Page 51 of Broken Vows

I love how she’s comfortable in the soft T-shirt Tasha dug out from who knows where, but I burn to see her in a beautiful dress again. Somehow, that will reassure me she’s still the same confident woman I met in Cannes, and that Franco didn’t break her.

Gigi scoffs and rolls her eyes. “As if. You haven’t even asked me yet.”

“Don’t hold your breath, angel,” I tease. “Here.” I reach out for a tote the other women didn’t unpack as I made sure the delivery came directly to me. “Tasha and Gigi helped picked out most of your things, but this, I got for you.”

She takes the pale pink tote from me and peeks inside. Then she puts it down on the table and pulls the first item from the bag. “What is…oh.”

The blush is back, and I drink it in. This woman is all lady, but wanton in all the ways that make me so fucking hard. And I can’t wait to rip this off her, or even better, work my way up to her naked butt and bend her over, her hair falling loose over her shoulders, then fuck her like she needs to be fucked.

“It’s so old school…and delicate.” She holds up the full-length white cotton nightgown as her fingers trace the lace on the bust. “And soft. And wide.”

“And perfect to let things heal.”

“God.” With a sigh, she lowers it to the side and feels for the other things I got her. “Why?” she asks as she lifts silk and satin from the bag, not looking at the individual items but fisting them and holding them out to me.

Granted, I’ve gone overboard as I got carried away in the lingerie section. I aimed more for comfort than anything else, but I know she’ll look sexy in everything I got her.

“Because when I told you I’ll take care of things, angel, I wasn’t fucking around.”

26

STEPHANO

“This is your guy,” Benedict says as the projector throws an image on the screen of a man with his side to the camera. His face is turned toward the lens, but it’s clear he was unaware someone was taking this photo.

“Matches the image the mole sent through,” Matteo says.

At least we still have that contact in Italy, and Matteo strengthened the connection when he was there earlier this summer. Franco Fiore’s neck tattoo is just as Gigi described it.

“He likes his tattoos,” Benedict says as he slides to the next image. “And apparently, snakes are his favorite.”

The one photo is a close-up of Franco as he smokes a cigarette. His hands are tattooed with snakes, slithering over his fingers as if they’re branches. What an idiot. To make yourself so easily identifiable.

We’re in a boardroom at our security company’s head offices, technically Dominic’s domain, but all five of us are here to strategize. Gigi and Carla have been in Boston for five days now. Dominic and I have been working on their security detail, putting new things in place for Gigi’s imminent arrival at my apartment. We’ve been in each other’s company a lot, butthere’s always someone else around, so we haven’t spoken about marriage again, but it will happen.

“There isn’t a lot on him, as expected. Let’s just say, he isn’t the type you want to meet alone in the dark.” We’ve been waiting for Benedict to scour his sources for proper intel on Franco and to dig around on the dark web. “He’s a known sadist and has grown a bit wild since he got clean. As a teen, he used to work in some cocaine packaging plant. Got a bit hooked. Italian parents, both dead, ex ’Ndrangheta. When they died, he was forced to go live with an uncle in Calabria. Said uncle was a Randazzo henchman. And the rest is history, as they say.”

“Just your typical Mafia bedtime story then,” Dominic says with a grimace.

“He has a weakness. Once a user, always a user,” Luca says.

“Maybe,” I say. “He looks like the type who loves power more than cocaine.”

Franco got off drugs and kept off them. That’s control, mind over matter, and an iron will. Good. I know the type. Like me, he must do something to keep himself in check. Something that feeds the hole in his soul. I shudder as I imagine that snaked hand wielding a scalpel, Franco relaxing into the high of cutting into skin and smelling blood. Observing his victim’s pain and feeding off it like a parasite.

My fingers twitch, my thighs tense with the need to squeeze all the air out of his lungs. I exhale slowly.

“What’s the plan?” Matteo asks. “We obviously need to get him here. We don’t stand a chance on his home ground.”

“No. And I don’t see why he’d come here,” Benedict says. “Gigi is charming, but?—”

“She’s also worth almost a billion euros,” I cut in. It’s time to put all the cards on the table here.

“What?” Matteo says.

Every man in this room looks at me with wide eyes.

“Trapani’s illicit diamonds and gold locked up in Switzerland. Only she has direct access to it without a shitload of checks and balances. It was a family secret. Obviously no longer.”

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