39. Stephano

39

STEPHANO

I curse under my breath as we wait at a red traffic light. The need to get my wife home is compounding by the second. She's reeling from the shock of seeing Vincenzo at the gallery, but everything went as planned, and my brain has already moved south. I'm hard as fuck and heady with having kissed her.

I broke our vows and kissed my wife . And she kissed me back, riding up my cock with her body, not even aware. She's been wanting this, craving it, just like me. If there were space in the back seat, I would have gone on my knees and spread her wide, but fuck, my cock wants to bury in her so deep, it never wants to see sunshine again. I can live and die in that tight little pussy of hers and be a happy, fulfilled man.

She's sitting flush against me, her hand quivering on my thigh. Maybe seeing Vincenzo was too much for her, so soon after escaping Italy. I'm used to this rush. I've been groomed for it and then molded by it for years. Il Consiglio likes a clean business and a clean slate, but those don't go together in our line of work.

Gigi hasn't been in this world for years. She drops her head to my shoulder, and I press a kiss to her hair as she skims a hand up my chest to cup my jaw.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she whispers as she stares right into my soul. "Things could have gone wrong."

I don't have the time or inclination to explain how Dominic and his team secured the gallery. She doesn't need to know his team apprehended two other men who were there on Vincenzo's side, waiting to kidnap her. She doesn't need to know Vincenzo is being drugged as we sit here and will find himself locked up in the special soundproof room next to Matteo's apartment for interrogation. An interrogation which will end with his body being dry frozen and eventually fed to the fish in the string of legit pet stores we own.

I sigh. "We needed the surprise factor. If I told you, you would've refused to go. You're not a princess in a tower, angel. You can't hide forever."

"But what if…what if you'd got hurt, or worse? Been killed?" she whispers as she fists my lapel. "Steph?—"

"I wouldn't have been. And I won't be. I have my brothers. Here, Franco is a loner. He might have mercenaries, or men that work for him under duress, but he doesn't have the network or backup I have."

She sniffs as she wipes at a tear. "Can't you see? That makes him ruthless, which makes him dangerous. He has nothing to lose."

I hug her close and lift her chin with my fingertip. "And I have everything to lose. I'll protect you with my life if it's the last thing I do."

"Don't say that," she murmurs, but I'm already closing the gap between us, and when we kiss, it's as if the world stops existing.

I'm gentle with her now, not only because we're in an enclosed space and it seems to shrink with our need, but Tony is in the front seat, and my driver is constantly looking in the rear-view mirror. I'm not keen on giving anybody a show.

Gigi's hand slips into my jacket and under the holster with my gun.

"Angel," I murmur against her lips. I'm not comfortable with her so close to a weapon. It's dumb, because they won't, but things could go wrong.

"Boss," my driver says, and I look up. "We have a tail."

What the fuck? I don't glance back, but meet the driver's eyes in the mirror. "You know what to do."

He accelerates and changes lanes, cautious, but putting distance between us and whoever is following us. This wasn't the plan. This wasn't even on our radar.

Gigi stares out of the back window, her eyes wide.

"Keep your head down." I pull my phone from my inner pocket and press the speed dial for Dominic's number. He answers in seconds, having been on standby in case shit hit the fan.

"All clear?" Dominic asks.

"No, we have a tail," I say as I glance back. "Luca has Vincenzo?"

"Yes. Bait and switch works like a fucking charm every single time."

I don't want to be charmed; I want my wife safe. "Why do we have a tail, then?"

"Boss, we have two now," the driver says as he swerves, tires screeching.

I wrap my arm around Gigi.

"Where the fuck did the other one come from?" I hiss.

"Slipped in from the side," Tony says, his gun shining in the streetlights as we speed past. "This isn't a normal tail."

"What the fuck's going on, Steph?" Dominic shouts into the phone.

"We're being tracked. And how the fuck did that happen?" I growl. Gigi has shrunk into a ball next to me, hiding. "Get someone on this, Dom, like in now ."

"Got it," he says.

I kill the call as the driver speeds onto the highway. He accelerates even more as the road clears.

I pluck my gun from its holster as I run my hand over Gigi's hip, recalling how Vincenzo rested his hand on her in greeting, and I almost lost my shit. It took everything in me not to rip at him in that moment and to let the scene play out. That fucker will never touch her again.

"Check your dress," I say as I feel her down with one hand.

"What?"

"Feel your dress for anything weird. Vincenzo might have planted a tracker on you in the gallery when the fucker touched you." Seems par for the course, given what Franco wanted to implant in her arm.

"You saw? Oh my God," she whispers, in panic running her hands all over her body.

"Of course I saw, angel. And I wanted to fuck up his face for touching you."

"Oh, my…what? Here." Her hand stops on her back and she leans forward so I can follow her hands in the dark. I freeze when I touch the small capsule-sized device Vincenzo must have stuck on her back. Between the folds of the dress and the zipper, she wouldn't have noticed it at all.

"Fuck," I hiss as I rip it off, taking some fabric with it. After giving it a quick inspection in the dark, I open the window and toss it outside. I want to keep it, but have no choice.

Gigi blinks at me. "It's similar to the tracker he tried to implant under my skin."

The cut on her inner arm has healed, but it's left a nasty scar, over an inch long and ugly. The fucker who sliced her open wasn't doing plastic surgery, that's for sure. Another reminder of what Franco did to her. Every cell in my body riots as adrenaline rushes through my blood. I feel like I'm going to flip. I drop my hand to her thigh, and it steadies me.

The driver swerves again and takes the off ramp, and Tony leans back and looks through the rear window to see whether we've ditched our tail. We take another turn and then about five others, and finally, we're in a quieter residential street. I glance around. Front and back. We're alone.

"Pull over," I say, and the driver parks the car in an open slot between a car and someone's driveway.

"What now?" Gigi asks.

"We wait."

I stare out of the black-out window to the houses lining the street. This isn't the place for a shootout, and I'm not plucking at our razor-fine truce with the local police force. The SUV's dashcams would have caught the number plates, though the best way to get info is through Vincenzo. Franco is working with someone local, and it isn't Benedict's fake gun-for-hire outfit.

"Where is Vincenzo now?" Gigi asks.

I close my eyes for a second. The last thing I want is his blood on my hands tonight. I had other plans. "Luca would have cornered him after we left, pretending to be me, and making as if to cut a deal with him. Bait and switch. We did it all the time when we were younger."

"Oh, God. Steph, are you going to… I mean…"

"Kill him? Not tonight. Well, that depends on how much he shares."

"Okay."

"Keep it to yourself. You can't tell Carla."

With a nod, she turns into my chest, and I hold her close. She's quietly crying but not fighting me. She knows how this ends, and that I don't have a choice either. Given what he's done to her, she probably wants him dead, too.

I've no idea how long we sit there in the dark, but when Dominic's team cruises up to us in another Il Consiglio SUV, I know we've shed our assailants for tonight.

"You good to go home, boss?" my driver asks.

"I'm not risking it." Who knows what Franco has on us now and who he has on his team. If anybody marked me as a Scalera tonight, the best place to keep Gigi safe is Matteo's apartment. Plus, Gigi would want to be with Carla after tonight. "We'll go to Matteo's place."