Page 120 of Rosetti Family New York
A breath hisses through my teeth. She's right to be scared, but she's wrong if she thinks I'm just going to roll over and let it happen. "Have you forgotten who I am?" I turn to her, my eyes locked on hers to make sure she gets it. "Rosettis are hunters, not prey."
Before she can argue back, I turn the key and peel away from the curb, keeping my eyes on the road, not trusting myself to look at her. She's going to be the death of me. Maybe literally.
22
Besiana
I’m still shaking when we get to the Rosetti mansion, my teeth clattering like wind-up toys. Domenico doesn’t say a word, his hand gripping the steering wheel so hard I’m waiting for it to snap in half. He slams the car door shut, and we’re inside before I catch my breath. I follow him through the freezing halls.
“What the hell were you doing there, Besiana?” he asks finally, each word as sharp as broken glass. My voice is trapped somewhere deep in my chest. I look at him and feel everything—fury, worry, relief—rolling off him like thunder.
“Saying goodbye,” I manage. “For good.”
His eyes narrow, suspicious. “You didn’t have to go to his house.”
I rub my arms against the cold, my head still spinning. The marble floors gleam under the harsh lights. I can feel him staring. He steps closer, and my heart clenches.
“His house? It was once my house too.”
“Not anymore,” he snaps. “So why the hell were you there?”
“I had to see him one last time,” I whisper, as much to myself as to him.
He’s quiet. It makes my skin itch. We stand in the empty living room, the cold seeping through my clothes and settling in my bones. He doesn’t let up. “Why now?”
The words pile up inside me, an avalanche threatening to break loose. The truth is on the tip of my tongue. How I was spying for Baba, passing on information, how the person who leaked the ixaphorine warehouse location was me, not Rafe, and how I’m so so sorry.
But before my secrets spill from me, Dom turns to face me, dark fury etched into his features. “Are you spying for the Albanians, Besiana?” He stalks closer. “I don’t demand your love or even your fondness, but I do demand two things of my wife. The first is loyalty.” He closes his hand around my throat, squeezing just tight enough to make my breath bubble out of me.
“If you aren’t loyal to me and my family, you don’t get to live. Do you understand?”
My confessions freeze in my throat. The man who made love to me and told me he loved me has vanished. This man is harsh and cold, willing to exact his fury on me if he ever discovers what I did.
He releases his grip on my throat just enough for me to nod.
“Say it. Tell me you understand.”
“I understand.”
"Would you like to know the second thing I demand of my wife?”
I nod.
“Not your fondness. Not your love. Just your body,” he says without a hint of softness in his voice.
He steps back and rakes his gaze down my body, slowly, running it over my fur coat, down to where my feet stand in heels sharp enough to poke out someone’s eye.
“Take off your coat,” he says.
I slide it off my shoulders and move to take it to the coat room, but he stops me in my tracks. “Throw it onto the sofa.”
I comply, standing there in my skirt suit, jacket done up over a dusty rose blouse.
“Jacket,” he says, and I unbutton it, glance up at him for instructions, and he just nods to the sofa, so I throw it on top of my fur coat.
The heat in his gaze is enough to melt my clothes right off me, but he doesn’t touch me. He stands a couple of yards away, his gaze glued to my body, and my fear morphs into excitement, my heart racing for another reason.
“Take off your skirt.”
