22. Trilby

T rilby

The first waking thought that enters my head is, How on earth is this bed so comfortable? The second thought is, I feel strangely rested, as though I actually slept.

I snuggle deeper into the bed. Then the bed moves.

My eyelids snap open, and my breath escapes. My palm is pressed flat against a wall of skin. Skin that isn't mine.

"Good morning."

The vibration of his voice makes me freeze. It came from beneath my palm.

I slowly piece together the rest of the picture. My bottom is cradled in his lap, and his arms are entwined around my shoulders, pressing me firmly into his hold.

Wait a minute ... I thought I locked the door.

I glance upward, momentarily lost for words. The whole top half of his body is bare, his hair is adorably messed up, and his inked skin is covered in a silky sheen. I swallow as his eyes roam my face, searching for any evidence I might have fallen apart in the night. It's not likely if he's been holding me as tightly as he is now.

My limbs turn solid in his grip. This is so far beyond appropriate I might as well be humping his leg.

"Cristiano . . ." I whisper.

"You had a bad dream."

My chest hollows out. I only ever know what it feels like when I wake up screaming; I have no idea how it sounds.

"How do you know?"

He loosens his grip, but only a little. "I heard it. You were crying ... and then you were screaming. I couldn't just lie in my room and listen."

My heart sinks. "Your neighbors ..."

His chest heats. "Fuck my neighbors. I couldn't let you carry on suffering like that alone."

I breathe out steadily, my head spinning from trying not to register every single spot where our bare skin touches.

"I've managed for a long time. What's another night?"

A low growl rumbles in his chest. "Does this happen every night?"

I shrug. "I don't know. Most nights, maybe."

One of his hands leaves my shoulder, and he scrubs it down his face. Exasperation looks good on him. To be honest, any damn emotion would look good on him.

"How ... um ... how long did it go on for?" I watch my forefinger trace a circle on his left pectoral muscle before realizing too late what I'm doing. Then I curl it into my palm.

"It was going on for about five minutes before I came in here. You calmed down not long after I picked you up."

"So it was just once?"

"Yeah. Just once."

I don't let him see my widened eyes. I usually wake up screaming several times in the night. It's no wonder I feel rested.

The breeze from an open window somewhere in his apartment makes the door to the bedroom sway, and my focus narrows on it.

"What happened to the door?" There's a shoulder-shaped dent in the side, and its handle is falling off.

He doesn't turn his head to look, and his voice is firm. "You locked it when I told you not to."

I repeat. "So what happened to the door?"

"I put a bullet through the lock. Well, three, to be precise."

I lift my gaze to his and force myself to keep it there. It's frightening, because the longer I look at him, the harder I fall into those Barolo-drenched depths.

My eyes narrow. "You shoot a lot of things when I'm around."

He cups my chin between his thumb and his forefinger, and the urge to lean into him is excruciating.

"I would shoot a fuck of a lot more if I didn't think it would make you run a mile."

I wet my lips, and he watches as if he's starving. Then I reluctantly pull away from his chest. I haven't moved off his lap, and it's been several minutes. I should probably show willing.

"At least there's one thing to be thankful for." I try to make light of the situation.

His tone is bland. "What's that?"

"We didn't have sex." I shoot him a shy smile and hope it comes off as relief. It only makes his eyes darken.

"Oh, Castellano. If we'd had sex, you'd know about it."

The breath whooshes out of my chest, and my body seems unfeasibly heavy as I try to move myself off his thighs. He said that with such promise .

"How so?" I sound breathless.

He waits until my stilted journey onto the comforter is complete, then he swiftly stands and brings his half-naked body close to mine. His fingertips trail down the side of my face, which mainlines fire straight to my clit.

There's a smile teasing the edge of his words. "Because you'd still be feeling me in your stomach, little one."

His fingers drop, and I follow them to where there's an obvious—enormous—erection inside his shorts. Then he turns and is gone, leaving me short of breath and so utterly frustrated I want to cry.

When I emerge from my room showered, dressed, and slightly less bothered than I was in the bedroom, Cristiano is suited and booted and spooning cereal into his mouth while scrolling through messages on his phone.

I hover by the kitchen island, unsure of where to put myself.

He doesn't look up, which makes me question everything I've heard and felt since I woke up. "Sav will be here in one hour," he says.

My stomach drops.

He gestures to some bread and cereal boxes laid out on the counter. "You want some breakfast?"

I stare at him.

Breakfast?

Breakfast?

He's just dropped the bombshell that in one hour I'll walk out of here to live permanently with a man I'll be serving for the rest of my life as a Cosa Nostra wife, when I'm falling fast for his brother, and he thinks I might want breakfast ?

I grit my teeth and walk across the apartment to take a last look at the view.

Minutes pass silently, and I can't believe he can feel comfortable about it.

"What will you do when I've gone?" I ask.

He swallows a mouthful of cereal. "Pack."

I feel the skin across my brow go taut. I want to cry.

"So you're leaving."

"You always knew I was going to."

"Doesn't mean I'm happy about it."

He stands and faces me as I turn my back to the window.

"I'm not happy about you marrying my brother, but I have no choice but to deal with it."

I sigh heavily. "I?—"

He holds up a hand. "And don't try to find a way we can make this work. I've been through a thousand different scenarios in the past four weeks, and it always boils down to two nonnegotiables."

"Two?" I whisper.

"You can't let your father down, Castellano. If you were to back out of this marriage, my brother would pull the plug on the whole arrangement. He'd use the strength of his army to screw over your family, and unlike me, he wouldn't hold back on the bullets. He's had his eye on your family's port for years. Our father wasn't interested in pulling it from under you, but now he's gone ..."

My blood runs cold, my awareness latching onto the sinister fact the very man Cristiano is speaking of is about to come in here and drag me back to his home.

"You sound like you don't approve," I say accusingly. "Why would you let him get away with doing this?"

He tears a hand through his hair, gripping at the follicles, then drops his arm to his side. "Which brings me on to the second nonnegotiable," he says, his tone weighed down with defeat. "I don't agree with how Sav does business. I don't want the same things he does. And I certainly don't approve of his methods. But ..."

I take two steps toward him. I need to hear the reason why Cristiano is letting his beast of a brother get away with treating me and my family like pawns.

"... I owe him my life."

I swallow and take a step back. "What?"

He cracks his knuckles, drawing my gaze to the tension in his hands. "When we were kids, I fell over the side of our grandfather's boat and got stuck in the ropes. Savero cut me free and pulled me out. I was unconscious, but I eventually came around. If he'd been only a couple of seconds later, I would have died."

The thought of Cristiano not making it that day suddenly overwhelms me, and I walk to a sofa, almost collapsing onto it. He follows and bends at the knees, bringing his face level with mine.

"I don't like my brother." He enunciates each word with care. "I don't understand him. I certainly don't deem him worthy of you ... But I wouldn't be alive right now if it weren't for him."

My mind empties of all the happy-ever-afters I've dared to dream of with the man crouching in front of me, taking every drop of hope with it.

He reaches up and takes a curl of my hair between his fingers. Then he closes his eyes as he lets it slide from his grip.

"If he hadn't saved me that day, I would never have met you."

I nod slowly, and a tear rolls down my cheek to splash on the polished floor.

"So ..." He lifts my chin gently. "We're going to be brother and sister, Castellano. And even though it's not exactly what I want, it's preferable to what we could have been. Which is nothing at all."

I force a smile through my quivering lips. "Brother and sister."