“What are you up to, Giovanni? It’s five o’clock in the morning.”
“Got a call from Stefano. He needs my help with something.” That was strictly the truth. Or maybe Giovanni needed Stefano’s help. Either way, they had a lot to discuss. “Go back to sleep, baby. I’ll be back soon and take you out to breakfast. Biagi’s Café has the best breakfast around.” He bent his head, brushed a kiss over her temple and backed away from the bed, watching her. It was difficult to leave her. He hadn’t expected that. Her eyes followed him right to the door. “You’ll be safe. The alarms are set and no one can get into the house. Sleep, Sasha. You’re working again tonight and you need it.”
She didn’t answer him, but those sapphire eyes of hers kept watching. He paused in the doorway, drinking her in, his heart doing the weird stuttering he was becoming familiar with. “I never expected to find you, Sasha. Never. You’re like some gift that dropped out of the sky right into my lap. I can barely comprehend that you’re here, in my bed, in my world. I know you’re taking a huge chance on me. I know you’re scared, but you have no reason to be. I’d very much like to see your brother this afternoon. I want to talk to him about letting me marry his sister.”
She half sat, forgetting to take the sheet with her. She was beautiful, with her curls escaping, wilder than ever, her full breasts and that expression on her face. Almost stunned. So pleased. He’d said the right thing.
“Go to sleep, baby,” he added softly. “I’ll be back soon and we’ll go to breakfast with the family.” He looked at her one last time. His woman. That gift that was for him alone. Then he forced himself to turn and walk out of the room, closing the door firmly behind him.
The moment Giovanni was walking down the hall and was certain Sasha couldn’t overhear him, he contacted the security guards in the control room. “I’m leaving for a few. I want Sasha guarded at all times. Wake Drago if she gets up. She doesn’t leave the safety of this house. Do you understand that command? She doesn’t leave.”
There was a small silence and then a crackle before the young man on the other end spoke. “I understand, sir.”
“Stay alert, Leone. The threat to her is very real.” He wanted to emphasize that so the kid would do his job. Giovanni knew he was a second cousin, a young man sent to be trained by Emilio as a bodyguard. Emilio always had the younger ones work in the control rooms while they were training as bodyguards.
“Will do, Mr. Ferraro.”
Giovanni hurried down the hall to the door leading to the back of his house. His youngest brother, Taviano, waited in the car under the covered drive. He slipped in and settled against the leather. His brother immediately set the car in motion.
“She asleep?” Taviano’s voice was clipped.
Giovanni glanced at him. “Not quite, but she’ll settle quickly. She’s too damned intelligent to get much over on. She knew I was going somewhere she might not like.”
“Just how much did you decide to tell her? How much do you think Stefano tells Francesca?”
Giovanni shrugged. “I can’t imagine Stefano tells Francesca much about any violence. He treats her with kid gloves and wants the world to do the same.”
Taviano laughed. “He demands the world to do the same. He adores that woman.” He was silent a moment. “Of course, so do I. I know she’s upset that she hasn’t gotten pregnant. Eloisa didn’t make the situation any easier.”
“Stefano had a private chat with her,” Giovanni volunteered. The car raced through the streets, heading toward their family home. The men usually visited their mother, not the other way around. It was only Stefano’s home Eloisa ever went to, and that was just fine with the others.
Taviano looked at him, a slow smile spreading over his face. “I wish I’d been there. Stefano doesn’t pull his punches when he’s laying down the law in anything regarding Francesca. I’ll bet Eloisa wishes she never confronted Francesca about why she couldn’t get pregnant.”
“Something is going on with the entire pregnancy thing. Stefano and Francesca have both been sad and upset for months.” Giovanni sighed. “Eloisa is a serious drawback to our chances with the right woman, Taviano. A serious one. We might have all the money in the world, but none of us want to be wanted for that reason, so what the hell else do we have to offer? Our reputations are shit. We have a legacy we can’t get out of. We don’t want to get out of,” he corrected, needing to be strictly truthful. “So, she has to live with it, no matter what. And then there’s our mother.”
Taviano pulled into the long drive leading to their family home. “You don’t have to tell me. She’s seriously screwed me, not that I already didn’t do that for myself.”
Giovanni regarded his brother carefully. No one had said a word to Taviano, but all of them suspected. “Nicoletta is the one, isn’t she?”
Taviano parked the car and turned toward him. His face was partially in shadow, but Giovanni could make out the lines in his face, the stubble on his jaw that would make Eloisa want to scream. They all did it, just to be bastards, but right now, Taviano was hurting and Giovanni didn’t much care whether or not they needled their mother.
“You can talk about it, Taviano,” he encouraged. “We’re all behind you.”
He shook his head. “She wants no part of me. Of any of us. I fucked up bad this last time with her. I was drunk and I knew better than to be alone with her. I was so mad, seeing her with those friends of Bruno. She had no business being with them. She’d been drinking and she was …” He shook his head. “It was bad, and I totally fucked up. She won’t look at me. She won’t talk to me. There’s no way to make it right, and worse, she’s a fucking baby. She’s barely eighteen years old. She’s not even out of school yet.”
Taviano rarely swore. He’d said the f-word three times. Whatever had happened between Nicoletta and him had to have been extremely bad. “Are you certain she’s the one for you? Your shadows? The chest thing.” Giovanni touched his own chest, right where Sasha had unlocked something deep inside him, allowing his emotions out, unchecked, the ones that told him Sasha was all his.
“I’m absolutely positive. I like sex, Gee. Correction. I love sex. Sometimes, sex is the only thing that gets me through a day. I’m never attached. I don’t want to be attached. I like sex a certain way. My way. I’m in control and I make certain my partner knows it. I’ve never wanted any kind of restrictions on me. I’m rough and I like it that way. My partners always know the score and they like it that way.”
Giovanni saw the problem and stayed silent. He had no advice for his brother, as much as he wanted to give it.
“Suddenly, I’m there with Stefano, facing three brutal men who raped a girl and are about to give her to the worst man they know, and it happens. In the midst of breaking necks and killing, I feel something give way in my chest. It opens, as if some lock preventing me from giving a damn about a woman is gone, and I just know that girl belongs to me. She’s mine. She was born to belong to me. She’s been beaten down for a good part of her life. What the fuck am I going to do with that? How do I even know how to be her man?” Taviano pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. “This is the biggest mess.”
Giovanni shook his head, knowing exactly what Taviano was talking about when he described the lock. He’d felt that same sensation and knew only the woman truly meant to be his partner could do that for him. “All I can tell you, Taviano, is that every one of us will do whatever it is we need to do in order to help you.”
“Help me what? Change my personality? My needs? The way I was born?”
“It’s possible dominance comes with being a rider.” Giovanni had speculated on that for some time. “In different degrees, but …” He shrugged.