“This is a lovely lunch,” he says suddenly.
My attention snaps sideways. His voice is too loose. Too loud. He’s already had too much to drink.
“It reminds me of the last time we met with the Kuznetsovs,” he adds, laughing slightly. “Wonderful people.”
Silence drops. Forks stop mid-air. Glasses pause halfway to lips. Even the servants freeze. The temperature at the table changes.
Pietro is still smiling.
Still talking.
Still drunk enough to think he didn’t just set fire to this gathering.
Across the table, Massimo’s posture shifts.
“Kuznetsovs,” he repeats quietly.
Pietro nods like he’s proud of himself. “Yeah. Good business people. They’re very powerful. They could be a useful alliance for you, Massimo. I think it’s time you bury the hatchet and actually think like a businessman.”
Massimo narrows his eyes at me.
I know he’ll call off this wedding if he thinks I’m working with the Kuznetsovs, and I swear to God I’ll kill Pietro myself if Sienna doesn’t end up my wife in two weeks.
For a second, the thought throws me.
That shouldn’t be my first concern.
This marriage is bigger than wanting Sienna in my bed.
It’s about power.
Control.
Keeping my seat as Don while Luca circles like a fucking vulture waiting for weakness.
I slowly turn toward Pietro. Across from me, he’s grinning like an idiot with a half-empty wine glass dangling from his fingers.
In my peripheral, I can feel Sienna watching me now.
It takes every ounce of restraint not to look back at her.
“Pietro,” I say calmly. “Enough.”
He snorts.
“What crawled up your ass, brother?”
The word brother is said with a sneer. A deliberate disrespect. My grip tightens around the fork in my hand.
One second. That’s all it would take to drive the fork through his eye.
I can already imagine the sound he’d make. But this is a formal lunch, and there are rules to these things. We smile here. We threaten later.
Beside me, Camilla has gone stiff.
Across the table, one of the older Caruso men shifts uncomfortably.
Pietro either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.
