Page 40 of The Mafioso’s Bride

“This is my home. Take me downstairs.”

Luca

Giada’s bedroom door closes between us. The latch clicks into place.

I remain in the hall, close enough to reach her in four steps if she calls me. She asked to be alone. I gave her my promise before I gave her my body: access to either belongs to her. So I walk downstairs.

At breakfast, she sits across from me in a white blouse instead of the blue tardigrade shirt she wore to my bed. Her tea is absent. She calls the bacon acceptable. When I ask what she wants, she asks to finish eating.

Yesterday, her hand would have reached for mine. This morning, both remain around her fork and knife. Her answers have narrowed to the minimum.

The conclusion fits every fact available to me. She chose sex. She chose my bed for one night. Morning gave her time to reconsider both. Her body is sore, and now she wishes last night hadn’t happened.

Every instinct I possess demands that I sit beside her and force the truth into the open. The promise wins.

Before I leave, I tell her Antonio was captured last night and is secured in the basement. Her fingers close around her book. I tell her she will never be required to go near him or speak to him. He cannot reach her.

“All right.”

When I leave for Corsini headquarters, she holds the book instead of touching me goodbye.

Dante’s office contains three reports, cold coffee, and no patience for distraction. Mine ran out before I arrived. Coffee chills against my tongue when I take a drink and miss the line I meant to read.

“Antonio has given us nothing useful,” he says. “Dario questioned him again.”

I turn a page. The same paragraph has occupied me for several minutes. “Then Dario asked the wrong questions.”

Dante slides the folder toward me. “He asked the questions you approved.”

I place my cup beside the phone. “Approval isn’t infallibility.”

Dante leans into his chair. “You’ve read that page three times.”

I turn the page over. “Twice.”

His finger taps the margin. “A vital distinction.”

My phone lies beside the folder. No call or message. Giada asked for nothing before I left, and she has continued the policy in my absence. I close the folder. “Where are we on Giuseppe?”

“Two crews are checking properties tied to Lombardi businesses. Mattia has men on the known family members. There is no confirmed location.”

I tap the list of loyalist holdings. “He needs money, shelter, and men he trusts. The families withdrawing support reduce all three.”

“Which gives him reason to move soon.” Dante’s attention drops to my lapel. “You wore the pin again.”

“It matches the suit,” I say.

“It has eight legs,” he says.

“Giada says the design isn’t anatomically exact,” I say.

“Of course she did,” he says. I reach for the next report.

Dante puts his palm on the page. “Your kitchen prepares food according to texture, you turn your office screen toward her, and you wear an inaccurate silver animal on your lapel.”

I lift my coffee. “You keep an alarming amount of information about my home.”

“You abandoned me in the middle of a gala conversation when she needed you.”