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“Emilia.” I brushed her arm, and she flinched. “Talk to me, piccola.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” She started across the road to the car.
One thing was for sure, there was a lot to fucking talk about because the girl who had just sat silently through that meeting was not the person I’d spent the last week with.
The ride home was silent, the kind where each breath felt ominous. Emilia was so far inside her head, she might as well have been on a different continent, and I knew it had something to do with Romano. The way she reacted to him… I had to wonder what he had done to her, but that was a dark and dangerous path. One that would result in me breaking my word to Sergio.
I would allow her silence until we got home. But that was it. After last night, I realized my little kitten needed pushing. Emilia would never come to me “willingly.” But she wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. Nothing in this world could keep her from me, though, not even her pride. Emilia was on the verge of breaking, so I would push her, and I would catch all her shattered pieces and put them back together when she did.
* * *
When we got home, Emilia seemed lost, disjointed as she lingered in the space between the door and the kitchen.
I handed her a glass of water. “Drink that.”
She did as she was told.
I put the empty glass on the counter before stroking her hair away from her face. “Go get in my bed, piccola. I have some calls to make.” I pressed my lips to her forehead, and she leaned into me, placing her palms on my chest. I couldn’t deny there was part of me that loved her sweet acceptance, but I was also concerned because even at her weakest, Emilia always fought me.
I went to my office and called Nero, then Jackson. By the time I was done, it was well past midnight. I could have gone and slept in one of the spare rooms. I should have, but I didn’t.
Emilia was curled on her side in my bed, looking so small and fragile. She still wore her dress, her hair half pinned up. When I approached with a shirt in hand, her glazed eyes didn’t move from the city beyond the windows.
“Sit up.”
She did, like a robot being controlled. I stripped her out of her dress before slipping the shirt over her head. She was so meek, I couldn’t even enjoy the sight of her in lace underwear.
“Emilia,” I cupped her cheek and pulled her face to mine. She blinked, and a lone tear tracked down her cheek. “Talk to me.”
Her mouth opened, then closed. “Why? We aren’t friends, Gio.”
Oh, we were so much more than that. “We don’t have to be enemies.”
“I think we do.” Her words were a broken whisper. She needed us to be enemies because the moment she let me in, we both knew I’d consume her entirely.
“I’m not your enemy, Emilia, and if you really thought that, you wouldn’t be in my bed.”
She dropped her gaze to the sheets as though realizing the truth in my words.
“So tell me, who is Matteo Romano to you? And how much do I need to make him suffer when I kill him?”
She huffed a laugh that sounded more like a sob. More tears fell, and I watched her break. Those walls I’d battered myself against over and over again cracked as though they were made of nothing more than sand.
“Don’t cry, piccola.”
I lay down on the bed, fully clothed, and pulled her trembling form to my chest. Tears soaked through my shirt and onto my skin for the second time in as many days. And I wanted it—every tear, every shred of hurt, every fear that lived in her head. Those tears felt like a branding of her pain, like she was tattooing herself on my damn soul. I stroked her hair, not expecting her to actually speak.
“He’s my punishment,” she whispered, “if I don’t marry you.”
Of course. Sergio knew she’d need to be leveraged to be complicit. “Sergio threatened you with Matteo?”
“I told him he couldn’t make me speak vows to that man.” She fisted a handful of my shirt. “I was given a choice: Act like a true Outfit princess and marry you, or he’d give me to Matteo. As his whore.”
My hold on her waist tightened as I pictured all the ways I could kill them both. So many broken bones, so much blood. But it wasn’t just them who had done this to her, and for the first time in forever, I felt guilt, true guilt.
“What did Matteo do to you?” I tried hard to keep the edge out of my voice, but it was impossible.
