Being a Sunday, only the guards were on duty in the lobby. Siena greeted them by name with a smile as she put her handbag on the airport-style conveyor belt for scanning, and then walked through the body scanner.
“Why would you do that?” Elio asked, bemused after he too had walked through the body scanner, and they were heading up a set of stairs. “You’re one of the owners.”
“New security measures,” she answered in a clipped tone. “Everyone goes through it, no exceptions.”
“What brought that about?”
She shrugged, stepping through a door into the floor that contained all the directors’ offices. The silence suggested they were the only people there. “It felt prudent.”
He smiled. It was no secret that he wasn’t the Espositos’ only threat. “If there are no exceptions, does that mean anyone who comes through the doors is allowed to carry a gun on them?” She eyed him so sharply that he laughed. “I don’t imagine you travel anywhere without a weapon.”
“They know who to turn a blind eye to.”
“Then why did they turn a blind eye to me?”
“I live with you now. If you’re planning to kill me, you can kill me anywhere.”
“Good point.”
She’d reached a door and put her hand to it. “Are you?”
“Planning to kill you?”
“Yes.”
“The point in us marrying was to prevent bloodshed.”
“That supposes you were being straight with us.”
“It does,” he agreed. “But unlike your father, I’m a man of my word.” To people deserving of it, a category the Espositos did not fit in.
She opened the door and strode to her wide, expensive desk. “So you’re not planning to kill me?”
Admiring the movement of her breasts as she settled herself on her office chair, he said, “We both know that depends on what happens tonight.”
Her beautiful face twisted. “Meaning I let you fuck me, and you let me live.”
He very much enjoyed correcting her. “No, meaning I letyoufuckme, and then I let you and your family live.” Sitting on the small sofa facing her desk, he hooked an ankle on his thigh. “If I’d wanted my marriage into your family to be in name only, I would have entered a civil union with Mattia. Keep me happy in the bedroom, and I will have no reason to end your life.”
How he loved the tight fury and distaste on Siena’s face that his comment provoked. He should never have allowed her cheap, bitchy jibes about his name and his supposed treatment of women provoke him earlier. One thing Elio never did was lose his temper.
He could still hear his grandmother’s words as they drove away from the cemetery after burying his father, her son. “It’s time to stop crying, Elio. You’re the man of our family now. It is up to you to take back what we have lost and avenge those who have been taken from us. You cannot do that if you think withthe emotions of a child. You need to start thinking like a man, so no more tears.”
He’d not shed a tear since. Not spared himself an emotion since. His life had been devoted to bringing himself to the exact space he now occupied.
Only when he’d destroyed the Espositos would he allow himself the luxury of emotion.
He cared not if his name had meant anything to this pampered princess when she was growing up. She knew it now, and she knew the power behind it. She wasinhis power, and for as long as he wanted. They might not fully accept it, but all her family were in his power. He’d not yet accrued the levels of wealth they enjoyed, but he’d accrued something much more important: the loyalty of his army.
Lorenzo Esposito thought he’d been so clever in framing Elio’s father for Fabio Romaro’s death. And he had been. For years, no one had dared voice their doubts. After all, history was written by the victors. In this case, though, the victor had left one of the witnesses alive. Elio.
He’d been there when his father received the call about Fabio’s death. His big bear of a father had turned pale. He remembered that bit so clearly. His mother had noticed his pallor too, and when they sent Elio to his room so they could talk in private, he’d disobeyed, standing on the other side of the kitchen door, listening.
His mother’s voice had been panicked. “Are yousureit wasn’t one of your men, Marco?”
“I am telling you, this ishim. He’s framing me.”
“Butwhy?”
