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I laugh nervously, feeling my stomach churn. Faking it. Very well. I can do this, pretend. I can pretend I'm ready. I can pretend I'm in love with Vittorio. I can pretend I learned to dance the goddamned waltz. For tonight I can pretend.
I blink at the dress on my bed and bite my lip, my heart changing rhythm as a terrible idea takes over my mind. It's a horrible idea, absolutely inadvisable, but before I have the chance to banish it forever and ever, it has already taken root in my heart in a way so selfish that, until that moment, I didn't even recognize myself capable of being.
‘It’s selfish, but why is that a problem?’ Vittorio's words echo in my mind, and I bite my lower lip. Just tonight, Gabriella. Just tonight. This is a dress too beautiful to waste. If you're going to pretend a little, why not pretend everything? Who, after all, besides myself could judge me?
CHAPTER 35
________
Vittorio Cataneo
I knock on Gabriella's bedroom door and, a few seconds later, it is opened by Rafaella. The girl's eyes widen when she comes across me before lowering her head.
“Don Vittorio.”
“Is Gabriella ready?”
“Yes, Don. We were on our way down.”
“Very well, leave us.” I make room for the housekeeper to pass, and she blinks her blue eyes several times, then looks over her shoulder, into the room as if she had doubts about obeying me, and finally swallows hard.
Rafaella passes me and I wait until she has disappeared around the corner of the hallway to enter Gabriella's room. The perfectly made bed catches my attention immediately, I remember Luigia's comment and wonder if it's still true. I'm almost sure it is.
“Rafa?” Gabriella's soft voice sounds from the open door, the closet, and I head there.
My eyes lock on the slender body, facing away from me, as I pass through the entrance to the room. Gabriella's gaze finds me in the reflection of the mirror she is facing, she follows each step I take towards her with bated breath, exactly like every time, andI shouldn't enjoy having that effect on the Brazilian so much, but I do.
“Hello, Gabriella.” I stop just a step away. She lets out her breath slowly and licks her red painted lips.
I take a good look at her image in the mirror. The dress I chose was much better than I imagined it would be, the vivid color contrasts perfectly with the pale skin and dark hair, modulated in waves and concentrated on one shoulder. My blood heats when my eyes stop at the round ass, outlined by the thin fabric. The dress appears to have been custom-made for her hourglass-shaped body.
“One thing is missing,” I say and take a long, thin box out of my pants pocket. Gabriella's eyes follow the movement and widen when its contents are revealed. She opens her lips, leaving them in the perfect shape of an O. “Lift your hair” I order, and as always, she immediately obeys.
I take the choker out of the box and bring it to Gabriela's neck, closing it. It fits like a glove, adjusting without gaps. The white gold jewelry is encrusted with diamonds in the shape of leaves and thorns, in the center, rubies bleed a fully blossomed red rose, surrounded by small emeralds.
That wasn't necessary, the simple fact of going to Massimo Coppeline's birthday party without being invited and with his supposed granddaughter hanging on my arm would have sent a loud and clear message to the old man.
However, what was just a touch of drama to the scene became an uncontrollable impulse when the idea of marking Gabriella as mine in this way pleased me much more than I thought possible. My initial plan was just an expensive necklace, any would do.
I also didn't intend to choose the dress myself to cover the soft skin of the woman in front of me, but Gabriella has this intriguing habit of making me act instinctively.
I am not an impulsive man, never have been and have no intention of becoming one. However, there is something about the Brazilian that makes me unable to curb the primitive demands that my body and mind have made on her in the short time we have known each other.
First, let her live. Then demand her surrender. And since then, a series of small decisions like letting her ask questions or simply answering them. And these impulses begin to become more and more intense with each minute I spend in her presence.
There is one, in particular, which begins to rebel against my indifference: to demand her complete and utter submission, to take every breath Gabriella has to give me, fill her broken mind and dominate her empty soul until there is not a single part of the girl that is not completely mine. To take everything away from her. Drinking her absolute obedience and getting drunk on Gabriella like nothing has ever been able to make me numb.
I inhale deeply and a sweet smell, something like roses, fills my nose as Gabriella lets her hair fall back over her shoulder. Incredibly appropriate, I almost laugh. One more thing, in fact, that the Brazilian has the power to awaken, this unusual desire that, until very recently, I didn't know I had, to smile.
“Perfect!” The word hangs between us, but this is a truth that I was not willing to keep. More of small instinctive gestures, impossible to contain. “Ready to pretend?” I ask, touching my fingers to hers.
Gabriella drops her eyes that were steady on the reflection of the necklace around her neck to our hands, almost as if shewanted to make sure I touched her. She lifts her head, but this time her face turns over her shoulder, looking for my eyes instead of their reflection.
“Ready.”
***
“This party is not like the other one,” the soft voice of the woman next to me says a few minutes after we enter the room.
