“I’m not a dog.”
“Then stop acting like a rabid stray.”
Heat rushed over my face. “I thought…”
“You thought what?” The question felt like a threat dancing in the air between us, daring me to say the wrong thing. But I didn’t have to. “I have plenty of willing women, princess. I don’t need to force myself on little girls.” His words shouldn’t have annoyed me, but they did.
He was willing to marry someone he saw as nothing more than a child. For an alliance. For the Donato name. All the while, he had “plenty of willing women.” Not like I ever expected anything else, but the bleak reality of my future if I failed to escape again spread out before me, cold and lonely, trapped. If I were going to be forced into marriage, it was definitely better not to have his attention, though.
Giovanni wrung out a cloth in the bowl of water, then held it a few inches from my face. “Are you going to behave, or shall I leave you to bleed everywhere?”
It was almost a kindness. Almost. And I didn’t know what to do with that. He reached for the dressing on my head, tugging it away. I tried not to look at him, to ignore the gentle brush of his fingers on my skin, the same fingers that were stained by so much blood. The action of him caring for me was strangely intimate, and I wanted nothing of the sort with this man.
After a few seconds, I found myself staring, studying him. Veins roped his forearms and popped beneath tattooed skin as he wrung out the blood-stained cloth. The buttons of his shirt strained over his chest, and I couldn’t help but admire the way the material lovingly caressed every muscle. He was too much, too perfect for violence and blood beneath his nails. But I’d heard the stories and witnessed first-hand just how ruthless he could be. There was a glaring sense of danger he elicited that tainted the air like the scent of death on the wind. This was a man even my uncle feared, and that was both thrilling and horrifying.
He finally applied a new dressing and took a step back, allowing me a breath of air that wasn’t completely bathed in his scent. “There are men in the hall, the lobby, and the parking garage,” he said as he moved toward the door. “Should you somehow make it past them, I own every inch of this city. You will be returned to me and locked in this penthouse. With me and the consequences of your actions.” He cocked a brow, ice hardening in his eyes. “But go ahead and try me, princess. I might just enjoy those consequences.”
I gaped at his back as he pulled open the door and left. And without him to distract me, the sense of claustrophobia closed around me instantly. It was just like being in the basement of my father’s house, and I was every bit as trapped.
5
Gio
The first gray light of dawn crept through the windows of my office. The city would soon stir to life, but this was my favorite time, when creatures of the night were melting back into the shadows, and normal, law-abiding citizens were yet to rise. My laptop sat on the desk in front of me, the camera feed showing all the rooms in the penthouse, but my attention was only on one. Emilia’s slight form tossed and turned beneath the bedsheets, and I wondered what plagued her dreams. Was it me? Was I the monster under her bed? The thought brought a small smile to my lips. The girl was not what I had expected. She was innocent, yes, but she wore defiance like armor, wielding distrust as a weapon.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her on her knees with a gun to her head, and my temper spiked. The Outfit had tried to kill her. The circumstances mattered not, only that the bargain had already been struck. Emilia was mine. Mine to hunt, to punish, to take, and they tried to put her down. Worse, though, was the acceptance I saw when she had that gun to her head. She’d accepted death, and it troubled me, especially now I knew just how much fight she had. I reached up and ran my finger along one of the angry, raised lines her nails had carved into my throat. There weren’t many hardened men who would dare to try to hurt me, but the hissing little kitten had.
Since taking over the day-to-day running of New York from Nero, I had to become harder, more ruthless, numb to certain atrocities. Morals I once had were now a mere whisper in the back of my mind because morals were idealistic. Emilia Donato was the image of idealism, though, young and innocent, and whatever sliver of conscience I had left was clawing at the cage I’d locked it in.