Page 44 of Broken Vows

“Marriage? Toyou?” Gigi’s eyes widen, and then she laughs, but it’s filled with disdain.

Yep, there it is. The snobbish superiority that grated on me in Cannes. “Yep, to me, since Matteo’s already taken.”

“I’ve vowed to never marry into the Mafia,” she spits out. “And I certainly didn’t just jump ship from one crazy bunch of Italian crime lords to land in a bucket of American ones.”

“Angel,” I say, reaching for her hand. “We both know the Scaleras don’t operate like the Franco Fiores of the world.”

Her eyes flash with fury as she pulls her hand away, showing a glimpse of the woman I met in Cannes. There she is. My pulse skips a beat in relief. Thank God.

“It’s the perfect solution,” Matteo says as he stands. “Stephano has vowed to never get married. You’ve vowed to never get married to the Mafia, so getting a divorce down the line will be a breeze.” He downs the last of his whiskey. “I’ll leave you to discuss the details.”

We both watch as he walks out of the office.

“I’m a good Catholic girl. We don’t divorce,” she mutters under her breath.

“Hmm. Good Catholic girls don’t get fucked with champagne bottles either,” I say as I take a sip of my whiskey.

“Fuck you,” she hisses.

Oh, boy. That night still triggers her, too.

“To do so will be a pleasure, I’m sure.”

She’s got no reason to complain; she did, after all, get two orgasms out of it. Things would most probably not have come to this if I actually had fucked her.

“God.” She turns to me, eyes wide. “How arrogant can one man be?”

“How conceited can one woman be?” I counter.

“I’m not getting married,” she snapped at me. “Not to you, of all people.”

I don’t blame her for this reaction. Gigi Trapani stumbled into my life on that marina in Cannes and kicked my usual equilibrium out of sync. What she’d said to me that day pressed my buttons because I never hurt her, and this only prompted me to put her in her place.

But after today and seeing her this brutalized, never mind the burning need to protect her, I have this urge to show her I’m not like Franco Fiore. I want to marry her, not only to prove to myself I’m a better man than her fiancé, but as a test to myself, to showmewho I am. To see whether it’s reallyin my blood.

Images of the Don with Mom flash through my mind. Of the night I walked in on them when he was beating her up. How she called me later that week, her face untouched but her body broken, and extracted a promise from me. I made a vow to her on those wedding rings Tasha wore in Cannes. I will never do that to a woman again, even though the Don forced me to join in thefunbecauseit’s in my blood.

And then, I went and beat someone my own age, almost to death, proving him right. I’ve never tested the theory with a woman. The horror of being like him drives me to the gym every day, beating the shit out of myself before I can take it out on someone else.

Control. That’s all I want.

The beauty of this potential fake marriage is in how it has an end date. It’ll be a test run. A taste of something I’ve promised to never have. I’ve proven I’m in total control of my mind and body when it comes to Gigi Trapani. And the best part of it is, as much as this woman tests my limits, she’s also the type who won’t take shit from any man.

She’s my perfect solution.

“When you’ve calmed the fuck down,” I say, so tempted to brush a strand of hair from her face in truce, “let us know what alternative solutions you’ve come up with.” I keep my hands to myself as I stand and stare her down. “One thing I can tell you is that we keep our records clean. Irrespective of the debt between our families, no Scalera is going to harbor an illegal in his house for the fun of it. Eyes are on us all the time, and just like you, we don’t like to draw attention.”

She glares up at me and shakes her head. “This was never the plan.”

“Plans change.” I point towards the door in invitation. “I’ll show you to Carla’s room before I head out.”

23

GIGI

The problem is I never had a plan beyond fleeing. Now what? I could kick myself for never thinking beyond coming here and being safe. I always thought London would be far enough, but the world has shrunk, and tentacles have stretched. I didn’t foresee the magnitude of this mess in Europe, or Vincenzo’s duplicity in handing us over without blinking to that psychopath.

I’m a fool. I got away from Franco, but he’s the type who will come for me—for us. Not only because he’s a sadist, but because I have something he needs. Desperately. It’s been eating at me since Friday night, because I don’t know what Franco Fiore knows. If Vincenzo spoke out of line, we are all in very real danger.

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