My jaw hardens.
I’m about to turn away when I glimpse the corner of a photograph sticking up from underneath the wallet. I glance to the sleeping beauty once more before moving her wallet and picking up the picture.
It’s a small square and a little damaged so I have to peer close to see the faces, three of them. Two children and their mother. Gabriela must be six or seven in this photo and has a smear of strawberry ice cream on her chin.
Beside her is a boy. I know who he is, too. He’s two years older than her.
Gabriel. Her brother
Funny how she’s become the image of her mother and her brother looks nothing like either of them but resembles his father instead.
No one’s heard from the younger Gabriel Marchese in two years and the rumor is that his father killed him in a rage.
I put the photo down and glance at Gabriela again. Young. Eighteen.
I shake my head, wondering for a moment who I am. What I’ve become to be able to do this. To take an innocent.
But I stop myself there.
She’s no innocent. She’s Marchese’s daughter. His heir. And her hands are dirty by association.
I wonder if even in sleep she feels this shift in my mood because she stirs, her forehead creasing, her hand coming to her face. She mutters something and I watch her, wondering if she’ll wake. If she’ll scream when she sees me. But she turns slightly to her side and falls back asleep quickly. She must be exhausted from last night and this day of travel.
When she draws her arm in and the blanket shifts, I notice a scar just beneath her shoulder blade. I peer closer. See seven matching scars, actually. Tiny little burns. I touch one lightly, feel the bumpy skin.
She makes a sound but doesn’t wake.
I straighten.
The rest of her back is unmarked, at least the part that I can see. And these are marks that can easily be hidden.
I shift my gaze to her duffel bag nearby and I go to it, rifling through the few things, mostly underthings, a pair of jeans that will be too hot for summertime in Sicily. A book. I pick it out, read the title. A romance. Typical.
She’d packed a gun in here. I wonder if she’s realized it’s missing yet. My men found it when they searched her duffel before checking in at the airport. It’s in my study now. I’ll address that with sleeping beauty when she wakes. When I go over the rules.
I smile. Remember her face when I spanked her ass.
Remember the feel of the plump, supple flesh against my hand.
She’s mine.
All mine.
The spoils of war.
And thinking about the things I’m going to do to that pretty little ass of hers makes my dick hard.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I lift it out, check the message.
It’s Rafa. He’s here.
I give my princess one last glance before I walk out the door to meet him, telling Millie to wake her for dinner when I pass her in the hallway.
Rafa’s waiting for me in the foyer.
“Stef,” he says, smiling. He’s the only one allowed to call me that. He’s been doing it since we were little. Rafa is a few months older than me and like a brother.
The thought reminds me of Antonio.
Antonio in life.
Antonio in death.
The memory of him on that table at the morgue as vivid as the day I saw it. I’m not sure I’ll ever forget that.
But that’s a good thing. It keeps me one step ahead of my enemies. Revenge may be best served cold, but it’s a churning, burning rage that fuels that vengeance.
Because taking his daughter is only step one in the destruction of Gabriel Marchese.
“Rafa,” I say, going to him, giving him a short, tight hug and a pat on the back. “How did it go? You got it for me?”
He hands me the bag. “I thought you had your mother’s ring,” he says.
I take it from him, reach inside to retrieve the box and set the empty bag on the nearby table. I open it to look at the obscenely large square-cut diamond on its heavy platinum band.
“She won’t be wearing my mother’s ring.” I won’t let a Marchese taint the ring that was given to my mother from my father and worn with love.
I close the box and slide it into my pocket.
“Drink?” I ask him just as I hear a door open upstairs.
His eyes flicker to the second floor and I turn to watch Gabriela emerge from her room wearing a turquoise sundress. Her straight hair hangs loose to her shoulders, the thick bangs brushed to the side and tucked behind one ear.
She doesn’t realize we’re there as she looks down either side of the hallway before turning and seeing us.
She stops short.
Rafa clears his throat.
I remain silent, watching her as she steels her spine and walks to the stairs, her hand tentative on the intricately patterned iron banister as she makes her way silently down the marble staircase. Silent because she’s wearing flip-flops and even so, I can see the shape of her slender legs, the lean muscle of her thighs.
As she nears the bottom, her gaze shifts to Rafa momentarily. Before returning narrowed eyes to mine, she lifts her head a little higher. Haughty and arrogant is my princess bride. My stolen bride.
I will rid her of her arrogance.
She comes to stand a few feet from us. “Were you in my room?” she asks me boldly.
I’m surprised by her question, by her daring. Clearly a single spank to her ass didn’t instill any fear.
“Correction, Gabriela. You are in my room in my house.”
“Did you come in there while I was sleeping?”
“I did,” I say, smiling as I step a little closer so she has to crane her neck to look up at me. She can’t be more than five feet five inches tall.
Speaking of.
“Flip flops are for the beach or the pool. You’ll wear high-heeled shoes to dinner.” I look her over. “The rest is fine. Go upstairs, change and come back.”
Her brows rise high on her forehead, and she looks from me to Rafa and back.
“What?” she asks.
Rafa chuckles. “I’ll see you later, cousin.”
I hold her gaze when he walks out of the house.
Millie passes by, carrying something to the table already set for dinner out by the pool. She pretends we’re not even standing there.
“What part was confusing?” I ask Gabriela.
“I’m…are you serious? You want me to change my shoes for dinner?”
“I’m for fucking real, yes,” I say, using her own words from earlier, reminding her how I dealt with her the last time.
She shifts her weight to one foot, jutting her hip out a little and cocking her head to the side. She studies me and I watch her pale blue-green eyes. Eyes the color of the Sicilian sea. The color of foam that washes up on the beach.
“Sure,” she says, pasting a fake smile on her face and turning to march back up the stairs. “Why not?”
I watch her go. This isn’t the response I expected. I thought she’d give me some ridiculous fight. She is only eighteen, after all.
But she’s no child.
I give a shake of my head as Millie reappears with a silver tray upon which sits a tumbler of whiskey.
“Thank you,” I say, taking it, my eyes sliding back up to the closed door of Gabriela’s borrowed bedroom.
Millie’s been with us for a long time. She worked for my father before me and she’s devoted to my family.