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The rough and viciously animalistic growled command raised the hairs on her nape. As did the gaze he concentrated upon the man holding her captive. Its savagery caused Vincenzo’s eyes to widen in swift alarm as he quickly heeded the order.
His will imposed, Ares redirected his gaze to her.
Odessa rubbed her stinging wrist, tilted her head up and up—had he always been this tall?—and met the cold liquid hazel gaze of the man who had dominated her thoughts once upon a time. But while she’d been able to read his expression back then, he was now a dark, impenetrable tower, content simply to stare at her without uttering a word.
In her teens, she’d likened his heart-stopping demeanour to one of the mythical Greek creatures of old. Even back then his dominance had been unquestionable.
That aura was a hundred-fold more potent now, and the ferocity of it snatched the air out of her lungs and accelerated her heartbeat.
Her alarm that he was here, in the place he’d left without so much as a goodbye, mingled with her nerves as she cleared her throat. ‘I... Ares... Thank you for coming.’
Odessa was painfully aware that her statement lacked warmth and held a definite query.
‘It isn’t me you should be thanking,’ he replied, in a voice that had definitely deepened with time, and once again warning tingles danced over her neck and shivered down her spine.
Before she could ask what he meant, his father was stepping up to her, the older Zanelis’ trademark smile dimmed only by the solemnity of the occasion.
‘Odessa, it is good to see you,’ Sergios Zanelis said, reaching out to grasp her hands in a much gentler hold. ‘I hope you don’t mind that we’re here, but I insisted we pay our respects. Your father was generous enough to keep me in his employ for over twenty years. I will never forget that.’
Ares’s jaw clenched at his father’s words, and an absurd hollow opened inside her. It couldn’t have been clearer that this was the last place he’d have come if his father hadn’t insisted on it. Or that his father’s positive outlook didn’t match Ares’s own view of past events.
Telling herself that she might easily have gone another few decades without clapping eyes on Ares Zanelis would’ve been a lie. For one thing, he dominated the news these days, his power and influence a source of breathless material for both mainstream and social media.
That was how she knew he was unmarried. How she knew his relationships barely lasted a handful of months, with the princesses, actresses and supermodels of this world who apparently lined up round the block for a chance to be his latest flame getting the revolving door treatment with eye-watering frequency.
That was how she knew his father was the only constant in his life.
When she’d read about the car crash that had almost taken both their lives four years ago it had sent her to the tiny Santella family chapel every sunrise for the three weeks Ares had remained in a coma in California. And in that chapel she’d made fervent promises she hadn’t been sure she’d be able to keep.
Aware of the thick silence, and especially of Ares’s laser gaze boring into her, Odessa cleared her throat and summoned a whisper of a smile. ‘It’s very good of you to come, Mr Zanelis. I really appreciate it.’
And she did, because in this sea of men with nefarious intentions and a willingness to mow everyone down including her—especially her—in their bid to become the next head of the Santella organised crime family, seeing this man who’d gone about his work with an incredibly sunny disposition was a balm she couldn’t help but greedily latch on to.
She grew even more conscious of Ares’s stare as she spoke, his scrutiny sharpening over her face as if gauging the veracity of her words.
The priest clearing his throat pointedly gave her the excuse to turn away. To face her father’s casket once more. She kept her gaze fixed on it even while her senses whirled in frantic alarm as Ares took Vincenzo’s place at her left side, with his father displacing Uncle Flávio on her right.
And it was in the thirty minutes as the service resumed—as her uncle’s dark eyes moved speculatively over her and Vincenzo’s gaze promised hell—that the seed of her desperate idea was born.
Because, while she’d been unable to read Flávio’s expression fully, she’d seen it enough before—deciphered that look after she’d spotted it countless times on her father’s face, and on those of most members of her family and his so-called business partners.
Resentment. Judgement. The promise of retribution.
In Ares’s eyes she’d spotted something else. The ghost of an emotion she’d thought long dead.
Lust.
Awareness of the feeling she’d thought had been left behind when he’d walked away from her that fateful night drew from her fresh tingles of danger and partly shame. But, while this occasion was the last place she should be thinking of such things, his proximity, his aura... Dear God, even the way he smelled—like thunder-tossed rainstorms and smoked wood—was undeniable and erotic in its invasiveness.
And if she wasn’t wrong about what she’d seen in his eyes maybe she could...
God, could she?
She drew in a shaky breath as the priest ended the ceremony. As she tossed the white rose she’d plucked from the offered vase onto her father’s lowered casket and mourned the parent not for his death, but for what he’d never been able to give her in his life, she knew, deep in her bones, that she needed something to change.
Remaining under Flávio and Vincenzo’s already strangling hold would be the end of her. But, just as she knew that, she also knew that merely running wouldn’t work.
Her move needed to be bold. Drastic. Terminal in a way that burned bridges neither Flávio nor Vincenzo could repair. Because if she didn’t...if she was somehow half-hearted in this...
