“I’m tougher than I look,” she said, chin jutting up, but there were tears in her eyes and she looked anything but tough.
Gio struggled with himself. He had been rough on her. He’d frightened her. He took little pleasure in wounding people. Much less women. But he also wasn’t afraid of doing what needed to be done. Marrying Rachel would keep Michael in Venice. It was a contract, much like his arrangements with his mistresses. He wasn’t doing it out of emotion, but practicality.
Yes, there were other ways to keep Michael in Venice. He could sue for custody. But legal cases of this nature took years, and he didn’t want to spend years battling for custody when he could secure it quickly through marriage.
“I do not doubt that,” he answered.
“I’m not afraid to fight you,” she added.
“Obviously.” He waited a moment. “But you won’t win.”
She searched his eyes, and he let her look, not hiding anything from her, because she needed to see who he was, she needed to understand what he was. Tough, driven, uncompromising. He did what he had to do. Always. And it’s why he’d succeeded, because he always did what he had to do, even if it was painful.
“I keep trying to decide if you were teasing or bluffing,” she said unsteadily.
“I don’t bluff.”
She looked hard into his eyes again, and then away. She sat across from him, cradling her cup, expression miserable, and the tension in his chest returned.
Despite the tension, he didn’t try to fill the silence. He had learned early in his career to become comfortable with discomfort. He wasn’t Antonio; his job wasn’t to encourage or inspire. Gio’s job was to make money and grow the company and take care of the Marcello employees, and that’s what he did. Day in, and day out. Feelings didn’t matter. Results mattered. Success. Stability. Financial accountability.
But it was hard to enjoy his single-minded focus when he sat across from a woman like Rachel. She wasn’t Adelisa. He wasn’t even sure what that meant, only she wasn’t his ex-fiancée.
* * *
Rachel looked shattered all over again. “You know it’s impossible.”
“That, cara, is an exaggeration. It’s not impossible. It’s just…difficult.”
“I don’t want to marry you.”
“And that is the difficult part.”
CHAPTER TEN
HE WAS CRUEL beyond measure. Rachel’s throat ached and her eyes burned. “I am nothing to you,” she said quietly. “I am as insignificant as a bug, or a twig on the ground. You have no problem stepping on me, crushing me.”
“That is not true.”
“But my life and my dreams, they do not matter, not when you compare my needs to yours.”
“I am responsible for a huge corporation. My decisions impact hundreds of people, if not thousands.”
“You believe what you’re saying, don’t you? You’re a demigod in love with your power.” She hoped he heard the scorn in her voice. She hoped he was offended, because she was disgusted and appalled. There was nothing about him she admired.
“You are so consumed with your business. It seems to be the only thing that matters to you.”
He leaned forward, narrowing the distance between them. “I have never put business before people. The various Marcello enterprises are made up of people, and not just my family, but hundreds of people, hundreds of loyal employees, and those people matter to me a great deal. The best businesses treat their employees like partners…family. Or, if you come from a seriously dysfunctional family, then hopefully you treat your staff better than family.”
He’d inherited his family’s business at a point when the company family seemed irreparably broken. The company was losing money, and his father had decided that he’d rather live with his mistress than his wife. Antonio was in America, working for a business that was not their own, determined to get as far from their father as possible.
Gio envied Antonio, because Gio couldn’t escape, not as the eldest, and he was surrounded by the family drama, ensnared in it as Father’s mistress was none other than his secretary, and the affair had been going on for years, with Father and secretary enjoying numerous “business” getaways and long private lunches behind locked doors.
Italians loved a good drama, especially when it was about sex and a beautiful young woman, a woman young enough to be Giovanni Marcello Senior’s daughter.
Gio knew but couldn’t convince his father to fire the secretary or end the relationship, nor would his mother divorce his father. Every day was grueling and Gio tried to focus on work, not wanting to be pulled into the middle of the family drama more than necessary. Gio, like his grandfather before him, had a sharp mind and a love for engineering and practical design. He disliked the endless conflict that had marked his childhood and adolescent years, and the only reason he’d agreed to work for Marcello Enterprises was because he loved the construction company his grandfather had founded.