At six foot three, he towered over most men in any room, but with the dark silk shirt, darker jacket and pants and thunderous fury rolling across his face, he was a force-five tornado, hellbent on inflicting maximum damage to anyone who dared to cross his path.
It wasn’t surprising therefore that even with my soldiers twitching to reach for their guns, and many members of my family tensing at the very visible threat, everyone still gave him a wide berth, allowing him clear passage to where I stood at the bar. No one had forgotten the humiliation of being trounced in our last two skirmishes. Least of all my grandfather.
It was why tonight’s win was especially sweet. Why the celebrations were particularly wild. And why no one wanted it ruined.
‘If you’re here to toss about more threats and warnings, save your breath,’ I pre-empted before he could speak, fighting the shock sheeting through me that Cesare planned on speaking to me. It’d been well over ten years since our last direct interaction, after all. ‘Narciso told me you didn’t take our win well. At all.’
The corner of his mouth ticked up, but it wasn’t from amusement. He’d been practically combusting during the podium celebration. It hadn’t helped that my little brother hadn’t held back from rubbing his face in it.
Standing on the ground beneath the iconic Monza podium, I’d willed time to fly by before Cesare gave in to his worst impulses and pounded my baby brother into the floor.
I’d seen him do it to others many times in the past.
Including that night.
The memory was seared into my brain.
Growing up, I’d thought that as second-generation children of a mafia family brought up in America, they’d be less… aggressive.
Watching nineteen-year-old Cesare Salvatore pounding into a coma the boy who’d dared to brush up against my ass, then following that up with almost killing my best friend’s brother for the simple crime of being our driver and protector that fateful night, had taught me different.
And it hadn’t even been that he’d done it because he was interested in me. Oh no. He’d made his scathing feelings clear that night when he’d discovered his mistake. He may have battered the poor boy with his fists, but me he’d battered with his words.
From then I’d earned myself the dubious title of Most Hated Mancinelli.
I clenched my fist around my glass of untouched champagne as he stepped far too close, saturating me with the scent of smoked wood and wild thunderstorms.
That my first, unchecked instinct was to step closer, bury my face in his throat or his wide chest and just… breathe him in was appalling and bracingly disturbing. So I was eternally grateful when my knees obeyed my command to remained locked, my body as still as I could maintain it in the presence of a feral predator.
I wished I could say that was an exaggeration. The smouldering glare I’d sustained from across the room for hours now bore down on me with naked fury and dislike.
‘Enjoying your win?’
‘Any reason why I shouldn’t?’
‘Absolutely,’ he breathed. ‘It wasn’t earned honestly, and you know it.’
Anger stiffened my spine. ‘Any win that isn’t achieved by Furia Racing must be manipulated somehow, is that what you’re saying?’ I tossed back.
He stared at me in silence, his gaze drilling deeper. I couldn’t help myself. I slowed my own gaze to trail his face, over the fierce slashes of his dark eyebrows, past the silky fans of his eyelashes to the chiselled cheekbones and severe jawline, ending at the sensual dark red curve of his mouth.
That mouth had haunted and titivated thousands of my dreams. I hated and desired it in equal measure, a secret I intended to take to my grave.
‘What?’ I snapped when the silence stretched my nerves.
‘I’m trying to work out if you’ve developed a good poker face or if you’re really that clueless. There was a time when I recall you weren’t so skilled at hiding your true feelings,’ he mused.
‘I was a teenager. And if my memory serves, you hadn’t quite gotten a handle on that infamous Salvatore temper. Oh wait, what am I talking about? You still haven’t, have you?’ I was belly-dancing with ten-foot-high flames. Any minute now I was going to be devoured in an inferno.
He didn’t fall for my taunt.
Cesare inhaled, slow and steady, his broad chest expanding until it seemed to fill my vision. Control locked into place as smoothly as a gear shift on his powerful racing car. Pivoting slightly, he dropped an elbow onto the bar countertop, his body relaxing as he studied me like a specimen beneath his microscope.
‘Believe me, sweetheart, when I truly lose control, you’ll know about it.’
The silky-smooth warning of danger tunnelled through me, straight between my legs in a shockingly invasive caress I couldn’t bat away.
My thighs clenched as I scrambled to drag my brain from images of a wild, out-of-control Cesare Salvatore. In my bed. Pinning me against a wall. Bending me over a table.
