Page 16 of Playing the Sicilian's Game of Revenge

“While I thought it was love?”

He would not touch that question with a ten-foot pole. “There is chemistry between us, Saverina.”

“Ah. A woman in your bed at your disposal was one of the things that wasn’t a lie in this whole debacle. How comforting.”

“I could have many a woman at my disposal should I so choose, bedda.”

“But you chose me. For my last name. This is not quite the compliment you seem to think it is.”

He scowled because she was taking this off the rails. While he was being reasonable and rational. “Regardless of how you feel on the matter, this was the plan. This is the plan. And you are here listening to it because you want to see Dante suffer almost as much as I do.”

She frowned a little, but she did not argue. Because she wanted this too. Maybe he’d have preferred her to be in the dark. Maybe that would have been easier. It certainly would have given him more control over the situation, but nothing needed to change just because she knew. He still had his plan. He still had her.

Now he just needed his revenge.

He held out the ring she’d left on the table. “Things do not need to change, Saverina. We want the same things. It only involves a few well-placed pretends, and while we pretend, I can offer you anything you want.”

She let out one of those odd long breaths, like a swimmer gasping for air. Yet she was perfectly calm and in control when she spoke. “No, you can’t.”

“Name it.”

“Love, Teo. I want to marry someone I love. Like Lorenzo and Brianna love each other. They make each other happy. They make each other better.”

He turned away from her then. His only experience with love was that it hurt. That it meant loss—of control, of hope. He had loved his mother—and to what end? There had been nothing he could do to stop Dante from ruining her life. Nothing he could do to stop cancer from ending her life. Love did not matter. It was the most inconsequential thing on the planet.

“Love is what I want, and that is what you cannot give,” she said.

Before he could think of anything to say to that ridiculousness, she stood and moved around so they were facing each other once again. She reached out, and he nearly backed away. He did not want to feel the soft brush of her comforting touch in this disorienting moment with the word love echoing about.

But she only uncurled his clenched fingers and took the ring from his hand. “But I also want to see Dante suffer for what he’s done to Lorenzo. And since Lorenzo won’t wage this war himself, I will. We will fake this engagement, Teo. I will play along with your plans. But I will not marry you. Once we have destroyed Dante, we will dissolve the engagement in a way that does not reflect poorly on either of us. That is the offer I’ll extend to you. It’s the only one I will, and you must decide now.”

He surveyed this woman he could not seem to get a handle on. He didn’t think he’d underestimated her, exactly. He’d known she was clever and might, at some point, begin to wonder about his motives, but he’d never expected her to understand his plan so quickly.

He’d never expected all the flashes of something else in her expression to exist, or to bother him. To have him hesitating. It would be easy enough to lie again. To agree to her little counterplan knowing he had every inclination of talking her out of dissolving anything—for a few years at least.

But he was beginning to see that even if he could persuade her, that route came with...uncomfortable and unusual pitfalls.

“I cannot agree to this plan, as I think a marriage will be necessary to prove my point, to twist the knife. However, I will concede that the matter shall be left up in the air. If you can convince me a dissolution of our engagement can work once enough time has passed, I’ll agree.”

“And if not? I’ll just be required to marry you?”

Teo lifted a shoulder. “I see no other way.”

“You are ridiculous, Teo. I am in charge of saying ‘I do.’ Well, in this case, not saying it.”

The sparring put him back on even ground. Re-cemented his control. He even managed a smile. “If you are so certain, there is no harm in agreeing, Saverina.”

“There will be ground rules,” she said fiercely. “Reams of them.”

“You may come up with whatever rules you wish,” he returned, and his smile got more genuine by the second.

She only scowled. “You must follow them.”

“We’ll see.” Which he figured was a perfect time to make an exit. Let her consider it overnight. She would come to his way of thinking.

And if she didn’t, he would simply convince her.

Because they were as close to Dante’s ruination as he’d ever been. So there was no turning back.

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