Thiago pulls out and I whimper.
He sets me on the ground, his hand coming up to hold my hip. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” I nod, finding my feet. “Just a little sore.”
Cupping my nape, he bends and kisses my forehead. “Lo siento, preciosa.”
I push off the wall and close the distance between us, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing my cheek against his chest.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m not ready for this to end this just yet,” I admit softly.
His arms close around me, holding me tight.
“What do you think is ending?”
“I don’t know,” I say with a casual shrug. “Where do we go from here?”
He palms my shoulders and pushes me back, looking keenly down into my eyes. “Home.”
I think about his home, about how things have been for us there. The only times we’ve really come together are in the middle of the night, almost in secret like we didn’t want anyone to know. I realize I’m the reason things have been that way, but I don’t want that anymore.
“Each in our own bedroom.”
His finger comes under my chin and he lifts it until I meet his eyes again. “No,” he says simply. “No more separate bedrooms. You’ll sleep in our bed moving forward, amor.”
My heart lurches against my rib cage at his emphatic tone. Is it really our bed, I wonder?
“Has anyone else slept in it?”
A slow grin spreads across his face and his arm tightens around me. “You have no idea how much I love this jealous side of you,” he purrs. “No other women outside of the cartel have ever even been to the mansion. That’s why it’s ours.”
A timid smile touches my lips. “Okay.”
For a moment, Thiago looks down at me. There’s a quiet, forceful intensity in his stare that creates a swell in my chest. He reaches out to cup my face, the pad of his thumb gently stroking my cheek, his gaze contemplative.
“Are you ready to accept the fact that you’re my wife now?”
I never thought there’d come a day where that question didn’t immediately make me want to run for the hills, but I’m standing in front of him still, feet firmly planted on the ground. I don’t want to fight anymore, both against what feels like the inevitable but also against my own emerging feelings.
“If we’re going to do this—”
“This?” he questions.
“Be married.”
His hand tightens on my cheek, his eyes flashing.
“There’s no if, amor, you—”
I set a palm on his chest, quieting him. “If we’re doing this, we should try and do it right. That’s what I was going to say. I have to be able to trust you and you have to trust me in return.”
When a shift in the air makes me shiver, Thiago reaches for my discarded gown and gets down on one knee, helping me put it back on until I’m holding the front up against my chest. Hands on my hips twist me to face the wall as he silently pulls the back zipper closed. He grips a handful of my ass when he’s done, making me yelp.
“Sorry, couldn’t help it.” He doesn’t sound sorry at all. In fact, I can hear the smile in his words without even turning around.
When I do, I find him already in his trousers, looking down at his belt as he tightens it. He reaches for his shirt, looking back expectantly at me.
“Trust obviously isn’t going to happen overnight, but maybe,” I pause, finding my words. “Maybe you can start by telling me about Adriana.”
A shadow crosses his face before he hides it smoothly behind the mask of control he always wears. I wonder if he’s grieved her death. Vengeance is one thing, but grief is another altogether. Something tells me he hasn’t let himself feel that pain.
He looks down at where his hands work the buttons of his shirt. “What do you want to know?”
His fingers falter when I touch him. I take over for him, slowly buttoning his shirt from the bottom up. “How old was she?”
“When she died? She’d just turned twenty-three.”
My stomach twists in response. We’d be more or less the same age today.
“What happened?” I question softly.
“She was kidnapped from a club. Firenze.” Realization flashes in his eyes and his hands come back to my waist, his touch urgent. “You’re forbidden from ever going back.” I part my lips to tell him his tight grip is hurting me, but he mistakes my mouth opening as potential disagreement. “That’s non-negotiable. I don’t ever want you going back there. If you feel like going out, I’ll take you somewhere better. Somewhere safer.”
The chaotic look in his eye pierces right through my chest. It exposes a part of him I haven’t seen before.
I shake my head. “Of course I won’t go.”
His shoulders drop with his low exhale, the sudden tension in his body easing somewhat. He releases me and even though I’d been about to tell him he was hurting me, I find myself missing his touch.
“After she was kidnapped, my father received an anonymous, untraceable message telling us she was murdered in retaliation for crimes of the cartel. To punish him for unnamed acts he’d committed. They included her finger.” I inhale sharply, my hand flying to my mouth. “She always wore our mother’s engagement ring on her right hand. You can imagine it being returned to my father in that way.” He breathes violently through his nose. “Their final act of punishment was telling us they’d never reveal the location of her body. That we’d have to live the rest of our lives wondering what happened to her in her final hours and what they did with her remains.”
It’s my turn to cup his face, forcing him to look back down at me. His brows twitch when he sees the tears on my face.
“I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine going through something like that. You didn’t deserve it.”
“Yes, we did.” He clasps my hands and removes them from his face, bringing them down between us. “Don’t cry for me, amor, I don’t deserve your tears. You know exactly who I am. What I’ve done. My father made me in his image; whatever I’m guilty of, he’s done a hundred times over. This business is war and people pay in blood for every victory, for every new inch of power. There are an innumerable amount of people who would slit my or my father’s throats for revenge if given the opportunity. We deserve worse than death. But Adriana.” He stumbles. “Adriana did nothing wrong. She was never involved with the business, never wanted anything to do with it. She always said she was a pacifist,” he says with a rueful smile. “She studied botany, for fuck’s sake. All she wanted was to work with plants, to have a couple cats, and to live in a home with a large garden where she could plant anything she wanted. That’s it. She came to London to celebrate her graduation. She was innocent. Killing her never made any sense to me,” he continues. “I never understood why anyone would willingly make an enemy out of us. They had to know our retaliation strategy would be complete annihilation.”
I blow out a shuddering breath. The truth is so far from what I expected. I’d fabricated this entire story in my head about her, blindly hating her based on my own foolish rush to judgment.
“Have you found the person responsible?”
“Not yet.” He looks off to the side and awareness brushes up my spine.
“You’re lying.”
His gaze slides back to mine, his brow raising.
“Or at the very least, you’re hiding something.”
The ghost of a smile touches his lips. “You know my tells already, amor?”
Picking up his discarded bow tie, I slip it around his neck, leaving it hanging on his chest. I can’t bring myself to finish tying it. There’s something about him looking unruly, about him looking just a little undone, that I love. He’s black tattoos and a lethal gaze and bloody knuckles. He was never meant to be constrained by something as formal and restrictive as a tuxedo. My eyes flick up to meet his.
“This is about trust, remember? So trust me. Earlier, you said you’d show me something if I wanted. What was it?”
Those same knuckles come up to brush my cheek, the contrast between the knives etched on his skin and the tender touch ridiculous.
“You want to see?”
I nod.
“Why? he asks. “I thought you hated this world even more than she did.”
“Because she was innocent and whoever killed her should pay,” I explain. “Protecting the ones you love at all costs is not something I have any trouble understanding. So show me.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t want to scare you.”
I lift an unwavering look at him and set my jaw. He already knows how stubborn I can be.
“I can handle it.”
He hums thoughtfully and thumbs my lip, staring at my mouth contemplatively for long moments.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Nothing.” His eyes lift to mine. “I’m just wondering how your father could ever have willingly parted with you.”
His words are raw and honest. They hit me like a punch to the solar plexus. I have a hard time reconciling this man with the violent cartel boss I know him to be, and yet they’re one and the same.
“When he finally realizes his fuck up, it’ll be too late. I won’t give you back.”
“He’s unlikely to ever see it as a mistake.”
“Good,” he growls, kissing my forehead again. “I can show you what I know about Adriana now if that’s what you want.”
My heart picks up in anticipation. I nod.
“I want to know. Show me.”
Thiago gives me a pleased smile, then looks around one last time to make sure we’re not forgetting anything. His palm comes to the small of my back as he guides me out the door.
“We’ll take the car. It’s about a twenty minute drive from here so it won’t take long.”
He keeps talking, walking beside me as we head back towards the main entrance where we left our coats. On impulse, I reach for his hand and take it in mine.
He comes to a slow stop, eventually looking down at where our fingers are threaded together. His expression is somewhere between riveted and mystified.
I’m about to pull my hand out of his and mumble some kind of embarrassed apology when he lifts it to his mouth. He presses a soft kiss on the back of my hand, his eyes staring intently deep into my soul. Something indescribable passes between us in that small, unimportant moment, but I know I’ll keep a memory of it in my heart forever.
Without another word, he takes off again. Except this time, my hand is buried in his and he’s squeezing my fingers like he’s planning on never letting go.
