Fear trickled up her spine, breaking through the furious blood pounding in her head.
When he finally spoke, his voice was like steel. “My name might have meant nothing to you in the years you lived as a pampered princess in the home built on the blood of my family, but it’s one I will make damned sure is front and centre in your mind for the rest of your life. When I’m inside you tonight, princess, know that the loathing you feel for me is nothing on the hatred I hold for you. Know that every time I’m fucking your beautiful body, you mean less to me than any of the walking vaginas I was with before you.” A cold, cruel smile curved on his lips. “Or, if the thought of your future makes you want to scream, you can return to your family today and make the most of the time you have left together before I destroy the whole lot of you.”
Chapter Four
Siena gazedout of the car window and absently watched the streets they were driving through blur by.
They. Elio had jumped into the car with her and announced he’d be joining her that day. They were the first words either of them had spoken since that sickening confrontation in the dressing room.
She hadn’t argued with him.
She still felt too tight inside to speak. Somehow, she had to pull herself together before she arrived at the café.
For once, though, traffic was light, and the driver pulled into the dingy side street and stopped outside the café soon after they’d set off.
The car door was opened for her. Not caring if Elio was following, she walked inside, ordered a cappuccino to take away, heard him ask for the same and for them to be delivered together. When she had her drink in her hands, Siena strolled through a door with a toilet sign on it, pushed open the door marked private, and climbed a set of steep, narrow stairs. At the top were two more doors, one marked with a 1, the other with a 2.
There was a loud click, and the door marked 1 opened, and they were stepping into a small, dingy gambling den thick with cigarette smoke. Three middle-aged men were playing poker. All the other patrons who’d played through the night had gone home to their families or whoever they spent their Sundays with.
“Nice place,” Elio deadpanned. “I thought your casinos were famed for their classiness?”
“Wait here,” she muttered.
“Where you go, I go, wife.”
She finally allowed their eyes to meet. “It was explicitly agreed that you would have nothing to do with my casinos, so you will wait here and fill your lungs with cigarette smoke.”
“But I love uncovering secrets.”
Recognising the threat, she smiled tightly. “This is my domain, Elio.Mine. One wrong move from you or one little signal from me, and that bartender who looks like he’s about to fall asleep and the croupier will have both put a bullet in your head. Those men playing their game will help clean your blood and get rid of your corpse. Your body will never be found, so don’t fuck with me.”
His silver eyes gleamed. “God, Ireallylove it when you talk dirty.”
Giving him the filthiest look she possessed, Siena walked through a door behind the bar and stood before the second of three more doors. It opened with a clunk, and then she was climbing the stairs to the second floor, deeply breathing in the much cleaner air.
She did not have the luxury of time to think of Elio’s ability to shake off his anger and act as if nothing had happened. She already knew he was a master at masking his true feelings. If she only had his skills, but no. Siena had never been good at hiding what was on the inside, not when it came to her personal life.
When it came to business, she was cool, calm and collected, no matter the provocation, and if she could only channel that mindset with Elio, then she stood a fighting chance. That she’d provoked him to anger was something to celebrate. If he was going to make her suffer, then she would damn well return the favour.
The door at the top of the stairs opened, and then she was inside the sprawling room that was her domain more than anywhere else. It had been Rico’s fiefdom, entrusted to him by their father, who had long stopped getting his own hands dirty in the years before his death. When he’d died, and Rico had turned his back on the family’s businesses, Rico had pissed both their brothers off by handing the casinos to Siena.
Filled with screens showing in real time all that was happening in their legitimate casinos, this was the hub from which she controlled it all, the hub the authorities were unaware existed. Italian gambling laws were strict and highly regulated, and it was a mark of how powerful her father had been that he’d been allowed to open any. It was Siena’s job to ensure they did nothing to have their licences revoked. As far as the authorities were concerned, their luxury casinos were squeaky clean. No one had ever found proof of money laundering, and Siena was damned if they ever would.
After going through the weekend’s figures with the head bean-counter, a man who’d been with the family since her father’s early days, and discussing pertinent business, she felt a lot calmer in herself. Siena wasn’t clever in the way someone like Einstein had been; she’d never had any illusions of that, but she was smart and had an instinctive feel for people and for business. People – men especially – always underestimated her.
She thought that’s why Gabriella’s treachery had hit her so hard. It wasn’t just a lifetime of the two women being practically raised as sisters; it was that Siena hadn’t registered Gabriella’shatred. Even now that she understood why Gabriella had been conspiring to bring them down – and in truth, she couldn’t say she wouldn’t have done the same if their roles had been reversed – she couldn’t get over that someone she’d loved and trusted and believed loved and trusted her felt nothing but hate for her.
There was a saying about children paying for the sins of their fathers, and that’s exactly what Siena’s whole life had become. In a matter of months, she’d lost her best friend and entered a marriage she wanted to run a mile from, and all because of something her father had done before she’d even been born. And it was all linked. Siena’s father had murdered his best friend and framed Elio’s father for it.
The best friend he’d murdered had been Gabriella’s father. Learning that had come close to pulling the rug out from under Siena’s feet. She’d always known exactly who and what her father was, but this was something else. All those years, her father had mourned his slain best friend, taken care of his wife and daughter as if they were of his own blood, never uttered the word Ranieri without an accompanying spit of disgust, and all along he’d been the one who had pulled the trigger. And all along, her mother had known it.
Siena could trust no one. Not her family. Not her friends. And especially not her husband.
If the woman who’d been raised like her sister had been working to have Siena put behind bars in revenge, then what about the man who’d lost all his family? How could he possibly be content with marriage and a loose business alliance to quench his thirst for vengeance? How could she trust that? He had to be plotting something more. Had to be. Because if the roles were reversed and it was her family that had been slaughtered on a lie, Siena knew damn well that she’d be willing to go to any lengths for retribution.
* * *
The Esposito Group’s headquarters were in the smartest district of Naples, and it was there that they went next. This was the family’s legitimate public face, the headquarters of the vast media empire that had made Lorenzo Esposito a household name and one of Italy’s richest and most powerful men. Elio had walked past the building many, many times, always imagining the day he walked through its doors as the new kingpin. That day was inching ever closer.
