It’s dark, because the office is one of the only rooms in the mansion with no windows. Therefore it’s the most secure if it were to fall under attack.
But it’s not filled with cigar smoke or that clove spice I sometimes smell in my nightmares. I suppose there are some habits Giovanni chose not to pick up.
“Lupo,” I whisper.
I need to get ahold of him before that guy comes in, before Romero catches up to us. Hopefully we’ll both be escorted back to the room without anyone getting hurt. And without involving Giovanni.
I raise my voice to a hushed demand. “Lupo, come here right now. Please.”
The door swings open behind me, sunlight bouncing off the glossy wood and spilling onto the rug in the office. Romero looks rumpled from the short run and pissed off. So much for getting on his good side.
“I’ll find him,” I say, praying he lets me handle this. Lupo has already been grumpy dealing with the walks. He’ll be even more defensive after getting cornered in here.
Romero reaches for me. “I’m putting you back in the room. Then I’ll deal with the mutt.”
Shit, this is what I was afraid of. I back up. “Wait. No.”
His eyes flash. “I have authorization to keep you in that room with force. Don’t make me use it.”
I shiver because I don’t want to imagine Giovanni giving that order. But it’s not like the locked door or the armed guard outside are particularly subtle. I’m his prisoner.
“Please,” I whisper. “I’ll get Lupo. We won’t cause trouble. Don’t tell Giovanni what happened.”
A drop of orange-yellow pierces the darkness. Giovanni is sitting in an armchair, large body reclined, one ankle slung over his leg, a lighter in his hand. The flame dances from the silver cylinder, casting eerie shadows on his face. “What shouldn’t he tell me about?”
My pulse pounds in my ears. “God, you could give a girl a heart attack.”
“I’m sorry,” Romero says, his voice clipped. “The dog got out.”
“And the girl?” Giovanni says, his voice low and liquid.
I plant a hand on my hip. “The girl is grown up. And she got out too.”
A smile in the dark, the flash of white teeth. The Cheshire cat’s smile. “Careless,” he says.
Romero swears under his breath. “It won’t happen again.”
“Leave.”
“But—”
“Now.”
Romero’s embarrassment and anger bubbles in the air behind me, and I know I’ll have to deal with him later. For now I have to deal with the man in front of me. As my eyes adjust to the dark, I see a small and trembling figure in the corner, behind an antique globe. Footsteps recede as Romero follows orders.
“I’ll just get Lupo and go.” Whatever courage I felt when I corrected Giovanni left with Romero. Now I’m alone in a room—in the room—and all I want is to leave.
“Wait.” The word is soft but clearly a command.
I wait.
He stands, still holding the lighter up. One step closer. Without thinking it through, I take a step back. We move that way, one forward, one back, until the wall stops me. This was a bad idea. Everything about this is bad, from the fact that I just moved into the shadows to the way he’s looking at me. Hungry. Starving, like he needs to devour me just to survive.
“Giovanni,” I whisper. “Let me get Lupo. We’ll leave you alone.”
His dark gaze flicks down to where my camisole doesn’t cover enough of my breasts, the orange-yellow light warming my curves. “Careless,” he says again. “What had Romero so distracted?”
The way he says it, he knows. He may not know that I was teasing Romero deliberately, trying to soften him up so he’d help me. But he knows exactly what Romero was looking at when Lupo escaped.
They’re a distraction, but I need a different kind of distraction right now. “What did Romero do wrong that you assigned him to dog walking?”
“It’s more what he didn’t do.”
I can’t forget how quickly Romero spoke out against Giovanni. It’s something I might be able to use to my advantage, but it’s also dangerous for Giovanni. I suspect he knows that. It’s a little hard for Romero to plan a coup if he never leaves the mansion. “Friends close and enemies closer, is that it?”
He makes an approving sound. “You understand the life.”
Anger flashes inside me. “I understand it, but I don’t want it. You have no right to force it on me.”
“That’s just it, bella. Force gives me the right to do anything I want.”
Fear quickens my heartbeat—fear and something else. Something like anticipation. It must be muscle memory, except the muscle in question is my heart. It remembers that it loves him, even if it shouldn’t. That’s the only explanation for how I can still want a man who holds me against my will.
A flick of his thumb and the lighter shuts off, plunging us into darkness. The door is still open, drawing a prism of saturated light, but backed into the wall, it’s completely black.
“It gives me the right to keep you here,” he says, his breath soft against my forehead. Then his hands are closing around my wrists, lifting them above my head.