Page 84 of The Temptation

“What was on it?” I ask, already dreading the answer.

“The safe house address.”

“Fuck.” I run a hand through my hair, heart thudding harder now. “What about their phones? Anything?”

“Burners. Both of them. Cheap, prepaid junk.”

“Can you keep me updated if anything else comes up?” I grumble.

He blows out a long breath before replying. “Like I said, it all happened quickly, and I was going to call you lastnight, but it was late when I got home. Stop acting like a chick and getting all butthurt over nothing.”

“I’m not acting like a chick.”

He chuckles down the line, smug and unbothered. “You are. Maybe I need to send someone over to watch Lucia for a few hours so you can go and get yourself laid. It’s been a while. You’re probably seconds away from dry humping your pillow.”

“Fuck off.”

“See? Exactly my point.”

I roll my eyes as I begin pacing again. “This isn’t about getting laid. It’s about not being kept in the dark. I need to know what’s happening, especially when it concerns her.”

His tone shifts, less teasing and more grounded. “And you do know. I’m telling you everything I’ve got as soon as I get it. You’re not out of the loop. You’re on the front line. You’re the one standing between her and them.”

I exhale slowly, the edge still there, but it’s dulling slightly.

“Then don’t make calls without me. Not about her.”

“Fair enough,” he says, more serious now. “How is Lucia?”

Usually, that question wouldn’t bother me, but with everything that happened between us yesterday, it hits like a swift kick to the nuts.

Here I am getting pissed about him keeping me in the dark, yet I married his sister-in-law yesterday, and he doesn’t have a fucking clue.

I swallow the bitterness creeping up my throat, trying to steady my voice. “She’s ... managing.”

Chapter 18

Lucia

I’m standing by the kitchen window like a creeper, watching my husband hang out the load of washing I put on after breakfast.

My husband.

Despite something feeling off about him today, I’m still giddy about that fact.

Throughout my life, I was always aware that the person I’d eventually marry would never be someone of my choosing. Yet here I am. And I have two people to thank for that, my brother-in-law and my sister.

When they showed up in Italy—unannounced, and hellbent on stopping my marriage to Giuseppe Salvatori—they didn’t just pull me out of that gilded cage. With Romeo’s help, they did something far more permanent.

They erased the problem at its root. They wiped my father off the face of the earth.

Freedom, in our world, doesn’t come from asking. It comes from taking. And they gave me that gift, whether I was ready for it or not.

Romeo is currently sorting through the wet clothes in the washing basket so that he can hang everything out in auniform order. This isn’t the first time I’ve watched him do this.

He places our underwear on the inside of the clothesline, followed by the socks, which he painstakingly hangs in neat rows, in matching pairs. As he makes his way to the outside of the line, our shirts come first before the heavier items, such as jeans, hoodies, and trousers.

My eyes widen when he holds up one of my lace G-strings to the light, staring at it for a short beat before bringing it to his nose. I gasp, but I’m in no way creeped out by what he just did, quite the opposite. When he reaches down to adjust his crotch, I can only gather that his move affected him as much as it did me.