“I don’t think I could ever hurt you,” he whispered, as though it were some sordid confession.
I wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of that statement because no one had ever cut me deeper—literally and figuratively. “You just did.”
“I had to be sure.” A hand wrapped around my neck, his palm pressing over the scratch he’d left there, slicking blood over my skin and his. “You make me weak. Blind.”
His lips pressed over mine, and I let him kiss me. Worse, I kissed him back, if only to remember what it felt like. To embrace that warm rush of belonging, of being the center of someone else’s world for a single moment before it was ripped away. Because this was a goodbye. As his lips pressed to mine and the last tears I would allow myself to cry for him dashed my cheeks, I shuttered myself to Giovanni Guerra.
I allowed the pain to strengthen me because I had grown weak, complacent in the arms of a man who would turn on me in a heartbeat. I would not be weak again.
His kiss became desperate, but it was too late. “Emilia,” his hold on me tightened as though he could feel my heart that was once so open to him growing cold. “I’m sorry,” he breathed against my lips.
The organ in my chest let out one last strangled hiccup, and then I steeled myself and blocked it all out. “So am I.” I pulled away from him, closing the door on every emotion I had until I was numb, cold.
One thing my father’s death had taught me was the ability to shut off the emotions that hurt me. Grief. Heartbreak...
I’d come dangerously close to giving this man my heart, and how stupid of me to think what we had could possibly be love. It was obsession and possession. Nothing more. I was a fool to ever stay with him. To allow him to trap me in this house.
I went to step around him, and he blocked my path. “We are done here. So, move.”
“We’ll never be done, Emilia.” He fisted my hair, pulling me into him with a bite of pain across my scalp. His anger lashed against me like static crackling in a storm. “You can fight me and scratch me, kitten, but you are mine.”
My own rage niggled beneath the surface of my skin, but it never quite made it to the surface. “I didn’t feel like yours two minutes ago when you cut my throat.” No, I felt like his enemy, and I hated him for being every bit as disappointing as all the other men in my life.
I vowed to myself there and then that he would never have my heart again. Deep down, men like him, like Matteo—they were all the same. I’d nearly forgotten the lesson that was very much carved into my soul with my sister’s death. Lust would do that, though, and hope called to those who had rarely felt its enticing caress.
I stepped around him. “And to think, I thought you were so much better than Sergio and my father.”
This time he didn’t stop me. As soon as I shut the door, I heard something smash.
Good. Let him rage; let him break. Let him feel as helpless as he just made me feel.
The thought of not having him terrified me, but I would survive the same way I always did.
10
GIO
I stared out the window as I sat on the couch in Nero’s office, a glass of whiskey in my hand. The burning liquor was doing nothing to chase out the cold that had settled in my gut. I was losing. Everything. Chicago, my men, Emilia…
It had been nearly a week since Patrick O’Hara was shot, and all four of the bars I owned in Chicago had been burned to the ground. It was now hard to tell if it was the mob or The Outfit.
With the messenger dead, the message never reached The Outfit capos, and while Jackson was working on contacting them, we couldn’t force them to take calls. With the mob now against us, we were certainly in a weaker bargaining position as well.
“Gio.”
I snapped my gaze from the view of the pool to Nero. He was frowning at me from behind his desk. Jackson sat on the couch beside me, shifting under the tension straining the air.
The pair of them were like sharks that could smell blood in the water, and they were agitated, eager for violence. I usually prided myself on being the smart one of the three of us, the rational one, able to find a peaceful, diplomatic solution. But that night with Emilia proved just how stupid and violent I truly was. I’d acted from a place of anger, and it had cost me dearly.
“I said, I don’t think you have another rat.”