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Vincenzo
When you worked in my line of business, you learned to read people. I killed my first man at fifteen years old, an initiation overseen by my father and cheered on by my mother. To say my childhood was fucked up was an understatement, yet it had given me the ability to tell a lot about people without a single word being spoken.
When I’d met Suna, shimmying out the bathroom window, I’d read her rebellious attitude and will for freedom. On the dancefloor, I’d read her fear of physical intimacy and the red-hot core of an innocent woman beneath her blasé demeanor. My sweet and sour little fiancée might even be a virgin. Fuck. She might be the death of me.
Tonight, as we’d said goodnight under the watchful gazes of our mafia families, I read her resolve. My little tesora was going to run.
Too bad I wasn’t going to let her.
“Antonio, I want a security detail on Suna. I want her watched round the clock.”
“The Songs are hardly going to let us roll up at their estate and stand outside her door,” Antonio said.
He lounged on the piano stool in the sitting room of my father’s grand estate. If you looked at the building, you’d think him an English lord of some kind. But look outside at the men with machine guns, security walls lined with barbed wire, and floodlights, and you’d know he was very different.
“Exactly. I need a presence outside their compound and someone inside. One person, someone close to her, to monitor her,” I told my younger brother. This kind of thing was his domain: security and surveillance.
Antonio nodded, his long fingers tinkling across the piano's keys and producing a melancholy tune.“Suddenly taken an interest in your bride? She’s stunning, I’ll give you that. But she doesn’t seem to care much for you, brother. You’ll have your work cut out for you there.”
“Do what I’ve asked you,” I snapped, standing and stripping off my jacket. I strode from the fire-lit sitting room and headed for the stairs, annoyance snapping in my veins at Antonio.
My younger brother had always been a thorn in my side. He was hardly younger, a mere year, and the slight age gap tormented us. More than age had made our father choose me as the next capo of the Luciano family. Antonio was prideful to a fault and had a hot temper, born of a need to prove himself. He wouldn’t make a good boss. He was too volatile.
I was accused of being the opposite. A cold-blooded snake of a man who would rob you blind without batting an eye. It was true; I wasn’t easily ruffled. Hell, even my calm acceptance of this arranged marriage before meeting my proposed bride was evidence of my control over my emotions. I did what was best for the family, acting with logic and strategy.
After tonight, that logic felt shaky at best. Suna Song was nothing I’d expected and everything I hadn’t known I wanted. She was stunning, smart, and mouthy. She was brave and funny as hell. I enjoyed her, and I hadn’t enjoyed a woman’s company in a long time.
Not just a woman’s company, I thought, pensively, as I poured myself a scotch in my room and slugged it back. I had no close friends who weren’t business contacts or my brothers. I was isolated and alone, about to take on a heavy mantle of responsibility for hundreds of lives and their family's welfare. Nothing had distracted me from that focus in years. Nothing had lightened the tedium of the sentence I would serve until tonight.
A light in the dark. A diversion in the mundane. A spark of excitement after so long.That kiss. Fuck, that kiss.I gripped my glass hard enough to crack. Her body was designed to fit in my hands. The taste of her mouth, her skin. The sound she’d made when she melted into me, the battle long since over and her complete surrender imminent, had been the most satisfying thing I’d ever heard. I wanted to hear it again, and again, on repeat… as long as we both lived.
Life had finally handed me a good hand. An arranged wife who set my blood on fire and made me laugh, and I wanted her.
I wanted my fiancée. The knowledge was startling yet undeniable. I wanted my fiancée and would have her, no matter what.
No one would stand in my way, and that included her.
