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Jackson glanced at the phone in my hand, and I didn’t even care if he saw me stalking her. “Are you really going to force a girl who ran away from you, to marry you, just to appease Sergio Donato?”
“No.”
He snorted. “Thought not. You’re too moral, Gio.” Only he or Nero would possibly ever say that, and only because they were such psychopaths. I was many things, but least of all, moral.
“You know, you could always just give her back. Remove the issue.” He glanced at my screen again, probably sensing the distraction she absolutely was. “I doubt they’ll actually kill her. They’ll just marry her off to some fuck who’s less concerned with her willingness.”
The thought of them killing her simply because she wouldn’t be their puppet bothered me, but another guy having her … that sent me over the edge.
“She’s not going back.” I wasn’t sure what I was doing with her. The only thing I did know—she was mine. By the time I was done with Emilia Donato, she’d be begging me to keep her.
8
Emilia
Turned out, Giovanni was rarely here, and if the pile of take-out bags outside my bedroom door was anything to go by, one of his men was delivering food regularly. Like a neighbor feeding the cat. Well, I didn’t want Giovanni’s damn food, so he could go screw himself.
The benefit of his absence was that I had ample opportunity to find an escape. Except there was none. The front door was locked, of course, with no keyhole to even attempt to pick. No fire exit and I didn’t have wings, so I wasn’t jumping off a balcony. What I did find, however, was a door that led to a set of stairs. With a paperclip stolen from Giovanni’s office, I picked the lock at the top and found a rooftop terrace.
The view was breathtaking, with the city sprawled on one side and Central Park on the other. A cool breeze tinged with the briny scent of the ocean tugged at my hair as I took in the patio furniture and a bar in the corner. Giovanni really didn’t strike me as the socializing or relaxing type, and I wondered if that door was ever unlocked.
I retrieved another bottle of his fancy wine and collapsed onto the rattan sofa, breathing in the fresh air as though it wasn’t tainted by exhaust fumes from the city far below.
The lake house was a cage, and I’d spent more nights than I cared to remember in the basement, but the lake and woods were always there to suck me into their wild embrace whenever my father decided I’d served my sentence. I craved the wilderness now, but it was nowhere to be seen in this concrete jungle.
I lay down, taking in the deep navy of the night sky, scattered with stars. That was where I remained, drinking wine and waiting for some kind of master escape plan to hit me.
The moon was high in the sky when the door to the roof banged open so hard the hinges groaned in protest. Giovanni was like a rolling storm, his presence apparent long before I ever heard the first rumble of thunder. Power and the promise of violence brushed over my skin like static.
“What are you doing up here?” His voice was calm, but I knew that was a façade.
My pulse jumped, and in a sick way, I liked it. The adrenaline he ignited in me was like a shot of heroin in my veins, cutting through the darkness that surrounded me. “What does it look like, Giovanni?” I lifted the bottle of wine.
His shadow fell over me, his energy as choking as the hand he’d clasped around my throat a couple of nights ago. “How did you get up here?”
I sat up and swung my legs to the side until my feet touched the ground and my bare knees brushed the soft material of his suit pants. “Picked the lock.”
He lifted a brow. “You picked. The. Lock?”
Renzo had taught me to pick a lock when I was ten. I almost smiled at the memory of Renzo, Chiara, and me breaking out and camping in the woods until my father’s men had found us. “You aren’t the first man to try to lock me up.”
There was a beat of silence where his gaze swept the length of me. “Picking locks, going into my room…”
I glanced down at the shirt I’d stolen from his closet earlier.
“Tell me, Emilia, are you brave or just stupid?”
I smoothed a hand down the front of the black buttoned shirt, and his eyes tracked the movement like a hawk. I pushed to my feet, not that it brought us level or made him any less intimidating. It did, however, bring me flush against him, the couch behind my knees, trapping me. “It looks better on me anyway.” That was an absolute lie because Giovanni was wearing an identical black shirt, and it clung to him like a jilted lover who couldn’t let go.
