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As if that was an admonishment—and it certainly felt like one—Ago stayed where he was, staring out his wall of windows as if the City of London could provide him with some relief from this torment.
When he knew by now that there was no relief.
Because now it was worse. Now it was not simply need and heat in the dark. Now it was the sight of Victoria gliding toward him down that aisle in a chapel where Accardis had claimed their women for centuries. Now it was that roar inside him that he had tried so hard to deny, even as it happened.Mine.
It was that and it was all the rest of it. The way sunlight seemed to follow her from room to room even on a gray November day. The way she watched him, so carefully, so intensely, as if she was committing his every word and gesture to memory.
Because though she said nothing that was not polite and never set so much as a finger or a utensil wrong, she still got to him. And he had no idea what he was expected to do with the storm inside of him that he suspected would break free at the slightest provocation.
He had no idea how long he stood there, seeing nothing but her face. It might have been days—
But then the door to his office flew open behind him.
Ago gritted his teeth again, because there was only one person on the whole of the earth who would dare disturb his privacy at will.
Only one, and it was certainly not his deferential secretary.
“I do not recall inviting you in, brother,” he growled. His younger brother’s inappropriately raucous laugh grated, but then, he knew that Tiziano meant it to do just that.
“I am not a vampire, Ago. I don’t require an invitation. Or have you forgotten? This is my company too.”
“Even if I wished it,” Ago muttered, “I could not possibly forget it.”
Though he was not being entirely serious. There had been times when he’d doubted his brother’s contributions to the family company, it was true. But in the past year, Tiziano had leveled up. He had proved that his haphazard successes, thrown about here and there accidentally, were in actuality the kind of marketing acumen that others paid excessive amounts to attempt to copy. Ago had learned that Tiziano had always wanted to beseenas haphazard and undependable. Now that he was in love and settled, he no longer felt the need to be seen as less than he was.
And Ago was not one to traffic in psychoanalysis, particularly of his younger brother. But he did enjoy that Tiziano took a far more active role in the company these days. He could admit that. Though not in his brother’s presence, of course.
“I have heard the most extraordinary rumor,” Tiziano told him, sloping into the room looking as he always did—like some kind of near-disreputable character who might have accidentally slept in the exquisite suit he wore, handcrafted for him, specifically, by one of the many couture houses who competed for his custom. “It involves our favoritepossiblypregnant heiress. And, to my eternal astonishment, you.”
“Where?” Ago asked shortly.
“In the bedroom with a bottle of wine?” Tiziano returned lazily. He laughed again, and it had precisely the same effect on Ago. “I assure you, brother, I do not require all the details of this scandalous event. I’m just flabbergasted that one occurred. Were you forced to participate? At gunpoint?”
“I meant, where did you hear such a rumor?”
Tiziano lounged his way across the room, then threw himself into the chair across from Ago’s desk, looking entirely boneless.
Ago knew he did it for the express purpose of driving Ago up the wall. And he hated that he was so on edge that it worked.
“Are you denying it?” Tiziano asked, a gleam of amusement in his gaze.
“I never comment on tabloid nonsense. You know this.”
“But it was not in a tabloid,” Tiziano murmured, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “I heard this from no greater authority than our dear cousin Patricio, who claims to have married you himself.”
Ago sighed. He had a set of wholly uncharacteristic urges course through him, then. To run his fingers through his hair, when he kept it close-cropped enough that there could be no profit in it. To fiddle and fidget, like he was some boy stood before a headmaster—or his own disapproving father and grandfather.
The Accardi heir had never been allowed such indications that he might be like everyone else. He had never been permitted to be normal.
“Patricio is correct,” he said, because he had also never been permitted to faff about with flowery language like his brother. He had been expected to reply with the correct answer, and succinctly, or risk a swift punishment. “We are married.”
He said this very shortly, and with a glare—not that this in any way discouraged his brother.
“I am shocked and appalled,” Tiziano drawled, while looking and sounding neither. “How can this be? Do you mean to tell me you had a wedding and failed to invite your favorite and only brother?”
Ago sighed again. “You already know that I did. It is why you are here today, I can only assume.”
“I do know you did,” Tiziano agreed merrily. “What I don’t know is why you married in secret. Very much as if you have something to hide.”
