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He held her gently, his fury banked but seething beneath his skin.
“Cata,” he sighed, sliding his fingers into her hair.Her trust in him, fragile and raw, was more valuable than anything else in his empire.“I’m sorry.”
Her arms crept around his waist, clinging to him, and he felt the wet heat of her tears seeping into his skin.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He kissed the top of her head, his heart thundering with a mix of rage and reverence.“It’s a miracle you ever wanted to be touched again.”
She gave a watery laugh that made his chest ache.“You make things more… exciting.”
His chuckle was rough, self-deprecating.“Exciting, huh?Not exactly the word I’d use.”He drew back just enough to see her face, her eyes glistening but steady.
“I’m sorry that those men threatened you.Scared you,” he rasped, his anger never far from the surface.
“My father did much worse.He never threatened.He just… lashed out when he was angry.It didn’t even have to be something I’d said or done.He just liked hitting, hurting people,” she told him softly.“The men who threatened me wouldn’t dare follow through.Not until after a wedding.They knew they’d have to face my father’s wrath if they sullied me.”She shifted against him.“The worst they did to me was pinching me.A slap or two.Or held me against my will.”
He shut his eyes briefly, his fists curling against her back.He wanted names.Faces.Corpses.
“Still,” he muttered, barely keeping his voice level.
She shook her head, her fingers clutching tighter at his sides.“It wasn’t the threats, Sal.It was the humiliation.Knowing I couldn’t stop them.That I wasn’t strong enough.”Her eyes flicked up to his, blazing now with something fiercer than shame.“And they weren’t even strong men, Sal.Not like you.”
For a long moment, he just stared at her, his chest heavy.Then something shifted inside him.His anger twisted into something sharper—an unyielding recognition of her resilience.She wasn’t weak.She had survived, endured, and somehow come out of hell with enough courage to stand here with him now.
He framed her face in his hands, his thumbs brushing away the dampness on her cheeks.His voice was rough, but certain.“You’re stronger than all of them, Cata.Stronger than me, maybe.”
Her lips parted in surprise, but before she could speak, he bent his head and kissed her—slowly, reverently, nothing like the punishing hunger he usually unleashed.This was different.This was a vow.
When he pulled back, their foreheads still touching, his voice dropped to a deadly whisper.“I’ll never let anyone make you feel weak again.Not your father.Not his men.Not anyone.”
And for the first time, Catarina believed him.
Chapter 35
Enricostormedintohishouse, slamming the front door so hard the frame rattled.Fury simmered through him with every heavy step toward his office.The week had been a disaster—one humiliation after another.
He’d lost money.A disgusting amount of it.Half a million gone, evaporated with the vanished arms shipment.He’d lost men too, good ones, and the emptiness of their absence gnawed at him.Not because he cared—they were pawns—but because he had fewer bodies to order around now.Fewer fists to swing, fewer guns to point.His protection racket was crumbling, his bribes thinning.Hell, even the strippers probably laughed behind his back when he left the room.
And then there was his daughter.His pathetic little bitch of a daughter.Catarina had betrayed him, publicly.He’d seen the pictures splashed across the papers and online—her wedding pictures plastered all over the news, that bitch of a daughter smiling like she’d never lived under his roof.They weren’t even professional pictures.The images seemed as if they’d been taken by a damn cell phone!
He hated the smiles.Smiles were weakness.He preferred women broken, terrified.That was what gave him a hard-on.
Unfortunately, that was the same moment when Matteo strutted into his office, smug and oblivious, another lavender shirt stretched tight across his chest.
“How’d it go, boss?”Matteo asked carelessly, leaning against Enrico’s desk.
Enrico didn’t hesitate.His hand dipped into the left-hand drawer, closed over the cold steel, and he pulled the pistol free.One smooth motion.One squeeze of the trigger.
The shot echoed like a thunderclap.Matteo’s head snapped back, his eyes wide, a spray of blood splattering across the oriental rug.Then he collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut.
Two soldiers rushed in, weapons half-raised.Their eyes darted from the body to the smoking gun to their boss’s expressionless face.
Enrico dropped the pistol onto the corpse with a casual flick of his wrist.“Roll him up and get rid of him.”
When they didn’t move fast enough, his temper flared hotter.“Now!”
Startled, the men obeyed, their steps jerky as they bent over Matteo’s body.They bundled him in the ruined carpet, his blood soaking deeper into the fibers, then hauled the weight between them toward the waiting car.Neither of them bothered to clean the gun of fingerprints.
