Page 30 of Marrying the Enemy

“Why?” Because of him?

A startled shrug.

“Find out where she is,” he ordered. “I want to speak with her.”

Four days later, Dom was vacillating between livid and sticky nausea when he walked into the Miami hotel that Nico Visconti wanted so badly.

It was showing its age, definitely not worth the price Nico had driven it to, but location, location, location. The view from the penthouse was exceptional.

Nico Visconti turned from the windows when Dom entered. He stiffened.

“What the hell are you doing here? I was expecting Perez,” he said of the current owner of the hotel.

“I asked him to set this up. Where’s Eve?” Dom’s staff had delivered the disturbing news that she was quietly missing. Her family didn’t seem concerned, but she hadn’t been spotted by paparazzi or photographed since Australia.

“Why?” Nico narrowed his eyes.

“She’s no longer with Visconti Group. Why?”

“Why do you want to know?”

Good God, they were never going to get anywhere.

“Did it have anything to do with our being stranded that night?”

“You have an exaggerated sense of your own importance.” Nico looked at his watch, likely to appear patronizing and dismissive. “Why?” he asked again, gaze sly as it came up to meet his. “Is there a reason I should have fired her? Did you sleep with her?”

Dom had prepared himself for that question.

“Would you excommunicate her for that? How medieval of you. Especially when the grapevine has it that she’s saving herself for marriage.” Thank you, Cat, for that nugget. “Do you really think she’d break her vow for me?” Dom offered his best poker face. “Or that I’d tell anyone if she had? I hear the last man who claimed he had slept with her walked away with a broken nose.”

“Because he was lying. My brother knew it. That was years ago,” Nico muttered.

“So where is she?” Dom pressed.

“Why?”

Dom’s temper started to slip, but he had a flash of memory of her saying, My brother is being a sexist jerk.

“You don’t know, do you?” He couldn’t help a smirk of dark amusement. He knew exactly how irritating it was to be ignored by Eve. “Who can tell me where to find her? Your mother?”

“Do not talk to my mother. No one in my family wants to talk to you,” Nico said impatiently. “I’m already tired of it.” He started past Dom toward the door.

“Wait.” Dom pushed his hands into his pockets and rocked on his heels. This was it. Once he took this step, he couldn’t un-take it, but he’d been going around and around in his mind, trying to find another way. There wasn’t one.

“I want to propose marriage.”

Nico froze beside him.

Dom braced for anything, a sarcastic, Me? A thrown punch...

He got a scoffing choke. “Are you on drugs? I’d rather throw you off this building and spend the rest of my life in prison than call you my brother-in-law.”

“Why?” Dom asked with genuine curiosity. “Do you ever talk about the feud? With your father? With any of your family? We never did.” Dom shook his head, not waiting for an answer. “Talking to Eve was the first time I even imagined there was another side to the story my father had told me about my uncle. All I knew growing up was that I was supposed to hate your family. Making the Viscontis miserable is simply what we do, like celebrating Thanksgiving and running hotels. Aren’t you tired of it?”

“What’s the matter, Blackwood. Are you feeling the pressure? You can’t afford this place so you came here to cut a deal that might soften the sting?”

“Oh, I can afford it, Nico. Can you? Does your father know how overextended Visconti Group is?”

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