Page 79 of Broken Vows

“They’ll be eliminated,” Matteo says.

“Vincenzo?” I ask.

“He’s got zero balls on him,” Matteo says.

Whether he means that figuratively or literally, I’m not sure. “Well, that was fast.”

“Caved within minutes,” Dominic says. “They don’t make them like they used to anymore.”

“Fucker’s not going to live,” Matteo says with a shrug. “But now, he knows where he stands.”

“And?”

“Franco wants Gigi at all costs,” he says. “He’ll come for her himself if he can’t count on Vincenzo.”

“Good.” My palms twitch. My hands fist. I smell his blood on me already. The flip Gigi talks about is rearing its ugly head. “What about Don Trapani?”

“Apparently, he’s fine. Forced to sit it out in Lake Como. He’s respected, and it’s the only reason why he isn’t dead yet.”

There’s a man who won’t see his piece-of-shit son again. “What happened tonight can’t happen again.”

I hate to say it, but we were cocky and caught off guard.

“It won’t,” Benedict says. “Vincenzo’s talking. We can manipulate everything else. He’ll report that he saw Gigi and then we’ll see what Franco’s next moves are.”

“This can’t go wrong.” I stand and slam my whiskey glass on the desk. “Fuck!”

The others still and stare at me as I take a desperate turn around the room.

“Cool down, Steph,” Luca warns. “You can go there on Vincenzo, not here.”

I strangle my hair between my fingers, taking a few deep breaths. This is what Vincenzo unleashed in me. Touching my wife. Threatening her.

“In any case, what the fuck, bro?” Luca asks. “We’ve already gone above and beyond for these women?—”

“Mywife,” I say, my voice dangerously soft, “isn’t just any woman.”

Another beat of heavy silence as they all stare at me, then at each other. Matteo’s gaze rests heaviest on me. He’s been here, and I recall the exact moment I realized he’d fallen in love with Tasha. Now he’s seeing straight through me. I sink back on the sofa and drop my head to my hands, the urge to beat something to a pulp making my hands tremble.

“Oh, boy,” Matteo says. “Welcome to the husbands-only club, Fanny. Are you staying?”

“Fuck off, Matty.”

This isn’t what I signed up for. Divorce is Gigi’s ticket out of here, and I’ve agreed to it—it’s a term of this arrangement—but I’ve changed my mind. I’m not letting her go.

A knock on the door cracks the tension in the room. I look up, and when Gigi peeks around the door, I swallow hard. The idea of losing her has taken hold of me now, twisting my stomach into a knot. As I take her in, every wave of uncontrollable fury seems to retreat, leaving me holding my breath.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she says as she steps inside, hesitant. “I want— I— Just a word…with Steph.”

“Here, angel,” I say, and watch as she pads over to me.

With every step she comes closer, the anger in me dies. This woman is my anchor. I reel with the sudden knowledge that I will never flip on her. Unlike for Don Scalera, my wife isn’t a trigger. She’s my sanity.

She’s stripped off her gown and is wearing a white towel robe she must have borrowed from Tasha. My brothers’ eyes are on her too, but I can feel how their gazes drop away one by one as Gigi stops in front of me.

“I—”

I reach for her hand, needing to touch her. “What?”

---