Page 28 of The Last Vendetta

“Did you kill my father?” she asked bluntly.

I rolled my eyes. “No.”

“How can I trust you?”

I shrugged. “You can’t.”

She licked her lips, staring at my mouth. “I trusted you to prove yourself to me before.”

In making her come. Fuck. She was trouble.

“Now’s not a good time,” I warned.

But her face fell. That sad, mad, and confused frown deepened as she crawled closer and straddled me. I set my hands on her hips, then her ass, as she settled on top of my lap. When she looped her arms around my neck and hugged me tightly, I furrowed my brow, at a loss for what was going on.

“We will never have a good time,” she whispered.

You got that right.

I rubbed my hands up her back, stunned that she would be so bold as to seek comfort from me. And that I would want to provide it. As she drew in a shaky breath, I held her tighter and gripped her back to keep her flush to me.

“I didn’t kill Rocco,” I told her. It mattered that she knew that. “I was at the bar with Gio and my relatives well into the night after the funeral.”

She sighed, leaning on me and pressing all of her sweet curves to me.

I rubbed her back, relishing this almost peaceful moment she’d insisted on so stubbornly. Asking her if she was all right would be stupid. She couldn’t be. Her father had died, and now she was vulnerable. “Giulia?”

“Hmm.”

“Did your father engage in any talks about your marriage?”

She leaned back, staring at me with a scowl. “No. At least, not that I know of.” Setting her hands on my shoulders, she cast her gaze down. “Besides, he wouldn’t have cared or had any say in it. My mother is scheming. She’ll be the one to choose my fate. Father never cared about anything.”

I watched her trace her fingers over the buttons of my shirt, absent and listless about it, like she couldn’t sit still.

“All he wanted to do was drink and get away from my mother and his daughters.” She looked up at me, pinning me with a sober stare. “I found him that morning.” Her throat flexed with a tense swallow. “And I had to make the arrangements for his private funeral.”

I saw how much she’d been through, and with Isabella as a mother, she would’ve been on her own through it all. For her sisters, too. While Giulia didn’t seem sad about her father’s death, she was stressed. And worried.

Seeing her so concerned bothered me. It excited me that she’d been so desperate to see me that she broke into my car just to talk, but I hated what I’d overheard.

Should I tell her? Will she appreciate the heads up that Nickolas is trying to take over her Family now?

“And all I wanted was… to feel safe again. Like I do when I’m near you.” She sighed, letting her shoulders slump as she gazed at me with such longing that I wanted to growl.

“That’s stupid.”

“I know.” She halfheartedly flicked her finger between us. “We’re enemies.”

Doesn’t feel like it, does it? The warmth between her legs made me harder. Feeling her weight over my dick threatened to change the course of this topic.

But I reined in my lust. I fought it, wrangling it back into control because neither of us could handle the curveball of wanting each other.

I framed her face and pulled her close to kiss her brow. Giving a tender kiss wasn’t my style. Giulia’s vulnerability shouldn’t have been my kryptonite.

Which was why all I could tell her was this sincere warning. “You need to stay away from me. From looking into Luka’s death, and your father’s. You need to stay out of it, Giulia.”

Beneath the sadness and longing burning in her eyes, I saw the curiosity that wouldn’t quit.

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