“We will find a compromise,” he insisted. “But there will be no more drama, Gia. Enough of the Mafia Princess act.”
That made her want to claw his eyes out. She tried to summon the rational part of her brain that should still be working, but the only word her brain could focus on was the word compromise. He was willing to compromise.
And then he was tracing an erotic path down the line of her throat with that talented tongue of his, his hot, hard erection nudging against her thigh, and she lost the plot completely.
“You should move now if you don’t want this,” he warned, giving her ample time to put a stop to the insanity that had been building between them all evening. But she couldn’t find the words. She had been imagining this all night. Craving it. Anticipating it.
He slid her dress up her thighs with a warm palm. Pushed aside the lace panties she wore and traced the slick flesh of her cleft with the pad of his thumb.
“You want me here?” he murmured.
She didn’t want to want him, but she did. Badly. She arched her hips against his devastating caress that delved deeper with every stroke. Against the thumb he rotated against the tight nub at the heart of her. “Yes.”
His breath left him on a harsh exhale. Her fingers found the buckle of his belt, the button of his pants. Freed his thick, rigid length. Lifting her hips, she took him deep in a single, powerful stroke that stole her breath.
Buried deep inside of her, she could feel the hard pulse of him, his erection as silken smooth and powerful as the rest of him. He was so deep, so big inside of her—he filled every part of her.
She sucked in a lungful of air. Attempted to find a foothold in the moment. But then, he set those hot, dark eyes on her and they stared at each other for a long, suspended moment, absorbing the power of what they shared. It was almost unnerving, the intensity of it. And then he started to move. One arm at her back, the other in her hair, it was breathtakingly deliberate, every stroke a languid promise, building with every powerful thrust.
Her gaze was riveted to his face. His beautiful features imprinted with lust, his eyes so dilated and dark they were almost black, he was as lost to the moment as she was.
He lowered his mouth to hers in a deep, slow kiss. Gia closed her eyes and gave in to the storm. Spurred on by the intense fullness inside of her, his undulating, devastating strokes, his bitten-out command for her to come for him, her orgasm swept through her, all-consuming and uncontrollable.
She shook in his arms. Santo drank her cries of completion. Clamped a hand around her thigh, lifted it around his waist and positioned her for his unfettered penetration, so that she caressed his shaft with every stroke. She met his thrusts with a ragged breath, aftershocks of pleasure exploding through her dazed body and soul.
He made her scream before he was done. Made her fall apart all over again. And this time, he came with her, too.
* * *
Gia emerged slowly from the ecstasy of surrender. Spent, shattered, she curled up on the soft, silky comforter and watched as Santo rolled off the bed and stripped off the beautiful suit with swift efficiency.
“That was—”
“Insane,” he murmured.
Yes. That was the word for it. She sank her teeth into her lip as he shrugged off his shirt. “So, regarding this compromise... I’ll have lunch with Nina next week and I’ll find out more details about the work. Chloe says she knows an amazing nanny who’s about to lose a full-time position, which is gold in New York. We can meet her and you can dec—”
Santo held up a hand. “I said compromise. Meaning we will find a solution to this problem that fits both of us, Gia. Which is not you working for Nina. That job will be manic. You will be on call all hours of the day. There will be no controlling it. What I am envisioning is that you start a small business where you can work from home. Take on small jobs, with the nanny here for Leo while you’re working. That way, you can have the best of both worlds.”
The best of both worlds? Her rosy glow evaporated in the millisecond it took him to crush it dead. She sat up on the bed and yanked her dress down over her hips. “And who is going to take me on?” she rasped. “Who, other than Nina, is going to have any interest in working with Stefano Castiglione’s daughter? In associating themselves with me?”
“If they judge you by your last name,” he countered blithely, “they aren’t worth your time. You have talent, Gia. If Nina is willing to break ranks, so will others.”
“And you saw how well that worked tonight,” she observed, a bitter taste in her mouth. “I was top of my class in design school, Santo. It took my fellow students in the top tier one, maybe two tries to get a work placement. Do you know how many tries it took me?” She arched an eyebrow. “Ten. They were all terrified of my father. And that was before he ended up on the front of every newspaper in the country.”
A stubborn look claimed his face. “Then maybe you should focus on family for the time being. It is impossible for two people in a relationship to have high-powered careers, Gia. It simply doesn’t work. The children are always the ones to suffer. I won’t have that for Leo.”
He wouldn’t have that? “And what about Nico and Chloe?” she challenged. “How are they making this untenable situation work?”
The closed look on his face intensified. “They are not us. That isn’t what I want out of my marriage.”
“No,” she agreed, flattened by his implacability, “you want everything. You want me to fall in line with this grand plan of yours. With your vision of what this perfect marriage of ours should look like. You want me to have faith in us. And just when I’m beginning to do so, you go and prove you are no more trustworthy than any other man I’ve ever met, because you knew, you knew how important this was to me and you went ahead and did it anyway.”
His ebony gaze went wintry and cold. “I did what I needed to do to secure my son. If there is a lack of trust in this relationship, Gia, that would be all on you. You started this with your inability to do the right thing.”
She jerked her head back at that cold, verbal slap in the face, any ideas that he might actually have forgiven her gone up in a wisp of smoke. But that didn’t mean she was going to let him run roughshod over her. That she would let him strip her of everything she’d fought so hard to become. That she was going to spend her days in another corrosive, unhappy marriage trying to keep him happy while she died a little inside every day, exactly as she had with Franco.
She scrambled off the bed. Recovered her physical and emotional feet. “I’m not interested in your compromise,” she told him, chin held high. “When you decide you are serious about making this marriage work, when you are willing to give as much as you are demanding, when you are willing to show that you care, you know where to find me.”
Frustration painted itself across his face. “Gia—”
She ignored him. Stalked into the dressing room and snatched up a nightie to sleep in before she abandoned ship for the spare room, everything that had seemed so bright and shiny and full of promise demolished in an unequivocal, emotional wreck.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SANTO EXITED THE meeting he’d been attending with his design team at Supersonic’s Central Park West offices, secure in the knowledge that the manufacturing flaw they had uncovered in Elevate had been successfully ironed out without detriment to the shoe’s design, and production was back on a smooth schedule.
Which was key, because in just a few weeks, the sneaker would be winging its way across the globe and into stores for its worldwide launch, supported by the massive marketing campaign the company had planned. Elevate would soon become the most talked-about running shoe on the planet and all the critics would be silenced.
His marriage, however, was not on that same upward trajectory. It festered like an open wound that wouldn’t heal as he picked up the messages his assistant, Enid, handed him before s
he left for the day, and continued on into his office. Gone were the intimate family dinners that had come to represent the highlight of his day, replaced by short, curt affairs in which Gia chose to communicate with him only when spoken to directly.
Gone, also, were the long, hot nights, replaced by an ice-cold version of her as chilly as the cherry-flavored Popsicles she served Leo after dinner. She wasn’t happy, that was clear. Nor was he. In fact, it was so far from the vision of the marriage he’d wanted for himself, it would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so damn disconcerting, because he and Gia were at a stalemate and he could not see a way forward.
Never, in his experience, had he seen a high-powered couple make a family work. Nico and Chloe were managing it, but that was the operative word. Managing. Even Nico labeled it the supreme juggling act that it was. Chloe had confessed she wanted to spend more time with Jack and had plans to scale back her focus to make that happen. Which only proved his point. So he’d proposed the optimal solution to Gia, only to have her turn it down flat. Which left them exactly nowhere, because she’d gone ahead and had her lunch with Nina instead.
Lazzero strolled into his office. Surveyed him with a long look. If he made one more comment about paradise, he fumed inwardly, he was going to take off his head. His brother, however, seemed to recognize his perilous mood and leaned a hip against the front of his desk instead.
“Carlos just called. We’re being asked to give input on the trade deal. He wants reinforcements.”
Santo rubbed a hand over his brow. He was knee-deep in orchestrating a one-hundred-million-dollar marketing campaign for Elevate. He was having lunch with the best soccer player in the world on Wednesday, as the athlete was headlining their advertising campaign. And then there was Saturday’s dinner with Gervasio Delgado. That the negotiations around the Mexican trade deal would heat up now, when they’d been lagging for months, was impeccably bad timing. But if Carlos Santino, the president of their Mexican subsidiary, had picked up the phone asking for reinforcements, he clearly needed it.
“When?”
“This week.” His brother waved a hand at him. “I’ll go. I’m better with the numbers and you have more on your plate than I do. Plus the daddy duties. But that means you have to handle Gervasio by yourself. I won’t be back in time.”
“Fine.” He’d met Gervasio Delgado numerous times. They had good chemistry together. Closing this deal would not be a problem.
“Chiara is going to crucify me,” Lazzero said drily. “She will be devastated.”
“She’ll have plenty of time to meet him when we ink this deal.” His wife, however, could be a problem. He needed her onside if she was going to charm Alicia Delgado at this dinner. If he could get her to talk to him. Which wasn’t at all a guaranteed proposition at the moment.
“When will you leave?”
“Tomorrow morning. I need some time to acclimatize before I have to use my brain.”
“Good idea.” Santo stood and threw some papers in his briefcase, intent on a cold beer, a wrestle with his son and a resolution with his wife. Preferably in that order.
* * *
Gia shouldered her way through the penthouse door, a bag of groceries in one hand, a latte from her favorite bakery in the other. Expecting that Anna would have her son in the bath by now, she was instead greeted by Leo’s peals of laughter and a rich deep baritone that accompanied it.
Her heart beat a jagged edge. Santo was home? She thought he’d be working late tonight, thus the reason she’d taken up Chloe’s nanny on her offer of a few hours respite to get some errands done. But when she walked into the living room, her husband was indeed home, lying on the floor, bench-pressing her son as if he weighed nothing. Leo was waving his arms in the air as if he was a supahero coming in for a landing.
“Mamma,” her son cried. “Look at me. I’m flying.”
“Wow,” she murmured. “You are.”
Santo set down his son on his chest, all of that bulging muscle under his finely woven shirt doing something crazy to her insides. He was indecently gorgeous even when she hated him. “Maybe Mamma,” he suggested, setting his gaze on her, “should come over and take a turn. She might like it, too.”
Gia gave him a frosty look. She wasn’t letting him charm his way out of this one.
Leo moved his gaze from one of them to the other, clearly attempting to decipher the mood. “I think,” Santo confessed to his son, “that Mamma might be angry with me. What do you think I should do?”
“Flowers,” Leo said confidently. “Pink ones.”
She almost smiled at that, a memory of Leo emerging, shoulders deep, from Delilah’s peony garden with a fistful of pink flowers in his hand and a wicked smile on his face, filling her head. She had been horrified, while Delilah had been thankfully amused.
But nope, that still wasn’t touching the ice that encased her.
Santo rolled into a sitting position. “Good idea,” he said to Leo. “I will keep that in mind. Did you know,” he told him, “that even supaheroes need lots of sleep? Especially supaheroes, because that’s where they get their power from.”
Leo’s eyes went round. He ran to Gia and gave her an enthusiastic hug, before Santo swooped him up and took him to bed. A discussion about kryptonite ensued, trailing off as they disappeared up the stairs.
Gia took the groceries into the kitchen, stowed them away, then opened a bottle of Chianti she had acquired from the art wall display. Intent on fine-tuning a couple of the drawings she’d done for the Hamptons house, she curled up in a chair in the living room with her sketch pad and a glass of wine.
Santo came downstairs shortly thereafter, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. She nodded toward the kitchen, without looking up. “I bought home some antipasto from the deli if you’re hungry.”
“I had a late lunch. I’ll join you for a glass of wine, instead.”
“Don’t bother.” She kept her eyes on the sketch pad. “I’m sure you have work to do.”
“We need to talk about this, Gia.”
She looked up at him. “What’s the point? You don’t see me, Santo. You only see what you want to see.”
Santo regarded his wife’s frigid demeanor. Poured himself a glass of wine from the bottle on the table and sat down beside her, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “Tell me, then. Tell me why it has to be this job, right now. Why it can’t be something more manageable. And yes, I know working with Nina is a great opportunity, but there will be other opportunities.”
Her chin took on a stubborn tilt. “Because it’s an amazing opportunity. Because I can do it. Nina has promised me a crack team. If I manage it correctly, it won’t be a problem.”
“And when the construction manager calls you at ten o’clock at night with an emergency?”
“I will handle it. Isn’t that how you do it?” She arched an eyebrow at him. “Surround yourself with good people to get the job done?”
“Yes, but I also work sixteen-hour days. We can’t both do that.” He considered her over the rim of his glass. “If you don’t want to do work for me, then come join Supersonic’s design department part-time. We have a massive retail push on at the moment. They could use the help. You’d be a fantastic addition given the work you’ve done for Delilah.”
The stubborn tilt of her chin intensified. “I can’t work for you.”
He threw up his hands. “I’m trying here, Gia. I’m offering you the money to front a business of your own. Alternatives. You have to give a bit, too.”
Her long, dusky lashes swept her cheeks. “You need to understand my past. My history.”
He swallowed past the bite of frustration that sank into his skin. “Which is?”
She pushed a lock of her hair behind her ear. “My mother never had what I have, Santo. She was powerless. She wanted more for me. She knew what I was walking into with Fran
co. So, she struck a deal with my father. That I would be able to go to college before I married him. So that I would have an education, something to fall back on if something happened.”
“Like what?” Santo asked.
He watched her battle against those internal rules that would have kept her silent, until she finally broke the extended pause. “My father,” she said, “has been to jail twice. Once for masterminding an auto-theft ring when he was in his early twenties. Another time for an illegal gambling operation when I was seven. In those days, he was still climbing the ranks. Paying his dues. The famiglia took care of us, but there was no money left for anything extra. No dance lessons for me, no cool sneakers for Tommaso. My mother was, essentially, devastated twice in those early years.”
Cristo. He hadn’t known that part. “That must have been difficult,” he murmured. “Did you and Tommaso know what was going on?”
Her mouth twisted. “My mother told us he was running the business in Mexico. Another of the myths my childhood was constructed on. But I think,” she recalled, eyes darkening, “that underneath it all, we knew something was wrong. My mother was always upset. Stressed. Though she hid it well. She is the strongest person I know.”
“Like you are.” Santo said quietly, eyeing the woman he had come to learn had a core of steel. “You are a lot like her, Gia.”
Her mouth softened, a glimmer of an emotion he couldn’t read in those deep green eyes. “Which was why,” she continued, “my career is so important to me. I told myself it would be my identity when I married Franco. My safety net. And at first,” she allowed, “he was fine with it. He liked the work I did on his hotels. I loved it. But after I had Leo, when we tried to have our own child, everything went...downhill.”
A fist clamped around his chest. He didn’t want to hear this part. Didn’t want to think about her with another man. But he also needed to know the truth to truly lay those ghosts to rest.
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