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He swallowed, his gaze dropping. “What do you want?” Santino Lucchese asked in a flat tone.
Beatrice’s forced smile fell. “A father who loved and protected me when he saw what my husband had done to me first hand.”
His hands closed into fists.
“But since that’s not possible, let’s start with what you promised the Coronellas in the marriage contract you once broke.” Her smile returned; she could see the sweat beading at his temples. “Though I know now that wasn’t the first time you broke your word.”
The negotiations were rather simple from there. She watched while her father sank deeper and deeper into the cushion behind him as she laid out how things were going to be. Over the past week, she’d picked up more than enough to understand the Coronellas’ strengths. She chose just enough that they would be bolstered but not burdened. Her father would feel the pinch, but it wouldn’t ruin him.
She wasn’t ruthless, though she could have been. Maybe she was as weak as her husband had tried to convince her she was.
As her father agreed, she considered a different end, but her mind filled with a childhood memory, his laughter as he lifted her into the air, and his death didn’t feel right. Not unless that image faded. Or the emotion that came along with it.
“Anything you’d like to add, Montrell?” Beatrice asked, twisting to where he’d stood quiet.
His eyes were always the warmest brown. “This is about you, Bea. Whatever you think is best.”
She frowned, wondering if she had missed anything. They should have discussed things first, outside of her father’s hearing. She pushed to her feet. Oh well. Blackmail was never-ending. She could ask for more later.
As if he had heard her thoughts, her father spoke. “How do I know you won’t ask for more?”
She gave him a view of her back, glancing over her shoulder. “I’m only taking back my pound of flesh, Daddy. I’m not a monster.” Her heels clicked as she walked over to where Montrell waited. He looked no different. Not surprised or amazed or impacted at all. Just quietly watchful.
Vespa’s eyes were harder, her lips pursed in thought.
Beatrice reached for the door but didn’t turn the knob. “Once you get over your pride, you’ll find that this is for the best. Had you made a different choice five years ago, we’d all have been better off for it.”
She opened the door. Anything he could say he wouldn’t want heard by his men.
Not if it in any way could lead them to what she knew about him.
The guards she remembered well still stood on either side of the door. Beatrice walked tall, her hips swaying with the giddiness of having pulled off her plan. A sense of relief that it was behind her flooded through her, better than the heat of whiskey through her veins.
So when fingers she wasn’t expecting skimmed her bare shoulder, she wasn’t prepared, and she jerked away on instinct. Her hand came up to steady herself against the opposite wall as she tried to breathe through her sudden panic. She cursed herself in her mind as she forced her trembling fingers to stiffen and straightened again.
The sound of flesh thumping into flesh made her whirl around in surprise. Montrell caught the guard’s fist as he punched him in the face again.
“Fuck! Montrell!” Vespa snapped, pulling her guns as other Lucchese soldiers raced toward them down the hall.
Montrell was fixated on his purpose. He broke the guard’s wrist before letting him collapse to the hallway floor. His chest heaved with a breath before his gaze swept those nearest, his expression one from Beatrice’s nightmares.
His words weren’t.
“No one touches my wife without her permission.”
Vespa was the only one who had pulled a gun. The Lucchese soldiers shifted at his words, their eyes searching past Montrell to where Santino stood inside the doorway.
Her father turned his back on them. “Let them leave,” he said, reentering the room and closing the door behind him.
Montrell’s normal, easy expression didn’t return. His eyes looked harder than she could ever remember seeing them. Turning away so she could no longer see him was simplest.
He didn’t touch her, but his heat was a presence at her back as they made their way toward the waiting car.
Chapter 10
Montrell got an earful from Vespa about almost getting them all killed at the Lucchese estate. He didn’t disagree. If he hadn’t been so angry at himself for not preventing the guard from touching Beatrice in the first place, he might have been able to rein in his temper better. He doubted it, though. He’d been revved up ever since he’d seen her bare back.
The number of pale scars crisscrossing her flesh had made the red fabric of her dress burn his eyes. The reports he’d gotten had painted a picture of broken bones and blood infusions. The evidence she’d displayed for all to see showed instead the toxicity of what her daily life had been.
