“Matteo.”
“What are you doing, Alessia?”
“I have to go,” she said, her eyes focused behind him now, fearful. Fearful of her father, he knew. He was gripped then by a sudden need to erase her fears. To keep her from ever needing to be afraid again.
“Where?” he asked, his voice rough.
“The airport. Meet me.”
“Alessia …”
“Matteo, please. I’ll wait.” She shut the door to the limo and the car pulled out of the parking lot, just as her father exited the church.
“You!” Antonioni turned on him. “What have you done?”
And Alessandro appeared behind him, his eyes blazing with fury. “Yes, cousin, what have you done?”
Alessia’s hands shook as she handed the cash to the woman at the clothing shop. She’d never been permitted to go into a store like this. Her father thought this sort of place, with mass-produced garments, was common. Not for a Battaglia. But the jeans, T-shirt and trainers she’d found suited her purpose because they were common. Because any woman would wear them. Because a Battaglia would not. As if the Battaglias had the money to put on the show they did. Her father borrowed what he had to in order to maintain the fiction that their power was as infinite as it ever was. His position as Minister for the Trade and Housing department might net him a certain amount of power, power that was easily and happily manipulated, but it didn’t keep the same flow of money that had come from her grandfather’s rather more seedy organization.
The shopgirl looked at her curiously, and Alessia knew why. A shivering bride, sans groom, in a small tourist shop still wearing her gown and veil was a strange sight indeed.
“May I use the changing room?” she asked once her items were paid for.
She felt slightly sick using her father’s money to escape, sicker still over the way she’d gotten it. She must have been quite the sight in the bank, in her wedding gown, demanding a cash advance against a card with her father’s name on it.
“I’m a Battaglia,” she’d said, employing all the self-importance she’d ever heard come from Antonioni. “Of course it’s all right for me to access my family money.”
Cash was essential, because she knew better than to leave a paper trail. Having a family who had, rather famously, been on the wrong side of the law was helpful in that regard at least. As had her lifelong observation of how utter confidence could get you things you shouldn’t be allowed to have. The money in her purse being a prime example.
“Of course,” the cashier said.
Alessia scurried into the changing room and started tugging off the gown, the hideous, suffocating gown. The one chosen by her father because it was so traditional. The virgin bride in white.
If he only knew.
She contorted her arm behind her and tugged at the tab of the zip, stepping out of the dress, punching the crinoline down and stepping out of the pile of fabric. She slipped the jeans on and tugged the stretchy black top over her head.
She emerged from the room a moment later, using the rubber bands she’d purchased to restrain her long, thick hair. Then she slipped on the trainers, ruing her lack of socks for a moment, then straightened.
And she breathed. Feeling more like herself again. Like Alessia. “Thank you,” she said to the cashier. “Keep the dress. Sell it if you like.”
She dashed out of the store and onto the busy streets, finally able to breathe. Finally.
She’d ditched the limo at the bank, offering the driver a generous tip for his part in the getaway. It only took her a moment to flag down a cab.
She slid in the back, clutching her bag to her chest. “Aeroporto di Catania, per favore.”
“Naturalmente.”
Matteo hadn’t lingered at the basilica. Instead, he’d sidestepped his cousin’s furious questions and gotten into his sports car, roaring out of the parking lot and heading in the direction of the airport without giving it any thought.
His heart was pounding hard, adrenaline pouring through him.
He felt beyond himself today. Out of control in a way he never allowed.
In a way he rarely allowed, at least. There had been a few breaks in his infamous control, and all of them were tied to Alessia. And they provided a window into just what he could become if the hideous cold that lived in him met with passionate flame.
She was his weakness. A weakness he should never have allowed and one he should certainly never allow again.
Dark eyes clashing with his in a mirror hanging behind the bar. Eyes he would recognize anywhere.
He turned sharply and saw her, the breath pulled from his lungs.
He set his drink down on the bar and walked across the crowded room, away from his colleagues.
“Alessia.” He addressed her directly for the first time in thirteen years.
“Matteo.” His name sounded so sweet on her lips.
It had been a month since their night together in New York City, a chance encounter, he’d imagined. He wondered now.
A whole month and he could still taste her skin on his tongue, could still feel the soft curves of her breasts resting in his palms. Could still hear her broken sighs of need as they took each other to the height of pleasure.
And he had not wanted another woman since.
They barely made it into his hotel room, they were far too desperate for each other. He slammed the door, locking it with shaking fingers, pressing her body against the wall. Her dress was long, with a generous slit up the side, revealing her toned, tan legs.
He wrapped his fingers around her thigh and tugged her leg up around his hip, settling the hardness of his erection against her softness.
It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
Matteo stopped at a red light, impatience tearing at him. Need, need like he had only known once before, was like a beast inside him, devouring, roaring.
Finally, she was naked, her bare breasts pressing hard against his chest. He had to have her. His entire body trembling with lust.
“Ready for me, cara mia?”
“Always for you.”
He slid inside of her body, so tight, much more so than he’d expected, than he’d ever experienced. She cried out softly, the bite of her nails in his flesh not due to pleasure now.
A virgin.
His. Only his.
Except she had not been his. It had been a lie. The next morning, Alessia was gone. And when he’d returned to Sicily, she’d been there.
He’d been invited to a family party but he had not realized that all branches of the Corretti family would be present. Had not realized it was an engagement party. For Alessandro and Alessia. A party to celebrate the end of a feud, the beginning of a partnership between the Battaglias and the Correttis, a change to revitalize the docklands in Palermo and strengthen their family corporation.
“How long have you and Alessia been engaged?” he asked, his eyes trained on her even as he posed the question to Alessandro.
“For a while now. But we wanted to wait to make the big announcement until all the details were finalized.”
“I see,” he said. “And when is the blessed event?”
“One month. No point in waiting.”
Some of the old rage burned through the desire that had settled inside of him. She had been engaged to Alessandro when he’d taken her into his bed. She’d intended, from the beginning, to marry another man the night she’d given herself to him.
And he, he had been forced to watch her hang on his cousin’s arm for the past month while his blood boiled in agony as he watched his biggest rival hold on to the one thing he wanted more than his next breath. The one thing he had always wanted, but never allowed himself to have.
He had craved violence watching the two of them together. Had longed to rip Alessandro’s hands off her and show him what happened when a man touched what belonged to him.
Even now, the thought sent a rising tide of nausea through him.
What was it Alessia did to him? This wave of possessiveness, this current of passion that threatened to drown him, it was not something that was a part of him. He was a man who lived in his mind, a man who embraced logic and fact, duty and honor.
When he did not, when he gave in to emotion, the danger was far too great. He was a Corretti, cut from the same cloth as his father and grandfather, a fabric woven together with greed, violence and a passion for acquiring more money, more power, than any one man could ever need.
Even with logic, with reason, he could and had justified actions that would horrify most men. He hated to think what might happen if he were unleashed without any hold on his control.
So he shunned passion, in all areas of life.
Except one.
He pulled his car off the road and slammed on his breaks, killing the engine, his knuckles burning from the hard grip he had on the steering wheel, his breath coming in short, harsh bursts.
This was not him. He didn’t know himself with Alessia, and he never had.
And nothing good could come from it. He had spent his life trying to change the man he seemed destined to be. Trying to keep control, to move his life in a different direction than the one his father would have pushed him into.
Alessia compromised that. She tested it.
He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to catch his breath.
Then he turned the key over, the engine roaring to life again. And he turned the car around, heading away from the airport, away from the city.
He punched a button on his dashboard and connected himself to his PA.