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She turned the hob off. “Why bother having fresh ingredients if you’re not going to use them?”

“There’s enough other stuff to stop us from starving.”

“You have a very wasteful attitude.”

“Not when it comes to my own life.”

“That’s not true, or you wouldn’t have kidnapped me.”

“I don’t expect to survive this,” he found himself admitting. When he’d put this plan in motion, it had been with a very keen awareness that he would likely die for it. “But I will do everything I can to stay alive until my mother is freed and the Esposito Group is returned to Esposito hands.”

“You really don’t care if you die?” Curiosity rang in her voice.

“Oh I care, but if my death comes at the hand of victory over your family, then I will accept it as my fate.” He spoke without bitterness, but self-recrimination laced his blood.

The long days he’d spent alone in the first apartment he’d bought with his own money had been just Mattia and his thoughts. They had not been happy thoughts.

His mother was a hostage for life, surety for his and his siblings’ good behaviour. The empire his father had created from nothing had been snatched from Mattia’s hands within months of his father’s death. Most of his army had abandoned him. Any respect he’d had was lost. He was reduced to living in the one property the Ranieris hadn’t been able to take from him, a bolt hole he’d bought in cash years ago.

He’d lost everything, and it was all his own fault. He’d created this mess with his arrogance. The loss of his army of men meant what the Espositos always called the shadowed world could never be taken back, and even if it could, the army needed to run it could never be trusted. Not now. But the Esposito Group had always been his father’s legacy, the legitimate media conglomerate that was the pride of Naples and, indeed, Italy itself. If he didn’t win it back, his short reign at the head of the Esposito family would go down in history as a lesson in how to lose an empire.

If his plan worked, his mother would be free and his father’s public legacy secure. The loss of the shadowed world was just something he had to accept, however bitter a pill it was to swallow. Still, he’d probably be dead, so wouldn’t need to swallow it.

Siena had warned him that ruling by fear was not enough, but he hadn’t listened. He’d known best. While their father had ruled with a combination of fear, respect and liking – he’d had a cuddly, jovial persona that had taken many people in – Mattia had arrogantly assumed being Lorenzo Esposito’s eldest son would be enough. He was taking his birthright and damn it, people would respect that. He’d sneered at Siena’s insistence that people had to like you as well as fear you, and that respect had to be earned.

He’d spent his whole damned life proving himself to everyone, most of all to his father.

It was when his sister had put a gun to her own heart and vowed to pull the trigger if Elvira killed their mother, and the flash of understanding that had raced through the room as if from brain to brain of what would happen if she did it, that had made him understand what she’d tried to tell him. His arrogance hadn’t allowed him to listen to her.

He’d also failed to listen to her warning that the Ranieris were a threat to them, and had severely underestimated the sexy woman bustling around the little kitchen with her homemade cereal toy firmly in hand.

Instead of allowing himself to consider just how damned sexy Elvira was and how her long, thick dark hair swayed and her breasts jiggled as she moved, he thought of how, if Siena had pulled the trigger on herself, Naples would have been thrown into war. Mattia’s only sister was genuinely liked and respected, not just because she was Lorenzo’s beautiful daughter but because she worked hard and treated people fairly. She’d forced a world dominated by men to take her seriously, and they did, and they liked and respected her hugely for it.

If Mattia died, only his immediate family would mourn him, and not, he strongly suspected, for very long. Not even his mother. There wouldn’t be whole streets packed with mourners as had happened for his father’s funeral when it felt like the whole of Naples had come to a halt.

“Well?”

Elvira’s voice pierced through his thoughts.

Blinking, he met her silver stare and was struck again at how damned beautiful and sexy she was. With her sexy leather jacket removed, there was no escaping that shapely backside in those skintight black jeans.

There was a hint of impatience in her tone. “Margherita, Capricciosa, Quattro Stagioni or Quattro Formaggi?”

She had the fridge open. She was talking about pizza.

“Capricciosa,” he said.

He watched her open the box, rip off the clear plastic wrap around it and place it in the oven. Then she returned to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water.

“Catch,” she called. A split second later, the bottle came flying to him. He caught it easily, which was just as well, as she’d aimed it at his face. She was a crack aim as well as a crack shot.

Removing a bottle for herself, she put the lip to her mouth and tipped her head back. Drinking deeply, her slender throat moved, dark hair falling to the small of her back, pert breasts lifting. By the time she’d drained the bottle, the urge to cup those breasts had grown so strong he imagined he could feel the weight and texture of them in his palms. When she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, he noticed – really noticed in a way he’d refused to see before – that she had lips that just begged to be kissed.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Realising he’d been staring at her like the woman she was and not as a woman waiting for the opportunity to kill him, Mattia pulled himself together sharply.

“I was just thinking how you drank that water like a man.”