Page 13 of The Leader

“It wasn’t a coincidence, was it? You, sending me to retrieve something from your vault, the same night Detta was sitting there, alone in the dark.”

He took another sip of his wine and then looked at her. “I suppose it’s too late to say that I don’t know what you’re talking about?”

Jazzy scoffed. “Why? You had to know you were placing me on his radar, making me a challenge to him.” Antonio Rossi never did anything without a reason. The old man was the most manipulative person she’d ever met. Had he lived a few centuries ago, he would have ruled in a Medieval court.

“Because I won’t be around forever.”

“What?” Panic grabbed her by the throat at the thought of something happening to him. “Are you sick? Why haven’t you told me? Or are we at war again?” She wasn’t sure what would be worse. She remembered a time, over a decade ago, when a war between families broke out, and she, Carmen, and their cousins had been in lockdown for months.

“No war,” he reassured her. “But I am getting older, and I will be having a few minor surgeries in a week. Nothing big, but you never know.” He stared outside into the garden for a moment before he looked straight at her. “We both know who will come after you should anything happen to me.”

Marco.

The ever-present dark panic inside her started to rise again, sending a chill over her spine, but she pushed it back. She couldn’t afford to be petrified by fear.

“And I will be ready if he does. This is what I have trained for over the years.” She knew of a dozen ways to incapacitate a man.

“There’s no ‘if,’ Jazzy. There’s only ‘when.’ He’s too much of a coward to come after you alone. That will not be the way he will operate. He has the means to come at you with sheer numbers you could never match on your own. I wish…” He cleared his throat. “Had he been any other man, I would have made him suffer and had him killed for what he did to you and Mary.”

It was true. Marco had the manpower and the means to come after her. In fact, it had been his parting words to her:I will make you pay, slut. I will fucking make you bleed.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“No, you never did,” he said with a sigh.

“So, what, you think Giovanni Detta is going to protect me from Marco?” Like she would ever tell him of her shame. She hadn’t told anyone. Ever. Not even her grandfather knew the full extent of what had really happened that night all those years ago. “I won’t tell him about it. You promised me, gave me your word, you wouldn’t tell anyone either.” She was going to hold him to that.

“This marriage might be good for you in other ways too. You seem adrift lately, Jocelyn. Marriage could ground you.”

She rolled her eyes at his archaic views of how a woman was not complete without a man.

“Even barbed wire has no purpose in life without a wall or gate to defend,” he continued.

She scowled. “You calling me stingy?”

“Would you rather have me compare you to a thorny rose?”

Yuck. “Barbed wire is fine.” An analogy that would make Detta a wall. How fitting.

“Giovanni Detta is extremely protective when it comes to the safety of his family,” he suddenly said. “Detta might not lead the life of a gangster on the outside, but that boy was raised, in every way, to the image of his father. Meaning that, if you should tell him about a threat to you, he will take care of it. Don’t... don’t ask Detta to take Marco out. Not during my lifetime. That is all I ask of you.”

Jazzy immediately walked over to her grandfather, wrapping her arms around his frame. They would never do that in public; he wouldn’t let her, believing it would make him look weak in front of the world. But here, inside, she could hug him all she wanted.

“I would never do that,” she assured him. “Still, even if I married Detta, it’s no guarantee that Marco won’t come after me should anything happen to you. Technically, I would no longer fall under your protection. Marco hasn’t set foot on American soil for over a decade. He might not even know who Detta is.”

“Oh, he will learn. And only a crazy man would go after the wife of a Detta.”

But who was to say Detta would give a crap about her well-being after he’d gained control over Rossi Enterprises? After all, he would no longer need her.

“Especially when it’s the wife of Giovanni Detta, their leader,” her grandfather continued. “There’s a reason they call him Black Ice. They claim he has a black heart and there runs ice through his veins. He never shows any emotion during a negotiation. Just puts down his demands, and it’s either take it or leave it.”

Wonderful. She was going to become Mrs. Black Ice. Guess she had no choice but to become the global warming to his iceberg.

CHAPTER 10

JAZZY

The next morning, Jazzy found herself in front of a large mirror in Giovanni Detta’s estate, wearing her mother’s old wedding gown. It was a simple champagne-colored one without sleeves. She had insisted on wearing the vintage dress instead of choosing one from the selection of wedding apparel that were shown to her by some bridal expert, courtesy of her fiancé.

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