AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He looked startled for a minute, then he gave a single nod. ‘Se.Power needn’t always come from being feared. He taught me that too as a boy.’
And in those words, Giada made a discovery.
It was both startling and alarming.
Because its effect on her left her frantically out of breath and on edge.
Alessio wasn’t a man who sold his services to the highest bidder without qualms. Every client he’d taken on had something fundamentally personal at stake. Something, if lost, money wouldn’t replace.
Underneath his ruthless, brooding exterior, the man she was snowed in with possessed an unyielding core of integrity.
And the reason she was so aflame at that discovery?
It ramped up the unstoppable appeal that seemed to grow and expand and seethe with hunger with every second she spent in his company.
‘You looked up to him,’ she added softly.
Again he looked mildly nonplussed, and, even though he didn’t nod, the flash of pain in his eyes spoke volumes. ‘He was a great father. He cared for his family and his integrity and honour never wavered regardless of the pressure from others on how he should lead the Montaldi family.’
‘What did the crest have to do with it?’ she asked when the silence stretched.
‘In Montaldi tradition, the person who possesses it has the right to challenge the ruling family for leadership. My father believed he had nothing to worry about because our family had retained it for four generations. We were easily the largest and most influential family in Sicily. No other family had dared to challenge a Montaldi in over ninety years.’ He paused, his eyes growing bitter and bleaker with harrowing memories. ‘But he didn’t account for the betrayal coming from within his own family.’
Her gasp echoed in the chilling silence of the room. ‘Who?’
The haunted darkness intensified, and within it Giada saw the ruthless man forged from loss, betrayal and determination. A man who plainly and unequivocally meant to avenge his father. A man who would strike down anyone who stood in his way.
A man who would go to the ends of the earth to reclaim the very tool he needed to achieve that goal.
The bracing shudder that rushed over her brought blinding enlightenment. She barely managed to squeeze her eyes shut and moan in despair as the true repercussions of what Gigi had done slammed home.
She wanted to throw herself at his feet in that moment. To beg for whatever sliver of mercy resided in his heart. But he was speaking again, and in that nanosecond she realised she couldn’t. They were stuck here for another handful of days at the minimum, a week if they weren’t lucky.
Divulging that Gigi currently had no clue where the Montaldi family crest was would be like sealing herself in with a predator and hoping it wouldn’t devour her out of sheer fury and frustration.
‘My father had three younger brothers. They didn’t like the new direction he wanted to adopt; they preferred to sell our services to the highest bidder. When he wouldn’t be swayed, they took over...by force. They gunned him down in front of his wife and sons on a Sunday after attending mass and praying by his side. My mother went from being a beloved matriarch to being cast aside like yesterday’s garbage, thrown out of her home with her sons. She went from donating large tracts of her time and money to charities to not being even worthy of charity herself because she’d been blacklisted by my uncles. We were forced to leave Sicily, to live in halfway houses across the country while she worked menial jobs. She died heartbroken and broken. But with her last breath, she asked me to make things right. So you see, Giada, reclaiming my possession isn’t a trivial matter to me.’
That momentary urge to disclose the whole truth was smothered beneath the need to assuage the obvious hell of his confession.
It grew and grew until she couldn’t hold still. Couldn’t watch him suffer from across the cold distance between them. Before she thought better of it, Giada rose off the sofa and approached him.
‘Yes, I see, Alessio. I see it clearly,’ she murmured.
He watched her with eyes that didn’t really focus on her, lost as he was in his tortured memories. The yearning to erase them drew her hands up, extended to him.
And when he didn’t move away or reject her, she touched the backs of his strong hands with hers. The skin-to-skin contact was raw and visceral enough to draw a hiss from him. To makehergasp low and needy, every inch of her flesh straining for more.
She dragged her hands higher, up and over his wrists and forearms, then higher still to his elbows. Then she changed direction, running her touch beneath his polo shirt and over his lower abs.
Packed muscles jumped beneath her hands, his eyes turning molten gold as he continued to watch her every move with avid eyes, his breathing truncating as she explored his tight six-pack.
‘Be careful what you’re doing, Giada.’
The sound of her name sent another bolt of desire through her, making her so thankful that she could now shed her false persona. That she could be who she was with him. Her hands drifted up, over his flat nipples. He hissed in another breath, his eyes growing even more hooded.
‘Giada...’ There was thick warning and barely leashed arousal in that single word, making her moan.
‘You moan when I say your name. You like it, don’t you?’
