Page 29 of Marrying the Enemy

“Selfish,” Nico provided. “We all act for the good of the family. Except you. Because you think you’re special. Like Nonna.”

Eve realized she was shaking. Her heart was pinched in a vise and all she could think was that she might have been able to comply with an arranged marriage eventually, if she hadn’t slept with Dom. Now she knew what she’d be missing and it would make any other man’s touch repulsive to her.

She picked up her purse and opened the door.

“Evelina! Where are you going?” her mother cried with alarm.

“I’ll let you know when I get there.”

Dom wanted to hate her, but he couldn’t. He wanted to forget her. But he couldn’t.

Not when he and Nico were once again playing a game of chicken over a property in Miami.

Eve had nothing to do with it. The timing of Nico’s bid made that impossible, but Dom still wanted to believe she had something to do with it.

Why? Because it would prove she was thinking of him? That he was as far under her skin as she was under his?

Even if he was, Eve wouldn’t resort to asking her brother to deliver a message in such a cryptic way. She wasn’t afraid to confront someone directly. He’d seen it more than once. He’d felt the smack on his ass, even.

Plus, asking her brother to exact revenge would necessitate revealing why. She wouldn’t do that. They’d agreed on a statement labeling their night a misadventure, nothing else. It had been released into a heavy news cycle, burying it. Like the first time they’d trysted, this was their little own secret and, for some reason, Dom liked that most of all.

What was he, nine? He didn’t convey messages by decoder rings and peer at diary entries and share secrets under the covers. He didn’t share anything with anyone. Ever. He didn’t need special connections. He barely tolerated the required relationships of work and basic social fabric. He’d spent his whole life learning to live at a distance from the rest of the world. He liked it that way. It was comfortable.

But he knew so many secrets about Evie now. Intimate ones, like how soft her mouth felt around him when he stood like a lighthouse in the dark, feet braced and hands clenched on either side of the narrow aisle of the shack while she rocked his world.

Then there were the intriguing tidbits Cat had shared with him when she’d come to his hotel. Dom had planned to use the light scandal of his night with Eve as a clumsy excuse to cool things off, but Cat had sheepishly confessed where she had spent the night and with whom.

She must have had a guilty conscience about it because she’d spilled a few of Logan’s confidences. As much as Dom had appreciated the information, he’d also realized Cat was a gossip. They definitely hadn’t had a future so that was off his conscience, at least.

“Sir?”

There were eight people at the boardroom table behind him, waiting for him to decide whether to increase his bid against Visconti Group while he, yet again, had spiraled into making love with Evie.

“The clock is ticking on our ability to counter,” someone else said. “It’s already been three weeks. Visconti Group has it locked in unless—”

“I know.” Nico had put funds into escrow to secure it.

Which wasn’t why Dom was stalling on matching and exceeding his bid. He was suffering a pinch of conscience.

Cat had revealed that Visconti Group was overextended. If Dom wanted to topple the first domino on what could spell the beginning of the end of Visconti Group, he would let Nico have the Miami property. According to Cat, they couldn’t afford it.

Dom had been working toward a moment like this for four years. It was the culmination of three generations of bloodthirst. He could hear his father’s voice shouting at him to, “Pull the trigger.”

Because all his father had ever wanted was revenge. Suffering. He’d thought causing someone else to hurt would somehow make his own pain stop.

No. Despite the attacks he’d suffered through the years at the hands of the Viscontis, Dom knew that crushing his father’s enemy wouldn’t do a damned thing to fill up the empty spaces inside himself.

He needed to do something else.

“I want to speak with Eve.” He turned to confront a sea of confused expressions.

Someone leaned to the person next to them and murmured, “The one in accounting?”

“Evelina Visconti,” Dom clarified with exasperation.

“Really?” They all sat taller and looked warily at each other.

“Um, sir?” A hesitant hand went up. “I’m not sure if this is relevant, but when I was doing my research, I noticed she’s no longer on their org chart.”

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