Page 7 of Marrying the Enemy

As she drew it from the sheets, however, Dom grabbed her wrist. He stared at the screen.

“How the hell do you know that man?” His voice had gone ice-cold.

Jealous? Because it wasn’t Ginny Visconti.

“That’s Nico. My brother,” she said dismissively.

Dom pushed off the bed. Her lover of seconds ago had left the room, the building and the country. This was a man who was dangerous.

“You’re Evelina Visconti?” His lip curled with repulsion.

“Yes?” She ought to sound more certain. She knew who she was. Kind of. She had never behaved like this with anyone so she was a bit of a stranger to herself in this moment. She was definitely someone else to him, though. Someone he didn’t like.

She reached for the edge of the sheet.

“Get the hell out of my hotel.”

“Your—What?” She sat up, trying to drag her bra back into place while tucking the blankets across her naked lower half, but he’d already seen everything and was looking at her as though he found her to be the lowest form of filth. “You’re not...” He couldn’t be. But his name was suddenly drumming in her ears. Dom, Dom, Dom. “You’re not Domenico Blackwood.”

As in Winslow-Blackwood Enterprises? WBE. No.

“Don’t pretend that’s a shock. What the hell is this? Do you have cameras in here or something?” He looked around while pulling his shirt over his head.

“What? No! That’s disgusting.”

“It is disgusting that you would do something like this. I can’t believe how low your family stoops.”

“You came onto me,” she cried. “You asked to see my room! And my condoms.” Along with her breasts and her body and, apparently, her humiliation. She had thought the rivalry between the Blackwoods and Viscontis was ancient history, but it was real and here and she suddenly felt very sick. “Did you plan this?”

“No.” He looked as outraged at the accusation as she had been. “I would have had you removed if I’d known you were staying here. I’m going to have you removed now.”

“Get out of here and I’ll remove myself.” She hated that crack in her voice. And the scald in her throat that was climbing to press behind her eyes.

“You don’t tell me where I go in my own hotel.” He punctuated that with a derisive point. Contempt flashed in his bronze gaze as his gaze flickered to the sheet across her waist. “Don’t try to use this against me. I’ll bury you.”

“Same to you,” she said in such a puerile response, it only earned her a snort and a final, dismissive curl of his lip.

“Security will be here in twenty minutes. You had better not be.” He walked out.

CHAPTER THREE

Six months later...

DOM WALKED INTO his father’s empty office and left the lights off, allowing the wet, New York day to cast everything in shades of pewter and ash. It suited his mood.

Not because he was depressed and grieving. His responsibilities were heavy and his thoughts grim, but there was relief in his father’s passing. Thomas Blackwood had been a bitter, combative man and, when his heart began to fail, had been even more quick to punish those around him who still possessed optimism for the future.

The funeral had been a somber affair, but there had been a collective exhale from everyone in attendance, Dom’s mother especially. Dom’s stepmother, Ingrid, had been the only one still projecting tension and discord. She didn’t like that she’d lost the ear of the patriarch. She would live out her life in comfort with a suitable allowance, but like everyone else, she was now reliant and beholden to Dom. The heir.

Dom glanced at the open bottle of Scotch in the refreshment nook, but as much as he would like to disappear into oblivion, he had too much to do—starting with fending off the Viscontis.

In the ten days between his father dying in his sleep and his body going into the ground, Romeo Visconti and his three sons had swept across the globe like an invading army.

Granted, WBE wouldn’t have been in such a vulnerable position if Thomas Blackwood hadn’t insisted on staying at this desk while he had breath in his body. Dom’s father had made some terrible decisions in the last years, determined to see the Visconti Group destroyed before he died. Dom had regarded that vendetta as a waste of time, energy, money and resources, but there had been nothing he could do except argue and watch.

Privately, he had hoped the feud between the Blackwoods and Viscontis would end with his father. He had been prepared to let it fall away into history since that’s all it was.

Dom’s great-grandfather had bootlegged and smuggled alcohol with Christopher Winslow during the Great Depression. When Prohibition ended, they turned their stills into breweries and their speakeasies into nightclubs. They invested their ill-gotten gains into hotels and casinos then, to ensure their combined fortunes stayed in the family, they arranged for Maria Winslow to marry Michael Blackwood.

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