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I hated the bastard.

“Dario—” he started to protest.

I held up a hand. “No. You know I had no desire to marry, to the extent I have not dated anyone in eight years. You know, further, that if I was to marry for gain, I would have vastly preferred to marry an Italian American who would know and understand my expectations, not a young, spoiled, untried Sicilian princess. I agreed to this farce of a marriage for the sole reason that you—finally, after years of pressure not just from me but from within the Outfit—agreed to hand over leadership of our legal and illegal enterprises to me. I am being more than gracious in giving you five months to wrap up your tenure. If you oppose me in this, Lando, I will have no choice but to forcibly remove you.”

“I am your father, boy,” Lando bit off, pushing back his chair so hard as he stood that it slammed against the console table behind him and dislodged some photographs that crashed to the floor. “Do not forget I am responsible for every breath you take.”

“As I am responsible for allowing you to breathe at all, given the way you have abused power in this family and in our organization for years,” I quipped coldly, leveling him with eyes that were only shades paler than his own blue irises. They were the only feature we shared, otherwise I might have hoped I was a bastard.

“You want it, fine. But I expect you to produce an heir with that Italian princess of yours,” Lando groused to save face. “With Vincenzo dead we need to solidify our agreement with the Sicilians in the only way we can. They will not turn on us if we have two of their own under our control.”

A muscle in my jaw ticked because I had no intention of sleeping with the girl.

I didn’t need her getting emotionally invested in some impossible dream about us being a real husband and wife.

And I didn’t need the distraction.

Because the truth was, though Fiammetta was too young, too naive, and entirely too vanilla for my liking, she was also unquestionably attractive.

As in one of the most gorgeous, sensual-looking women I had ever laid eyes on.

Her long body was lush with steep curves and tight muscles, her low-lidded hazel eyes almost slumberous, as if she had just enjoyed a bone-quaking orgasm and was ready for a nap. All that tanned skin and the belly-length, dark tumble of waves that begged a man’s hands to dive in to tug and pull her into place for his kiss or his cock were rampantly sexual. A saint would have been tempted to sin without regret.

I was no saint, though I was also no stranger to restraint.

But I was also a man, and living under the same roof as that magnificently erotic woman was a temptation I did not need. One I knew deep in my bones I would not be able to resist if I got even a single taste of that beauty.

So no.

I absolutely did not intend to sleep with her.

She would remain my virgin bride forever.

Cruel, perhaps, but it was good for her to learn young that life was like that.

It was all you could really count on.

“I’ll try,” I told Lando, because there was no way for him to know short of checking our marital bed for blood, an antiquated custom we had thankfully abolished in the New World. “But no promises, old man.”

“Ferretti men are fertile,” Lando said with a wink, his good nature restored by the idea of getting a leg up on his reviled Sicilians. “If the rumors coming out of Palermo are anything to go on, Vincenzo and Beppe are dead, and Ricco should follow soon enough. Your son would be the rightful heir to the whole Sicilian empire and our Chicago Outfit combined. Think of the power to be had.”

It was my father who had taught me that life was a game of chess with high stakes that meant you either won or you died, so his speech did not alarm me. What did was his brutish enthusiasm. Lando had no tact, and his age had made him arrogant.

Arrogant enough not to assume the son he kept chained to his throne was finally ready to break free.

“Five months,” I repeated firmly. “You won’t like the consequences if you decide to go against me, Lando.”

“You forget yourself, Dario,” he returned, but I was already turning on my heel and stalking from the room, so I barely heard him add, “You aren’t my only horse in this race.”

But I was finished with him, my point made and mind already on other matters, like how to reassure what remained of the dismantled Sicilian Cosa Nostra that our new alliance was still strong.

When it absolutely was not.

Chapter Six

Fiammetta

I had been in Chicago for ten days without catching sight of my husband once. Edgemont House was enormous, but I still felt he had to have been ignoring me to evade me so easily when we slept on the same floor just down the hall from one another. When I woke up, he was gone to the office, and though I tried to stay up late enough to see him return, jet lag and the exhaustion of worrying about what my life had become made me fall asleep long before I wanted to. Once, I fell into a coma-like slumber on the couch in his office and woke up ensconced in my own red silk sheets, left to wonder if it was my husband who had carried me.