Page 22 of Wicked Rivals

And yes, sexy as hell.

If only I could forget about the terrible things he did as head of his family, the crimes he committed, his sins, everything that made him what he was.

In another lifetime, if I were alone with him, I might have let this predator take me, take all of me, everything. I might have let him treat me the way I knew he could, let him protect me, worship me.

But I wasn’t alone, and men like Stefano Vignali came with too much risk. I no longer had the liberty to take those risks.

I had to think about my son first and always.

Of course, I knew why Stefano had come. I didn’t know how he’d found out about Enzo, but he had. He finally knew about his son. What he would do next, I couldn’t foresee. He made it crystal clear, though, that he intended to confirm his suspicions.

He continued pacing in front of us, his intense fury burning him from the inside out. His body heat reached out to me like the licking flames of a blazing fire.

And still, all he’d done was call me a liar and break a teacup.

Was that really going to be the extent of it?

He could have screamed at me. He could have had his men deal with me while he took my son away from me, all of which he probably thought fell within his rights.

A man like Stefano, well, the legal technicalities of breaking and entering or kidnapping wouldn’t bother him. He wouldn’t give it a second thought, not if he believed something or someone belonged to him.

He didn’t do any of that.

One brief explosion of anger, but the only victim turned out to be my teacup. He had even thrown the cup away from Enzo and me, so it would hit the wall instead of us.

When he pushed his hands into his hair and started pacing, breathing deeply and slowly, I understood what he was doing.

This man functioned on order and control. Thrived on it.

Now he needed to rein it back in, and I used those seconds during his loss of control as an opportunity to do whatever I could to protect my child.

I grabbed Enzo and pulled him behind me, so he wouldn’t have to face the full impact of Stefano’s outbursts, or worse, if it came to that.

But Enzo yanked his hand out of my grasp and stepped away from me, his steely gaze focused on the dangerous stranger pacing by the window.

Was Enzo angry at me too, for keeping him a secret from the man he had to know by now was his father?

Probably. A conversation for another time, though.

Right now, my child likely thought he was protecting me from the big man throwing tantrums in our home, proving himself to be the nine-year-old man of the house.

The sight of my boy that way became a moment of pride for me and breathtakingly terrifying all at once.

Then Stefano stopped moving and turned to Enzo.

His chest and shoulders rose and fell with his heavy breath.

I wanted to stop him before he said anything else, to intercede and keep this inevitable nightmare from playing out any further than it already had. But I froze, staring at the man I’d spent nearly every night thinking about for the past ten years.

At that moment, I even questioned myself.

Why had I done this?

How could I have truly believed he would never find out?

Nothing but pure luck had ensured it took Stefano so long in the first place. If I really wanted to keep Enzo from his father, I would have left Brooklyn and New York altogether.

If I had taken Enzo across the country as a baby, somewhere nondescript and boring, Stefano would never have known.

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