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I swallow as my lips part, and his thumb brushes across them. “You’ll be my undoing,” he murmurs.
His undoing?
That can’t mean what I think it means. This man is as cold as ice. He doesn’t have a beating heart or feelings.
Except … what if he does? What if he feels something more, like I am? Confusion. Hope. Something more powerful than lust.
Is Marcello Dellucci falling for me?
I stare at him for a second, completely dumbfounded by this realization. He leans in again, his palm against my cheek as his lips move closer and closer until I can feel his breath on my skin. The imminent kiss is electrifying, and I’m frozen in place, gasping for air.
It’s then that it hits me.
I’m hungry for his kiss, his touch. And the mere thought of his body against mine made my heart flutter.
No.
I shake my head and pull away from him, glaring at him as though he’s stolen something of mine I wasn’t ready to give.
I can’t. I can’t let him do this, no matter how badly I want him to.
So I turn away and run past him, tears filling my eyes as I rush back inside the mansion.
Because if I know one thing for sure, it’s that I cannot ever fall in love with this man.
Marcello
I’m left standing alone in shock. The garden around me buzzes with insects, and a breeze rolls through. Under other circumstances, I might find comfort in these small, simple beauties. My money and power are supposed to get me the nicer things in life.
But right now, this place chills me to the bone.
How much longer can I keep doing this? I’ve aged decades in the past month, and no end is in sight. Everything in my world—or what’s left of it—is wearing me down bit by bit. The war, the shipment, but most of all… Harper.
I don’t regret buying her. Even now, I can’t find it in me to wish I hadn’t done that. The real mistake was letting her get close to me. Close to my heart. To where no one has been in a long time.
I swore an oath on that bloody, vicious night fifteen years ago I’d never be vulnerable again. And I’ve gone and done exactly fucking that. I showed Harper parts of me I vowed to keep in the darkness. I told her things that were meant to be buried deep for the rest of time.
Like about my mother. My thoughts flash to where she lies inside the mansion, hooked up to IVs and beeping machines. I still can’t believe I blurted that secret out loud. And to Harper, of all people—my pet, my fuck-doll. Isn’t that what she called herself? That’s how she thinks I see her?
I say the words out loud into the empty garden. “She’s nothing more than a fucking toy.”
The crickets chirp louder in response. It’s like they know I’m a fucking liar. She isn’t a toy, and she hasn’t been, not even in the beginning. She may have just been a waitress in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it wasn’t an accident she was there.
It was fate.
But is she my path to a happy future? Or will Harper be my undoing?
I don’t have the answers to these questions. There’s nothing I can do but turn them over in my head again and again. But if I’m going to torture myself with thoughts of Harper, I might as well be drinking. I go inside, leaving the rose garden behind me.
There’s work to be done.
The next night
I’m in the middle of contacting some of my relations about the shipment, when I suddenly get a phone call from Ricardo. “Yeah? I’m busy.”
“Sorry, Sir, I know you told us not to disturb you, but uh … there’s just something I think you should know.”
“Spill it,” I respond.
“I found a mole.”
I shove my chair away from the desk and immediately sit up straight. “What? Who is it? Tell me you have him detained or I swear to fucking G—”
“Yes, Sir. But … it’s Claudio.”
My eyes widen. I almost drop the phone from my hand but then clench it so tightly it almost breaks.
Claudio, my fucking right-hand man, a mole?
“Are you sure?”
The guy has been with us for years. I trusted him with my life.
“We have him in custody downstairs, Sir. You can ask him yourself.”
I don’t even reply before stopping the call, and I shove the phone in my pocket and march out the door. It takes me only a minute to run down into the basement and slam open the door. There, Claudio is bound to a chair, a dozen of our men watching over him, anger spilling from their eyes. Rage becomes me as I pull out my gun and point it straight at his head.
Claudio, my fucking consigliere. Not in a million years would I have suspected him to be a rat.
