“Sì.” He lifted bushy salt and pepper eyebrows in anticipation. “I am Signore Polermo.”
I exhaled a relieved breath. “Felicity Merrick sent me.” I tugged the envelope from my bag and held it out to him. “She said you were expecting this.”
He took the envelope from my hand and looked from it to my face. And then his dark eyes widened, and he said, “Mio Dio. You are the American. The one who married Signore Salvatici.”
Apparently, word had spread. My cheeks warmed as I gripped my bag in both hands in front of me. “Sì.”
He rushed to the open doorway behind the counter with the envelope still in his hand. “Signore Vecellio,” he called, looking through the doorway and waving his hand excitedly. “Sbrigati! Veloce!”
He said something else in Italian I didn’t understand, but I was too shocked by the man stepping through the doorway to try to translate the words.
“I-I know you,” I muttered, my eyes growing wide.
He was thin, tall, with a wrinkled face and long white hair pulled back in a tail at the nape of his neck, and though he was dressed in loose slacks, a white button-down shirt, and a long deep brown vest instead of a long dark robe, I recognized him immediately.
I recognized him as the man who’d grabbed me in Rome after that fashion show at Santo Spirito in Sassia and tried to pull me away from Luc.
“Signora Salvatici,” Signore Palermo said, holding his hand out in introduction toward me with a wide smile.
Signore Vecellio’s dark eyes narrowed on my face, and he eased closer to me, but he didn’t step around the counter or touch me. And I was glad because I suddenly wasn’t sure what I’d do if he tried. “Signora Salvatici?”
Signore Palermo nodded several times and spoke quickly in Italian. The white-haired man tore his gaze from me and listened, then slowly nodded and looked back at me once more.
I had no idea what was going on. Luc had told me this man was a member of the Seventh Sanctum, a group who opposed the Entente and was working behind the scenes to rid the Houses from the world.
“I-I’m confused.” I looked toward Signore Palermo. Felicity hadn’t said anything about the Seventh Sanctum, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she even knew of their involvement with Signore Polermo.
“Yes?” Signore Vecellio said, watching me carefully.
“The last time I saw you, you were trying to kidnap me.”
“Not kidnap. Rescue.”
After all the things I’d learned about Luc’s family, I could see his point. But he didn’t know Luc at all. I straightened my spine. “I don’t need to be rescued from my husband.”
Signore Vecellio placed his hands on the counter. “Signore Polermo speaks very highly of your husband. He says he will make a great leader very soon. It is the intention of the Sanctum to rid the world of all those who try to exert authority over those they have no claim to—”
“But,” Signore Polermo said, rushing to his side with a pointed look. “The Sanctum has realized the benefits of joining with la Resistenza. Together, we are stronger, and together we have the opportunity to instill true change in Europe.”
“Sì,” Signore Vecellio said, nodding his head, his eyes still on me. “And across the world. Of course, much depends on what happens in House Salvatici. And the hidden intentions of your new husband.”
I wasn’t about to get into any of that with these men, and part of me wasn’t sure I should leave that envelope with Signore Polermo, but this conversation was quickly getting out of control, and I wasn’t about to be sucked into a discussion that was over my head.
“I must be leaving. Signore Polermo.” I nodded his way. “Signore Vecellio. Buongiorno.”
I turned for the door, but Signore Vecellio’s voice stopped me when he said, “Signora Salvatici. Un momento per favore.”
I stopped with one hand on the glass door and slowly turned back to face him.
“Do you know what the Salvatici name translates to in English?”
I shook my head.
“It means savage. You may trust your husband, but he is and will always be a Salvatici in every sense of the word. Be careful. Even the lost pup can be reintroduced to the pack, and after enough time, assimilate until it is virtually indistinguishable from the other beasts.”
My heart raced, and my hands grew damp as I stared at him. Fingers shaking, I pulled the door open and moved onto the street, fighting back the chill suddenly sweeping down my spine.
The man was wrong. Luc was not like his family. He wouldn’t become like the rest of his family simply because he was back in Italy and working for them. He wouldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t let that happen. I fumbled for my phone and dialed Luc’s cell, desperate to hear his voice and prove to myself that would never happen.
The line only rang once, then Luc’s deep voice filled my ear as he said, “Ah, angioletto. You have perfect timing. I was just thinking about you.”
I slowed my hasty steps, pressed a hand against the cool bricks of the building at my side, and exhaled a long breath. “Hi.”
“Are you all right?” Concern tightened his voice. “You sound upset.”
“No.” I swallowed back my stupid fears and shook my head even though he couldn’t see me. “I’m fine. Just missing you.”
“I like you missing me. What are you doing?”
I looked up and around the quiet street, knowing if I told him the truth, he’d rupture a blood vessel. Even though he’d agreed to let me work with Felicity, he wasn’t wild about the idea. And he’d made me promise not to go anywhere alone. Today’s little excursion had been a spur-of-the-moment decision I’d had to make without telling him. “I-I’m at the market in Siena. With Caprice. Getting groceries.”
“With Caprice?” He chuckled. “That must be a fun experience.”
I closed my eyes against the lie. Caprice was Felicity’s fifty-something housekeeper, and she had the personality of a cardboard box.
“Yeah.” I ran a hand over my hair, hating that I was lying to him. I especially disliked how easily I was doing it lately. “We’re headed home soon. Did you need anything?”
“Nope. Just you.”
Those three words had the power to make me completely weak. I sagged against the building at my side. No, he was absolutely nothing like the men in his family. “When will you be home?”
“Around six. I have a few things to finish here. Then I want to spend all night with you.”
A smile curled my lips. “That sounds heavenly. I think I might even cook for you tonight. I was thinking it’s time I tried my hand at spaghetti alla carbonara.”
He gasped in a playful way. “You’re trying to seduce me, aren’t you?”
I couldn’t stop myself. I laughed. “Yes. Always. Hurry home, vita mia. Senza di te non posso più vivere.”
“I can’t live without you either, angioletto. I mean that.”
I sighed, feeling better with every passing second. “Ti amo.”
“I love you too. Now hang up so I can get my work done and come home to you. Every time you speak to me in Italian it makes me freakin’ horny.”
I laughed. “Okay, okay. Ciao, bello.”
“Ciao, amore mio.”
I clicked End on my phone and headed back for the Central Market to pick up the items I’d need for dinner, but my feet came to a stuttering stop when I spotted a familiar face through the crowd.
Gio’s light eyes were locked on me, and a predatory smile curled his lips, telling me this wasn’t a chance meeting.
Heart in my throat, I turned and ran.
My feet came to a skidding stop on the sidewalk. Not twenty feet from me, David Bonello’s tall frame blocked my path to freedom. “Look what we have here,” he said in English, his accent thick. “A lost maiden. Giovanni, I think she needs help finding her way.”
A hand closed over my arm, and I gasped because I hadn’t realized Gio was so close. With a wicked smirk, he jerked me into an alleyway between two lar
ge buildings. I cried out, but his other hand closed over my mouth, muffling the sound.
I kicked and scratched, but they easily picked me up off the ground and carried me deeper into the alley and behind a dumpster. My purse slipped from my arm and clattered against the ground, the contents spilling over the pavement. Horror tightened my throat because I knew what they were about to do. This wasn’t a warning. This was payback for the other night. This was Giovanni not following anyone’s rules but his own.
I kicked harder and fought with everything that was in me. Bonello grabbed my legs as I struggled. Gio wrapped his arm around my chest and kept his hand clamped over my mouth as he held me against him and fumbled with some kind of door at my back. “Hold her still so we can get her in here.”
“I’m trying,” Bonello said, grappling with my feet. “She’s fucking fighting me.”
I knew if they took me through that door I was never going to survive. I fought harder and wiggled my mouth until I could grasp a finger, then bit down until blood rushed over my tongue.
“Santo cazzo Madre di Cristo!”
The second Gio jerked his hand back, I screamed as loud as I could.
A fist slammed into the side of my face, choking the scream in my throat. I hit the ground on my side and skidded over the dirty pavement.
Italian voices echoed around me—Gio’s, Bonello’s—but there was another voice. A third I vaguely recognized. Shouting angry, incensed words in Italian.
I tried to push myself off the ground, but the entire side of my face and body was on fire. Hands closed over my arm, and I gasped and jerked back, then I heard a calm voice say, “Easy. It is me, Signore Vecellio. You’re all right, signora. We help you.”
My vision wavered. I blinked and looked up at both Signore Vecellio and Signore Polermo, helping me off the ground. Bio and David were nowhere to be seen.
“Are you all right?” Signore Polermo asked when I was on my feet.
“Y-yes.” My heart was racing, my adrenaline still in the out-of-this-world range, but a quick check told me nothing was broken. “I-I’m okay. Thank you. Grazie. If you hadn’t come along—”
Signore Vecellio pulled me toward the end of the alley while Signore Polermo stooped to pick up the spilled contents of my purse. “You must hurry. Drive straight home. It is not safe for you here. Where is your car?”
I took the purse Signore Polermo handed me. “O-on the other side of the market.”
“We walk you there.”
The two men walked me at a clipped pace all the way to my car. As soon as I was behind the wheel of the Mercedes, they looked down at me through the open door, and Signore Vecellio said, “Do not make any stops. Drive straight to the Romero estate. They will be looking for you.”
It occurred to me I should be scared these two old men knew where I lived, but I didn’t care. They’d saved me. “T-thank you.”
“Sbrigati!” Signore Polermo said, closing my door as both men stepped back.
I wasn’t sure how I made it back to Marco’s estate. I don’t remember the drive. But the second the gate closed behind me and I pulled to a stop in front of the guest villa, I dropped my forehead to my hands against the steering wheel and let the shakes I’d been holding back consume me.
A tapping sounded at my window. I shrieked and jerked back.
Through blurry vision, I realized Ariana was standing outside my car door with a worried expression on her face.
I braced a hand against my chest and exhaled a hard breath. She jerked my car door open and reached for me.
“Natalie? What happened? I came by to see you, only weren’t here, so I waited on the porch. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
She helped me out of the car. I wobbled on weak legs but steadied myself with a hand on the door. Ariana reached for me to hold me upright, then stilled at my side.
“Mio Dio,” she whispered.
I turned toward her, knowing this time my face looked a whole lot worse than it had the last time Gio had hit me.
Her eyes hardened just like Luc’s did when his control was about to snap, and in a low voice, she said, “Tell me everything.”
Chapter Seventeen
Luc
I finished running the last few sales reports for the winery and was just about to close my computer when Ariana swept into my office looking like a kickass female warrior straight out of one of those comic book movies she liked to watch.
“Uh-oh,” I said as I closed the binder in front of me. “Problems with the latest boyfriend?”
“I wish. Luc, we need to talk.”
The urgent tone of her voice put me on instant alert. “What’s wrong?”
“A lot.”
She stepped past my desk and peered through the windows that overlooked the processing section of the winery.
At this time of night—close to six p.m.—most of the employees had already gone home. I was the only one left in the offices.
I swiveled my chair toward her, hoping like hell she hadn’t gotten into a sparring match with either of our parents. “I’m listening.”
“Promise you won’t get mad at what I have to tell you.”
I did not like the sound of that. I sat forward. “Spill.”
“You have to promise first.”
“Fine, I promise. Now tell me what’s going on.”
She stared at me with intense, anxious eyes, then finally exhaled and said, “Giovanni is the problem. He... He’s been harassing Natalie.”
“What?” I jerked to my feet.
“You promised you wouldn’t get mad.”
All bets were off when it came to Giovanni. “Tell me what the fuck he’s been doing, Ariana.”
She brushed a hand through her dark hair, shoving that one lock of white over the opposite side of her head. “Remember that dinner at the house right after you and Natalie came back from Scotland?”
“Yes,” I said hesitantly.
“Well, he...cornered her in the hallway when you were outside.”
My jaw clenched so hard it almost snapped. “And?” I growled, growing impatient.
“And... When she tried to knee him in the balls to get him to back off, he slapped her.”
“Porca troia!” My jaw tightened. I knew she’d been lying. “She said she slipped.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m kind of surprised you bought that.”
I moved for the door, intent on finding my brother and slamming my fist through his face.
Ariana rushed in my way. “There’s more.”
I stared down at her. “More?”
She nodded and swallowed hard. Stepping back, she twisted her hands in front of her. “Today, I went over to see her at the villa. You know, just to visit. Only she wasn’t there, so I waited for her. She drove up about an hour later, but she didn’t get out of the car. So I went over to see what was wrong. Luc, he cornered her today in Florence. Dragged her into an alley. David Bonello was with him.”
“No.” I blinked, her words spinning round me in a fog. “She wasn’t in Florence today. She went to Siena. With Marco’s housekeeper.”
“No, she didn’t. She went to Florence to run an errand for Felicity. She didn’t want to tell you because she thought you’d say no.”
Hell yeah, I’d have said no. But even as the thought hit, I realized...she’d lied to me. Again
I shoved that thought aside and focused on my sister. “What happened?”
“They...” She looked down at my dress shirt, clearly not wanting to say the words. “I think they tried to pull her into a building but two elderly men intervened. Natalie thinks they were with the Seventh Sanctum. She said they’re working with la Resistenza to overthrow the House. They helped Natalie get away, but Gio hit her pretty hard and she has bruises all over the side of her body.”
Belatedly, I realized my baby sister knew a hell of a lot about our House that she wasn’t supposed to know. But a roiling rage was coloring everything red, distracting me from that news.
All I could focus on was the fact I was going to kill my brother. As for my wife... I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do with her. She’d made me promise not to keep a damn thing from her ever again, and she was hiding shit right and left.
Ariana stepped in my way again when I tried to move for the door.
I glared down at her, not wanting to hurt her, but I was past the point of being nice. “Get out of my way.”
“No. Luc. There’s something else you need to know.”
“There’s more?”
“Yes. You have to understand that I wouldn’t have even told you any of this if I thought I could have handled it on my own, but Gio is out of control. When I confronted him this afternoon after I saw Natalie, he told me to stay out of it. That it was between him and Natalie. Luc... I think Gio is obsessed with her. He’s not going to stop.”
“He will when I kill him.”
“Dio dannato.” She shoved two hands against my chest, knocking me back a step, her eyes as fierce as a fire. “That’s the whole damn point of this. You weren’t supposed to know. She did all this to protect you, but if you go after Giovanni, it’s for nothing.”
I faltered. “Did what for me? What are you rambling about?”
Her mouth snapped closed, and fear filled her eyes as she stepped back, almost as if she’d just realized she’d said more than she was supposed to.
“Ariana?” I moved toward her. “What did Natalie do to protect me? Tell me what the fuck is really going on.”
“I-I’m not supposed to.”
“Cazzo. I don’t give a damn if you’re not supposed to. Tell me.”
She pursed her lips and stared at me. Then quietly, she said, “During that ritual they made you the center of? She made a deal with Papà.”
Everything inside me turned to ice. Not just because my little sister knew about that ritual she wasn’t supposed to know a damn thing about, but because Natalie had made a deal with the devil.
“In exchange for stopping those women from...from raping you...she agreed to bring you back to the family.”
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