Page 2 of Playing the Sicilian's Game of Revenge

She had dressed knowing she would have a meeting with him today, opting for a skirt over pants and a blouse the color of strawberries that skimmed her figure rather than hid it.

It was all very professional, but it definitely wasn’t sexless.

“You have access to my calendar, do you not?” he finally said, that dark, delicious voice of his threatening to turn her insides to absolute mush. “You couldn’t have just changed the meetings?”

“No,” she replied, feigning—perhaps a little exaggeratedly—shock and disdain. “Not everyone is prudent about filling out their schedules, and you know how Lorenzo is about changing things. We need to make certain no more reschedules happen.” Which was, of course, ridiculous, because Lorenzo was the one rescheduling in the first place.

But she liked having an excuse to see Teo at work, and it was often easier to meet face-to-face to make schedule changes rather than trade endless back-and-forth emails. Or so she told herself.

“We must behave ourselves at work, Saverina,” he said, and she supposed he meant it to sound scolding, but the curve of his mouth and the heat in his eyes undermined his words.

“I don’t recall suggesting otherwise,” she responded brightly. This man had turned her world upside down, sure, but she was still herself. Inwardly she might quake a little, but even when Teo got under her skin, under her defenses, she didn’t let him know that.

She hoped.

Teo LaRosa was not a good man. He knew this every time he put his hands on Saverina Parisi and did not tell her the truth. Every time he watched with too much interest as she crossed her legs in his office.

As he did now. She was a beautiful woman. Smart, and so quick-witted it nearly knocked him off his axis on a daily basis. Even if he had not targeted her, he might have found himself interested in her.

But he had targeted her. From the start. After this job, she was the key to his plan for revenge. Retribution would always be more important than goodness or truth.

No matter the surprise of Saverina Parisi.

“I believe your eyes were suggesting otherwise, bedda,” he said, enjoying these interludes when they were just alone enough to flirt, arouse, seduce...but at work and unable to go through with any of it. Until tonight.

After.

It had been no hardship wooing her. She was beautiful. Clever. He hadn’t even really planned to take her to bed. It had just sort of...happened. The chemistry was undeniable.

It was hard, sometimes, to remember that she was a means to an end over someone to be enjoyed. But at the end of the day, he always remembered.

Just as he always remembered what Dante Marino had said to him the first and last time Teo had approached him.

I will crush you if you try.

Teo would never be crushed. He would use everything in his power—this job with Dante’s worst enemy, a soon-to-be engagement to said worst enemy’s sister—to not just flourish, but to crush Dante first. In every way that would hurt the man’s substantial pride and reputation.

Saverina was a tool, but this would not hurt her in any real way. Her beloved brother also hated Dante Marino. So Teo did not consider this using her, exactly. They enjoyed each other. And when she married him, he would be a suitable husband. He would provide for her in the lifestyle to which she was accustomed. He would be kind—or his version of kind. He would never drag her name through the mud or embarrass her, and he would certainly never treat her in a way that would make her fear for her life.

That was a Dante Marino specialty, and Teo had promised himself the moment he’d discovered the truth that he would never be anything like his biological father.

Perhaps he could not love Saverina as such a young, beautiful woman deserved to be loved. He had no use for love, for children, for families...all those delicate things that could be lost. But he would give her a good life.

She would never need know that she was a tool or a pawn.

They rearranged the necessary schedules, and Teo fixed them into his computerized calendar himself while simultaneously noting them down in his paper planner as that always helped him remember things without having to look at them again.

He had not risen in the ranks at Parisi Enterprises by being careless or relying on anyone else, even an assistant, though he had one at his disposal now. He had worked hard, kept all his cards close to the vest, and given Saverina space and time to arrive in his orbit rather than go after her so obviously.

Teo knew how to be patient. He knew how to lay a trap. But most of all, Teo LaRosa knew how to survive.

Now he was on the precipice of thriving. As he’d promised his mother he would after she’d made those world-altering deathbed confessions.

He had the unwanted image of his mother, small and frail and wasting away in a hospital bed, lodged in his mind, and needed to erase it. The way he’d been doing for the past two years.

Focus on his revenge.

“That should be all,” Saverina said, rising from her seat. He rose too, enjoying the way she didn’t quite meet his gaze. He knew if she did, her cheeks would go pink, and she didn’t want to leave his office flushed and flustered.

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