Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 94124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
“No.” He drags her across the room until her rain-soaked shirt dampens my shoes. “Not like that. Apologize like you actually fucking mean it.” My stomach recoils when he adds, “Like you know that this apology is the only reason you’re not already under six feet of dirt.”
“Vanni—”
“Apologize!”
Tears topple down Valeria’s cheeks when the reality of the situation finally dawns on her. She isn’t running the show around here. “I’m sorry.”
“For?” Giovanni continues to push, the word shooting from his mouth like poison.
This time, Valeria falls into line. “For thinking I could mark you. That I could put my hands on you and get away with it.”
Since I can’t take more of this, I nod so fast that I make myself dizzy. “It’s fine.” My reply is thin with fragility. “I accept your apology.”
I don’t believe she is sincere.
I simply want this over before Giovanni does something he can’t take back.
In my head, I call Valeria an idiot when she peers up at Giovanni and murmurs, “You wanted an apology. You got one. Now let me go.”
Giovanni doesn’t move, nor does his expression soften. His shoulders remain rigid, and his jaw locks so firmly I can see the strain. “No.” The chilliness of his words causes me to shudder. “I never said I’d let you go once you apologized. What you did was inexcusable. A mistake like that is only corrected one way.”
I can’t breathe when he raises his gun an inch. Now, instead of being pointed at Valeria’s eyes, it homes in on the wrinkle popped between her brows.
Valeria re-finds her panic. “What do you want me to do, Giovanni? Beg? I can beg.”
I don’t recognize the voice that comes out of Giovanni.
“I need you to grasp the implications of your actions.” He speaks each word with lethal deliberation. “And how you can’t take back with words what you did. You fucking marked her. You dug your nails into the woman I’m obsessed with…” He makes eye contact with me, and electricity surges through the air. His hooded gaze is dark and lethal but also burning with something that scares me more than Valeria ever could. “You hurt the woman I love.”
He misses the rapid dilation of my pupils when he returns his eyes to Valeria.
Love? He loves me?
“And now you will die for your stupidity.”
Aware I am her only lifeline, Valeria looks at me, but her silent pleas barely register as I call Giovanni’s name. He doesn’t look at me. He can’t. His focus is locked on his target like a predator, and every fiber of his being screams violence.
Valeria’s confidence is now stripped bare, but it doesn’t matter. Giovanni’s rage is too out of control to reel back in.
I doubt I have what it’ll take to make him see reason, but I have to try. This is about more than me. It is about more than all of us.
“I’m pregnant.” My confession fires from my mouth like a gunshot.
This time, my bait hooks the fish. Giovanni’s eyes snap to me, and the silence that follows the deathly bob of his Adam’s apple feels endless. Valeria stiffens before her lips part in victory.
I don’t pay her fanning feathers any attention. This situation is too volatile for me to remove my eyes from Giovanni for even a second.
His finger is still hugging the trigger, and it’s three-quarters compressed.
“You’re pregnant?” I’d describe his voice as broken, though not necessarily disbelieving.
I wet my lips before murmuring, “Yes.”
Giovanni stares at me like he’s reading the truth on my face, and then his gaze drops to my stomach, where it lingers like my confession is the only thing anchoring him through the storm endeavoring to swallow him whole.
My steps are thunderous as I race to the dresser. With shaky hands, I pull out the test I hid a second before he burst into my room like the hour we’d spent apart was more like a decade.
When I hold it out for him, he drinks it in slowly, like it’s a sacred artifact worth millions. He scans the result, and although it relights the fire in him, the flames are nowhere near as ferocious since they’re watered down by the weight of what this means for his family.
His father now has the chance to meet the heir of his eldest son’s legacy.
“I’m pregnant,” I repeat, softer now, because I need him to understand how this changes everything. “If this child is Valeria’s”—that hurt to say more than you could ever imagine—“do you want him or her to grow up hating you? Do you want your son or daughter to never forgive you because you couldn’t control your anger about something their mother did to me?”
His expression morphs as the storm disintegrates before my eyes. He loosens the fist tangled in Valeria’s shiny locks and lowers the highness of his shoulders.