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I move faster than she expects. My left hand shoots out, my fingers wrapping around her wrist with the ruthless strength I inherited from the docks. I twist her arm backward, driving her wrist up between her shoulder blades until she lets out a sharp, humiliated shriek of pain.

Her champagne glass slips from her hand, shattering against the marble floor.

The surrounding room instantly falls dead silent.

"Listen to me very carefully, you little Sicilian tramp," I whisper directly into her ear, my voice trembling with deadly fury. "If your hands ever come within six inches of my jewelry or my husband again, I won't just break your wrist. I will take this broken glass off the floor and carve your face until you look just like me. Do you understand me?"

"Let go of me!" Gianna wheezes, tears of pain blurring her mascara.

"Iris."

Romeo's deep voice cuts through the quiet room like a gunshot.

I release her with a shove. Gianna stumbles back into her friends, clutching her red, swollen wrist, her chest heaving with outrage.

Romeo steps into the clearing, flanked by Enzo and Tony. His tuxedo jacket is open, his dark eyes taking in the shattered glass on the floor, Gianna sobbing into her friend's shoulder, and me, standing tall with my jaw set and my knuckles white.

"Romeo!" Gianna cries, putting on a breathy display of helplessness as she steps toward him, reaching out to touch the lapel of his jacket. "Your wild animal attacked me! She nearly broke my arm! You need to control this creature!"

My vision spots with red. The sight of Gianna's manicured fingers touching his jacket snaps the final wire in my brain.

Romeo looks down at Gianna's hand on his lapel with utter disgust. He lifts one hand, peels her fingers off his jacket like she is an insect, and shoves her back.

"Touch me again, Gianna, and I will have Tony cut your hands off at the wrists," Romeo says.

He does not raise his voice. That is what makes the hall go still. I have heard him tease. I have heard him purr. This is neither. This is the Don. The temperature in the room drops as if someone opened a door into a winter blizzard.

"Look at her when you apologize," he continues, still holding Gianna's fingers like they are something he found on his shoe. "Not at me. She is the one you insulted. She is the one wearing my grandmother's emerald. If you ever put your perfume in her air again, I will not send a warning. I will send a box. Do you understand the difference?"

Someone drops a glass at the far end of the hall. No one picks it up.

"Apologize to my Donna. Then get the fuck out of my house."

Gianna gasps in disbelief, turns on her heels, and flees the ballroom with her entourage trailing behind her.

Romeo turns his gaze to me. A wicked grin spreads across his face that’s blinding in my shadows, his dark eyes bright with amusement.

"Feisty little thing tonight, aren't you?" he purrs, stepping toward me.

"Don't touch me," I spit, the rage boiling over.

I spin around, grab Sofia's lead, and storm away from the party, marching through the double doors and straight toward the private residential wing.

My heels click furiously against the marble. My heart is beating so fast I can hardly catch my breath. I hated the way Gianna looked at him. I hated the way she said they had a history. I hated that every woman in that room looked at him like he was a prize waiting to be taken, and most of all, I hated how desperately I wanted to rip their throats out for even daring to breathe his name.

I kick open the bedroom doors of our master suite, unhooking Sofia's lead so she can pad over to her bed.

The bedroom door clicks shut behind us. The sound is small. Final. The kind of sound that seals a room off from the rest of the world.

Romeo sets me on the edge of the bed like I am made of glass. His hands linger on my waist, fingers spread wide, thumbs pressing into the hollows of my hips. The torn emerald silk pools around me on the duvet. I am still bare beneath it. Still wet. Still shaking.

"You're trembling," he says.

"Shut up."

A low, deep laugh rolls through his chest, making me shiver in need. He shrugs the ruined tuxedo jacket off his shoulders and lets it fall. The white shirt beneath is unbuttoned to his sternum, dark ink swirling across bronze skin. I want to put my mouth on every inch of it. I want to bite him until he bleeds.

"Say please," he murmurs.