Page 13 of Twisted Obsession

The glass of soda that she had just taken a sip from was moved quickly away from her mouth, the liquid slopping slightly over the sides of the tall glass.

‘I will not answer that.’ She giggled and blushed a little. It was the sweetest thing I’d ever seen.

‘Mmmm,’ I pondered. ‘I seem to also remember that you can’t bear to be tickled.’

‘You wouldn’t?’ Her mouth opened wide as she looked around the people close to us. It was then I saw that Salvatore had moved a little closer to the two of us. I leant in closer to speak softly in her ear.

‘Not today, no.’

I stood myself taller and watched as she took in my intonation, and once again a fierce blush consumed her cheeks.

‘What’s your favourite colour?’ I carried on.

‘That’s easy, it’s blue.’ Appearing relieved, Giovanna answered with an excited, childlike exuberance.

Slowly, I bent my knees to bring myself down to her height. When I was right where I wanted to be, I stared pointedly at her, making sure all she could see was my aqua blue eyes that women seemed to love so much.

‘Well, that’s fortunate, isn’t it?’ I added before offering her another wink.

I couldn’t remember talking to another woman that wasn’t a member of my family as much as we talked in those few hours.

And Salvatore De Luca rode each wave with us. I saw the joy in his face if she left my side to talk to someone else and his immediate anger the second she came back close enough for me to re-establish my hold over her.

It had to be said, I was enjoying myself far more than I thought was possible.

Giovanna was a beautiful soul, a willowy beauty with intelligence, grace and an amazing sense of humour and I liked her more than I wanted to. The more she refused my teasing advances, the more she walked away from me, the more the alpha male inside me wanted her.

I could only hope it was for the novelty factor.

But deep inside, I grasped that if she’d been anyone else, I would have been approaching the family and asking if I could be allowed to walk out with her, chaperoned of course, as our society denoted.

But she wasn’t.

She was merely my way of twisting the knife into her bastard of a brother and seeing how he enjoyed it, all under the pretence of a large family celebration.

After enjoying flirting and getting to know her for a few hours, and after being rejected a few times, my passion for the twenty-year-old Giovanna had reached boiling point. Finally, I’d pulled her with me under the sweeping staircase inside the villa and out of the view of the gathered guests. Then, with my hand on the back of her neck feeling her feverish skin and some gently coercion, I’d gently kissed the lips of the very beautifulGiovanna, who also happened to be the apple of her big brother’s eye. As we’d walked back out to the terrace seconds later, I’d very deliberately wiped her lipstick off my mouth just as he turned to find me once again, and I watched as his anger increased at my dalliance.

Ten minutes later, with her hand in mine concealed behind my back, the look in her eyes as our lips had parted branded into my soul, and with the taste of her sweetness lingering on my lips, her brother Salvatore’s succession had been announced.

Not wishing for witnesses to see my absolute revulsion to the Don in waiting, I shifted my stance and effectively stopped the involuntary shake of my head. I squeezed Giovanna’s hand a little to offer her comfort as her papa stormed out and her mama started to scream. For once, it seemed, I was more attuned to someone else’s pain than my own.

‘Gi, I’m sorry, but you will need to see your mama home,’ Salvatore interceded, looking over the heads of the people in between us until he found Giovanna standing next to me.

‘Yes, Salvatore.’ I heard the regret in her voice as she replied and watched appreciatively as she reluctantly moved away from me and slowly closed the distance to where Valentina had just feigned fainting and was currently screaming from a prone position on the floor of the terrace.

Catching my eye, Salvatore began to form a small smile at what I knew was the obvious disappointment written all over my face. For once, it didn’t matter. He didn’t matter. I didn’t matter. Those around us failed to be of any relevance. The only person of any significance was slowly walking over to her mama. And as she walked, the confident young woman, who had slowly revealed herself to me over the past few hours, once again became the anxiety ridden young girl I remembered from our teenage years.

And I hated it; watching her revert.

‘I can help with her, Don De Luca,’ I offered Salvatore Snr. And trying to balance on the ledge I fathomed I was precariously teetering on, I grinned at my nemesis Salvatore and moved quickly to walk the same path as Giovanna.

Her grandfather nodded his permission. Just as soon as I saw the nod, I bent down and in one movement swung Valentina up high into my arms. As the woman in my hold finally stopped wailing, and the crowd we were leaving parted and fell silent, I felt Giovanna wrap her arm around my waist and lean her body against mine as she attempted to glean the strength she so obviously needed.

In the space of the past few minutes, she had learnt that her nonno, the grandfather I knew she loved unconditionally just by the way she spoke about and looked at him, was dying, and in that declaration her older brother was to be his replacement; her family had fractured. I knew first-hand how that felt and comprehended that our families, who had been bound by blood years before, had just become even more interlinked.

When her long fingers dug into my side as she steadied herself from the waves of grief beginning to consume her, I felt the small shudders her body was releasing, and I empathised. From that moment on, I knew I was not only responsible for carrying my own pain and anger, but also hers.

She might not be able to see it yet, but I felt that the catalyst causing our conjoined agony was none other than her brother, our soon to be Don.

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