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He didn’t look at me, but a sly smile tugged at his lips. “Come a little closer and say that.”
Butterflies took flight in my stomach, and I had to bite my cheek to hold in a smile.
It was eleven a.m. on a Sunday when I realized I wasn’t only attracted to my fiancé. I was, with a madness that ached, completely and utterly infatuated with him.
By the time we got back to the car, my feet were killing me and the sun had reddened the skin on my shoulders. It could also be said that I was nearing starvation. It was only two in the afternoon, but I was very particular about when I got fed, and now I had missed lunch and second breakfast.
As he drove, I rested my head against the window and watched the world fly by. After a moment, I sat up, my brows knitting in confusion.
“Nico, I thought the Capellos owned this part of the Bronx?”
When he licked his lips and didn’t say a thing, a disbelieving laugh escaped me. “Oh my god. You’re crazy. We can’t be here.”
He glanced at me, a sly glint in his eyes. “I thought we already established I was crazy.”
I glanced out the window and felt like I was a wanted criminal in a foreign land. I couldn’t believe I’d been walking so casually only moments ago on Capello streets, the family whom my papà had a neutral but sometimes tense relationship with.
“You’re going to get me killed,” I announced.
He shook his head before pinning me with a gaze that pooled with intensity. “Do you honestly think for a second I would let someone kill you?”
No. It was an immediate, visceral response in my head.
I warmed from his words, though was uncertain of how to feel. I’d always followed the rules, and the one time I didn’t it had cost an innocent man his life. I’d known Nico didn’t care much for the law of the land, nor even the rules and etiquette of the Cosa Nostra. And today only proved it. I didn’t want trouble; this man lived for it.
“It’s dangerous,” I said.
Silence filled the car. He ran a thumb across his bottom lip and glanced at me with one hand on the wheel. “Trust me?”
The fact that he’d told me not to last night was a loud awareness between us. I swallowed, because the way he’d said it, all soft and rough, burned through my chest and straight to a place I tried to close off from the world. This was him telling me I could. That I should.
I had to marry the man.
I didn’t have to trust him.
Though not everything is about what we have to do, but what we want to.
I glanced outside the glass, at this forbidden part of town he’d taken me to. My stomach tightened at the unfamiliarity of it all, but the warm presence beside me, the strong heartbeat I’d felt last night, the masculine scent, it was all beginning to feel familiar. Necessary.
I never was a very good liar, so I told him the truth.
“Yes,” I breathed.
And I’d never been more sure of anything.
“Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.”
—Charles Maurice de Talleyrand
WE STOPPED AT HIS OFFICE, and when I saw there was pizza waiting for me on the coffee table, I groaned.
Nico let out a breath of amusement and headed past me to his desk, where he spent the next hour on the phone. It could have been longer, though I wouldn’t know, because with my stomach full and the toll the sun had taken, I fell asleep on the couch. It was a light sleep, where I could still hear his deep and newly comforting timbre in the background.
Three hours later, I awoke to an empty office.
Slightly disoriented, I blinked and then pulled my hair out of its ratty ponytail. I finger-combed it and slipped my heels back on before heading to the door and into the hallway. The card tables were still, the basement silent except for a few soft male voices.
I stepped into the main room and noticed Lorenzo, Lucky, and Luca at one of the far booths, each holding a hand of cards. I wondered how one went about playing poker with a cheater in each seat.