Page 46 of Where the Wicked Reign

“Fine,” he grunted. “One careful step at a time. We’ll start with the operation she wants our help with and evaluate from there.Butif things do go a bad way with her, you need to drop the hammer, Nico. You give her a free pass or favor her in ways you never would others just because you’ve got an intense thing for her, and it could destroy us all. Keep that in mind, all right? Keep it in fucking mind.”

Before I could get another word out, he spun and stormed out of the room, slamming the door closed for good measure, the force of it reverberating through the space.

Message received.

Fuck.

Things were this tense already and the worrying thing was that they were just getting started.

9

~Emilio~

Caterina Leone was dangerous.

It was a big part of my job to anticipate threats and to do it ahead of time, often before anybody else.Thento decimate those threats before they could come close to harming Nico, our soldiers and associates, or even the family as a whole.

And I’d most definitely identified Caterina as one such threat.

But Nico and Julian weren’t viewing her that way.

Julian had become enamored with her because he’d never met somebody like her before who wasn’t immediately taken with him and instantly receptive to his charms. I was sure it also had something to do with the kinship he’d recognized in her from her having awful issues with her father, just like he had with his.

For Nico, it was complicated. Too goddamn complicated.

Honestly, the best thing to do was to have him fuck her as soon as possible so he could hopefully get it out of his system. His weird mating dance with her had been going on for a ridiculous amount of time, so now she was high up on a pedestal for him, like some sort of an untouchable goddess that he’d built up so much in his mind. Just like Julian wasn’t used to somebody not succumbing to him immediately, Nico wasn’t used to being challenged, especially not by a hot piece like the Leone princess. He’d been paired with socialites all his life, fake dating, playing a role. He’d never been able to be himself. But he had with Caterina and he’d become obsessed with the fact that he actually could be.

So, yeah, something needed to give, so he could see straighter when it came to her.

And the way I saw it, it was to break the sexual tension between them, to smash through all that buildup. He needed to fuck her, and he needed to do it as soon as possible.

It was something I’d just relayed to Julian.

He leaned back in his hot tub on his balcony, sipping from his Belvedere vodka, savoring the velvety texture he always credited it with. “What am I? Nico’s pimp now?”

I rolled my eyes at his dramatics. “More along the lines of his wingman in this situation.”

“So you wanted me to stop him from fucking her and now you want me to push for it to happen?”

“Goddammit, yes.”

“Well, I didn’t just stop him because he was in his fucked-up state, it was because he hadn’t told her the truth about the whole ridiculous forced marriage shit, and we knew he would have regretted doing it dishonestly like that—at least with her.”

“What’s your point?”

He took his time taking another sip from his glass, making me wait and holding power over me in any way he could, as he so loved doing. It was a game we played and normally I was fine with it and oftentimes it turned me on something fierce. Just not right now. Not with this.

It had me snapping, “Julian!”

He jolted, some of his vodka spilling over his glass and into the water. He cursed and glared out at me. He downed the rest of it, then slammed it down on the white tile surrounding the hot tub. “Fine,” he muttered. “My point is that I think the best way to make it happen is to actually let him go fullferal.”

“What?”

“You should’ve seen her with him. She was into it. Big time. I think that’s what he wants from her, the root of his obsession. He thinks she can take him like that.”

“And if she can’t?”

“Then we’ll be there to stop him.” He sank back against the tub. “Mmm, honestly, though, I bet she can take a hell of a lot.”

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