Page 7 of Sin & Sapphire

She shoved me away, her face twisted in a sneer. "Fuck you, Uncle Angelo."

If only she knew how badly I wanted to do exactly that.

3

VALENTIN

The bell-like chimesof my phone roused me from a deep sleep. I rolled over to snatch it off my bedside table, immediately missing the warmth of Angelo by my side.

Angelo

I’m sending her to my father’s.

I blinked the sleep out of my eyes. What the fuck time was it? 4:00 a.m. — 11:00 p.m. in Yorkfield. With a swipe on an app on my phone, I turned on the lights, then immediately dimmed them to a soft glow.

Angelo and I had been traveling the world apart and together since we’d become lovers six years ago. His single-minded focus no longer surprised me. But sending Ana to his father was a mistake.

She was tempestuous on her best days, and a brat on her worst, and Enrico would eat her alive. Or she would eat him. Either way, they’d leave the family villa a cratered, burning pit by the time they were done.

Moi

He’s a misogynist prick.

Angelo

She can’t stay here.

It’s too dangerous.

My jaw clenched. Was it too dangerous because the Russos intended to dismantle the Costa empire brick by brick and Ana was part of that? Or was it too dangerous because Angelo was in spitting range of his obsession and couldn’t resist?

I should be jealous of the slip of a girl who wanted nothing to do with him or what he did for a living. But I wasn’t. And I hated that I wasn’t, that as much as I cared about Angelo, I didn’t have the emotional depth to hate this obsession that predated our relationship.

My phone rang, and I swiped it open. Angelo’s face filled the screen, handsome and vibrant, even with his tanned face lined with exhaustion.

“Salut,”I said softly. Hi.“Comment vas-tu?” How are you?

Angelo scrubbed his face and set the phone down, angled so I could see his face as he shrugged out of his jacket.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Selfish asshole,” I teased, softening the instinct to tear into him for not checking the time before he called. Incapable of giving Angelo the affection he craved, I made up for it by suppressing the ruthless instincts that had made me a billionaire.

He loosened his tie, and I could feel his eyes roving over my bare shoulders through the phone.

“She has a lover,” he muttered, changing the subject to what he really wanted to talk about.

“This isn’t a surprise,” I reminded him, forcing myself to keep my voice even, despite my frustration. Angelo had slowly unraveled over the past several weeks as the war between the American branch of his family and the Russos intensified, and he’d increased the level of surveillance on Ana as a consequence.

Ana Costa was a fucking idiot to be sleeping with her best friend’s brother, and the son of a man who’d sworn to salt the earth with the ashes of her family. How Angelo discovered it while she managed to keep it a secret from her father was a mystery to me.

“If she stays…” he trailed off, and looked at me, his eyes haunted. “I don’t have any self-control, my love. I never have. And she deserves better.”

Angelo took off his shirt, and I admired his shoulders, the black lines tattooed over his body, most of them stories, a few a way for him to escape into the euphoria of the needle when the urge for violence became too great for him.

He saw the path of my eyes through the screen and grinned. “How’s your mom?”

“Vas te faire foutre.”Affectionately, I told him to go fuck himself. “She’s well. Wants to know when you’re coming back.” My relationship with my mother was complicated on the best of days, and watching Angelo ship Ana off to Europe for a better life brought back the worst of my memories.

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