by Bella Rose
“I can’t marry you, Giovanni,” she said suddenly. There. Man, it felt good to get that out in the open. “I’m in love with another man.”
Giovanni nodded his head toward her belly. “The father?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to tell me who it is?”
“Antonin Mikhailovich.”
Giovanni didn’t speak for at least a full minute. Juliet was beginning to think that she’d been foolish to tell her old friend the truth. Then finally Giovanni exhaled a heavy sigh. “I had wondered why there seemed to be so much chemistry between the two of you.”
“Really?” She was truly surprised by this insight.
“That and there was absolutely no body language from him that he might be in danger of hurting you at all,” Giovanni mused. “Even at the warehouse when he was holding a knife to your throat he seemed to be protective of you in an odd way.”
Juliet sighed. “He’s a good man, Giovanni.”
“He’s the enemy, Juliet.” Giovanni looked sick. “How can you even consider a life with him? He’s a member of the Bratva. He had to murder one of our men in order to gain his position. Have you ever really considered that? Have you wondered if he was the one to murder Enzo? What about your father?”
“Stop!” Juliet put her hands over her ears like a child. “Stop saying that. Antonin wouldn’t do something like that.”
“That’s wishful thinking, Juliet,” Giovanni murmured. “And deep down you know it is.”
***
THERE WAS ONLY one sure place where Antonin knew that Josef would eventually show up, and that was at the Cagliones’ home. Consequently, if it took all day and all night, Antonin was going to stick to his position in a tree outside the house just to make sure Juliet was safe. Catching Josef was secondary to that. Eventually the smarmy little bastard would turn up. He would be selling something or stealing something else in order to reintegrate himself back into the Bratva ranks.
Although Antonin was beginning to wonder if Josef really needed to get back into the ranks of the Bratva. Josef was Mikhail’s favorite spy and always had been. What if this entire thing was an elaborate ruse to test Antonin’s loyalty and murder the remaining members of the Caglione family at the same time?
Something moved inside Juliet’s bedroom, and Antonin’s gaze was immediately focused there. He couldn’t take the chance that Josef would somehow slip by him and the Cagliones’ lax security. Josef knew how much Juliet meant to Antonin, and he would not hesitate to exploit that if he were given the opportunity.
No. Antonin clenched his teeth. Giovanni was pacing inside Juliet’s bedroom. Antonin didn’t appreciate the familiarities the Italian took with Juliet. He didn’t want the man anywhere near her bedroom. And he certainly didn’t appreciate the fact that Juliet’s family was trying to make her marry the man.
Antonin moved from the tree to the house. Carefully navigating the thick branch, he headed toward the ledge that ran around the entire exterior of the old house. A few days ago he had traversed this ledge with Juliet so that he could kiss her on the roof in the moonlight. Sometimes he wondered if he would ever gain the right to use the front door in her house.
He crouched on the ledge and peered into the window. She had drawn the curtains closed. Had she been intentionally trying to keep him from seeing in? Why else would she close the curtains? She had never seemed to particularly care before.
Antonin watched Giovanni attempt to get closer to Juliet. She pushed him away. Antonin could hear snatches of the conversation. She was telling him that she loved someone else. Giovanni was reassuring her that she would get over it. He took her in his arms and held her close. Juliet was crying, weeping actually. She pressed her face to Giovanni’s chest, and Antonin could barely contain the rage that threatened to flay him wide open. This was his woman, the woman he wanted to be his wife. She was carrying his child—their daughter—and this man was putting his hands all over her and attempting to convince her that she didn’t need to belong to Antonin any longer. It had to stop. Now.
Chapter Sixteen
“STOP IT, GIOVANNI.” Juliet tried to be firm, but Giovanni kept pressing into her personal space. She didn’t feel frightened, but it was very obvious that he didn’t care to take her protests seriously.
Giovanni gently took her hands and removed them from his chest. He laced his fingers with hers and drew her even closer to his body. “Come on Juliet, it’s me. Do you have any idea how much I care for you? I love you.”
“But I don’t love you.” Her words caught on a sob. “Don’t do this to me! I told you to give me my space. I asked you to leave my bedroom.”
“I’m not leaving you alone. Not tonight.” He began backing her toward her bed. “I’ll keep my clothes on. But I’m going to hold you tonight.”
“No. Giovanni, no.” She could just imagine what would happen if Antonin should choose tonight to sneak back in through the window.
“She said no.”
Giovanni spun around. He shoved Juliet behind his back in the process as though he were confronting a threat. “You have no business here.”
“On the contrary.” Antonin stepped down from the window ledge and stood loose and ready. The expression on his face was deadly. He pointed to Giovanni. “You’re touching my woman. She’s asked you to stop.”
Giovanni’s breathing grew ragged. What Juliet could see of his face showed an expression contorted with rage. “She’s not your woman!”
“Giovanni, please!” Juliet tugged at his arm. “I want Antonin here. I love him. Don’t be like this.”
Giovanni turned around to face her. He was ashen faced, and his dark eyes were filled with pain. “So this is how it’s going to be? I’m going to marry you, and you’re just going to let this man into our bedroom every night?”
“I’m not going to marry you,” she told him quietly. “My grandfather was wrong to promise such a thing. I’m not some medieval maiden. He can order me all day long, but I’m not going to listen. Surely you know me better than that.”
“I could have him killed.” Giovanni’s gaze drifted back to Antonin’s big and rather menacing presence. “I could call the men in here and have him gutted right here in your room.”
Antonin’s expression suggested that Giovanni could try it, but Juliet didn’t want that violence, especially when the bloodshed really wouldn’t change anything. “You could,” she agreed. “But I will never stop loving him. If you kill him or hurt him you hurt me. And forcing him to act is just going to get good Caglione men hurt. Why would you do that?”
Giovanni gaped at her. “So I’m just supposed to pretend he’s not here, walk out of the room, and go about my business?”
“Go home,” she urged. “And yes. You’re supposed to walk out of here and mind your own damn business. If you had listened to me in the first place, you would still be blissfully ignorant.”
ANTONIN WAS NOT foolish enough to believe that this was over, but for now the man was going to leave them be. Antonin could see the resignation on Giovanni’s face. He had realized there was no point in fighting a battle he could not hope to win. Antonin’s first instinct was to take Juliet far away from this house and these people. Yet he had nowhere to take her and wasn’t silly enough to believe that she would leave her home.
Giovanni pursed his lips but said nothing else. He glowered at Antonin and then took his leave through the bedroom door. Juliet dashed over and locked the door behind him. Antonin wondered at the notion that a paltry door lock would keep anyone out. He half expected to hear the thunder of boots on the floor outside. If Antonin had swapped places with Giovanni, nothing would have kept him from the woman he professed to love. Not even her protests.
Juliet approached him with a smile. “You came.”
“Of course.”
“How long were you watching?” Two lines appeared between her eyebrows.
“Long enough to know that he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.” He took
her hands and drew her into his embrace. It made him feel better to hold her. “We have to figure out what to do next.”
“What do you mean?”
“We can’t keep on like this.” He exhaled a long sigh and rested his chin on top of her head. “My father is planning something behind my back. I don’t know what it is yet, but he claims to have exiled Josef from the city.”
Juliet drew back and stared up at him with an expression of incredulity. “Seriously? People do that? And does the exiled person actually stay away? It’s not like there’s a wall around the city. Besides, your father isn’t a king or a president or anything. He has no authority outside his own men.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,” Antonin said drily.
She pressed her nose against his chest. It was cold. “So what you’re saying”—her voice was muffled by his shirt—“is that this supposed exile is just a bullshit punishment to pretend that Josef isn’t working for him?”
“I suspect as much, yes.” Antonin gently nudged her toward her bed. “Lie down with me. I just want to relax for a moment.”
She climbed into her bed and snuggled down with her cheek resting on her folded hands. The innocence in the way she looked was deceptive. He loved the contrast of her. This woman could be so soft and willing one second, and a hellcat that would happily tear apart her enemies the next.
Antonin climbed into the bed beside her and drew her into his arms. She cuddled close and took his hand in hers. When she gently drew his palm down to the bulge of her abdomen, he experience a bone-deep desire to safeguard everything that was so vitally important to him.
JULIET COULD HARDLY keep her eyes open, but there were things she needed to know from her Prince Charming. She yawned and then forced her brain to focus on the important stuff. “What do you want for us?” she finally managed to ask.
“What do you mean?”
At least it didn’t seem as if he were actually ducking the question. She tried to be clearer about what was really important. “We’re having a baby. You say that you love me. What do you want? I suppose I never saw myself doing the traditional family thing, you know? I don’t think I ever had a good idea of what my life was going to turn out like. Sometimes I wasn’t even sure if I was going to get to make my own choices. But now…” She let the statement hang.
He gently stroked her hair and then touched her face. He traced the line of her nose, her cheekbones, and then pressed his fingers against her lips. “I never considered myself a candidate for a traditional family life either.”
“Did you want one?” If he said no she was going to break down. She just knew it.
His low chuckle sent a riot of chills through her body. “I never thought it was an option. Now that I’m so close I feel like I would fight for it.”
“Sometimes I close my eyes and I think about a little house where we could raise our daughter and maybe even have a few other kids. You know?”
“One of those crazy normal lives where people get up in the morning, kiss each other, each some breakfast, kiss again, and then go to work?” He nuzzled her neck. “I’ve started thinking about that a lot.”
“Do you think it’s possible?”
“I think if we want something like that we’re going to have to fight for it.”
Juliet tried to reconcile what that might mean. “You mean that we’re going to have to leave this life behind?”
“Not necessarily.”
She thought of the inherent danger of criminal enterprise. She thought about the worry of who might want their territory, or what organizations might be in competition for a contract or a business deal. She thought of bribes and murders in informants. She even thought of the possibility of law enforcement coming in and ruining everything.
“What’s wrong?” he whispered. “You just tensed up.”
She clung to him. “This life is dangerous.”
“All life is dangerous.”
“I don’t want to risk losing you just because of a lucky shot or a misplaced knife blade.” Juliet knew that her emotional state wasn’t exactly consistent right now. But the feeling of panic she was experiencing was almost too much to bear. “Promise me I’m not going to lose you.”
There was not a hint of doubt in his voice. “You’re not.”
HOW COULD HE promise such a thing when he had no way to know if it was true or not? He felt Juliet begin to relax and began to wonder if there was anything he could promise her. He couldn’t give her tomorrow. He wasn’t even sure that he had a tomorrow. The only way to have a future with Juliet was to force their families to acknowledge the union. They had to work together, and that was going to take nothing less than an act of God to accomplish.
Antonin waited for Juliet to fall asleep. The room was still lit by the dim glow of her desk lamp. Carefully extracting himself from Juliet’s embrace, he settled her on the mattress. Antonin pressed a kiss to her forehead and rose from the bed. He covered her with the blanket and then moved to the desk to turn off the light.
As much as he wanted to spend the night with Juliet in his arms, it would do neither of them any good should Giovanni bring Caglione men into the room in the hopes of catching Antonin napping. So instead of spending the night in bed with his beloved, Antonin settled into a chair across the room. Tucked into the shadows, he watched her sleep and wondered if this was to be their fate.
The night stretched long. He listened to the sounds in the house. It was obvious that there was always some kind of activity going on here. He’d observed the place more than once from the trees outside or by peeking into windows. The capos tended to loiter about the house eating and drinking as they caroused half the night away. Typically the quietest portion of any day or night seemed to be the hours between four and six in the morning.
Antonin blinked the sleep from his eyes. Had he napped? If felt as though time had spooled by unchecked. He still sat in the chair in the corner of Juliet’s room, but something had woken him. He straightened his spine and listened hard. There were hushed voices and far more foot traffic than usual out in the hallway. Most of it seemed to be concentrated on the area outside Carlos Caglione’s bedroom. A suspicion began to grow in Antonin’s gut. There was only one thing he could think of that would cause such a stir.
A door slammed. Antonin got to his feet and hurried to Juliet’s side. He knelt beside her on the bed and kissed her face. “Sweetheart, you have to wake up.”
“I’m tired,” she muttered. “Go away.”
“Baby, you have to look at me.” Antonin cupped her cheeks in his hands and kissed her eyelids. “I think something has happened to your grandfather.”
Her lashes fluttered and he could see her fighting to wake up. “My grandfather? What do you mean?”
“There’s way too much noise out there for six in the morning,” he told her quickly. “I need to go.”
“Stay,” she pleaded.
“Giovanni knows I’m here.”
He saw realization cross her sleepy features. “He’ll blame you.”
“Yes.”
“Go.” She all but pushed him off the bed. “Will I see you soon?”
He kissed her lightly on the lips. “I hope so.”
Leaving her there on her own was hell, but she was safer that way. Getting rid of her wouldn’t be a part of Giovanni Corleon’s plan.
Chapter Seventeen
JULIET FORCED HERSELF to lie still in the bed. She could hear a commotion in the hallway outside her room and knew that Antonin was right. It was difficult to believe that someone like Giovanni who had been a friend and loyal soldier to the Cagliones could be behind some kind of scheme to hurt her grandfather. Yet even if something natural had happened to Carlos Caglione, Giovanni would be a fool not to take advantage of the fact that Antonin was close at hand and the perfect scapegoat.
“Juliet!” Giovanni pounded on her door. “Juliet, open the door! Let us in or we’ll break it down!”
She had
barely started to get out of her bed to do just as he requested when her bedroom door burst open. Splinters of wood flew in all directions, and she gave a squeak of terror as three burly Caglione men entered without a word.
“Where is he?” Giovanni demanded. “I know he’s here!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Juliet pulled the covers up to her chin for modesty’s sake. Then she glared at Giovanni. “You can search all you want, but there is nobody in here except me.”
“Search the bathroom!” Giovanni barked at the men. Then he turned to her. “I know he was here.”
“He left right after you did,” she lied. There was no point in stirring up trouble. “Do you really think he would be that easy to catch? He didn’t want me in danger. So as soon as he knew I was safe, he left.” She glared at Giovanni. “Would you mind telling me what’s going on? You cannot just barge in here without reason, Giovanni. You don’t even have that kind of power.”
“Your grandfather is dead.” Giovanni couldn’t meet her eye. “Someone smothered him in his bed.”
“What?” Juliet struggled not to burst into tears. “And you’re searching my room because you think I had something to do with it? You bastard! How dare you? Get out. Get out. Get out! All of you!”
“I don’t suspect you personally,” Giovanni amended. “It’s that Bratva bastard that I suspect.”
“Then you suspect me,” she snarled. “Because he would never do anything to hurt me, and that would hurt me a lot.” She narrowed her gaze at the man she had considered her closest ally within the family. “In fact, perhaps we should be investigating you!”
The men all paused, staring at Giovanni and then at Juliet with varying degrees of confusion on their faces.
“You’re the one who had so much to gain from grandfather dying. You can push me into marrying you, and then you’ll just take over.”