me, clutching my arm. This is the first time she’s seen this side of him, and she’s rightly terrified.
I wrap my arm around her waist, meeting her worried gaze. “Don’t be scared,tesoro.He’s not angry with you.”
14
Matilde
The audacity of this man is without bounds. Interrupting my chance to see Maddalena tonight, forcing me to live with him, threatening Primo, putting me in a corner like a misbehaving child?! I have never met a bigger asshole than Nico Morelli.
Yet the charged exchange when I dared to pull the switchblade out left me with countless butterflies in unmentionable places, and his protectiveness when Dante blew into the house like a furious thundercloud stole my breath away.“Don’t be scared, tesoro.”
I can’t quite follow all their rapidly shouted English words beyond it involving some woman in a lake and a secret nest, but the brothers argue until Dante storms back out again, thankfully without any blood spilled.
“Shall we go retrieve your things and the children now?” Nico asks, as calmly as ever.
“Why do this? You did not want me here before.”
“Things have changed. I’d like to discuss your future with you on the drive to my parents’ home, Matilde.”
“My future?” How can I discuss my future with this man when my world still feels so jumbled? “I will think about the future after I finish my diploma,” I hedge.
“Your diploma, yes. You should graduate from high school first. Of course.Christ.”
