Taboo Flames (The Sicilian Sins #2)

Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

Giovanni

I f there’s one thing I’ve learned about Aurora, it is that she’s a shit liar.

She’d be dead if she were really a part of my world. You need a poker face as solid as a steel mask to survive in my world.

She has far too many tells, from the shifty eyes to the way she bites her lips to how she wrings her hands. I’m not sure she even knows she’s doing all those things, but I, of course, clocked all of it at once.

At first, I suspected she was cheating on me…if that word can even be used for two people in a non-relationship.

Naturally, my plan was to tail her and find out who the bastard was. But as soon as she took a turn onto the highway, I knew exactly where she was headed. I saw the home page of the orphanage I grew up in on her laptop, and I put two and two together when Fabio sent me a threatening yet enlightening message to ensure his sister didn’t get involved with my bullshit.

I’m not sure what would have made me angrier: her going to visit a lover or her putting her nose in my damn business. But in summary, I’m pissed right now.

I shouldn’t be surprised though. Her silence regarding my nightmare had been more than a little bit suspicious. I’d been waiting for her to fire me with a thousand questions concerning that night, but past her bruised throat, she had given no indication that anything had happened.

That had been my first hint.

“Gio,” she breathes out shakily, “W—what are you doing here?”

I stalk toward her and glare at her through her car window. “I could ask you the same thing, princess.”

“Oh,” she mumbles, chuckling nervously, “I was just on my way to?—”

I cut her off immediately and say, “If you’re about to lie, you can save it because it’ll only attract more punishment than you already deserve.”

A frisson of panic flashes through her face.

“Open the door,” I command.

“Gio, I can expla?—”

Without any preamble, I open the car door and drag her out. She lets out a shriek as I throw her over my shoulder and turn toward my car.

“Let me down!” she snaps.

“I should have shackled you to my bed the first chance I got,” I growl.

“Put me down. You can’t dictate what I do with my life.”

I drop her into the passenger seat and say, “Yes, I can. Especially when it has to do with you putting your nose in someone else’s business.”

“I had to know,” she explains.

I glare at her. “This is none of your concern, so stay out of it.”

“You’re my concern,” she insists stubbornly. “I have to understand your past if?—”

“My past stays firmly in the past,” I interrupt her. “It has no bearing on anything.”

“How can you say that?” she gasps. “Of course it does. Tell me what happened last night isn’t connected to your past, Gio. You looked haunted, you?—”

“That’s enough, Aurora,” I grit out. “I knew this thing with you would turn out to be more trouble than it’s worth.”

She gasped, hurt flickering in her eyes. “You d—don’t mean that.”

“This was a mistake. It’s obvious you’re too immature to know what a physical relationship entails.” I run a hand through my hair in leashed frustration. “It’s not all your fault though. I let us cross the boundaries that should have been firmly in place. I should never have let you sleep over.”

“You’re a dick, Gio,” she says angrily.

“And you have a goddamn hero complex that only seems to land you in trouble,” I tell her. “But I’m not a damsel in distress, Aurora. I don’t need you to save me.”

“Everyone should have someone who’s willing to save them,” she says quietly.

I chuckle bitterly. Aurora has her head so high up in the clouds that she believes everyone can be saved. Unfortunately for her, I’m irredeemable. If she wants to fix me, she is almost two decades too late.

“You’re just a too rich, too pretty, very bored, spoilt girl who’s looking for another pet project to entertain herself,” I tell her coldly. “I can’t be your pet project, princess. I don’t need fixing.”

Tears spring up to her eyes, and I hate that I’ve put that stricken look on her face. “How…how dare you?” she sputters.

“How dare I?” I roar. “You’re the one who’s trying to unearth things I’d rather leave buried just because you have nothing better to do with your time. Face it, Aurora. You’re not doing this for me. You’re digging just to satisfy your own curiosity.”

“And I think you’re a fucking coward,” she yells in reply. “You’re afraid to let me in, so at every point in time, when it begins to feel like we’re going somewhere, you find some bullshit way to push me away. Even now, you refuse to let me in because you’re just so terrified of anyone seeing the real you.”

“This. Is. The. Real. Me,” I grind through clenched jaws. “And we’re done with this conversation. I’m taking you home, and then I’m walking away like I should have done from the very beginning."

“Keep running, you coward!” she screams at me.

Ignoring her, I raise my hand to call one of my men who drove out with me as a backup. This part of the city is unfamiliar territory, and any troublemaker can pop out at any time.

As usual, Aurora never considers her safety in her harebrained schemes.

“Take Miss Vitale’s car home,” I instruct as I hand him the keys.

“I’ll go with him,” she says. “I don’t want to spend a second more around you.”

I look at my man with hostility, and his eyes widen before he scurries off. Good.

“No, you’re coming with me,” I tell her with finality.

The drive is riddled with oppressive silence, and even in my state of fury, I want to hear her voice. I want to shake her, scream at her, and yell that she should never have gone plucking at old wounds, but I also want her to blast her trashy music on the radio.

The sound of my phone ringing finally breaks the silence, and I breathe a sigh of relief. I grab the phone to pick up the call.

“You can’t drive while you’re on the phone,” she chides me angrily.

“And I can’t fuck my best friend’s little sister either,” I drawl coldly.

She flinches imperceptibly, and something ugly inside me triumphs at the dirty blow.

“Yes?” I say into the phone.

“Gio,” Giordano’s easy voice says into the phone, “I have news.”

I immediately pull the car over with a screech, “News?”

“Information, actually,” he says. “It’s about your Miss Vitale’s little problem. You will want to hear it. How soon can you get here?”

I look over at Aurora, looking small yet mutinous in the passenger seat. By now, she’ll know about him from what Fabio told me. So, since there is nothing to hide, I tighten my hand around the steering wheel and say, “Twenty-five minutes. Thirty tops.”

After hanging up, I throw the car into reverse.

“We’re taking a little detour,” I say when I see her puzzled expression.

“You mean extra minutes in the car with you?” She gasps dramatically. “How terrific. I’m so excited,” she adds sarcastically.

“If you wanted to be home so badly, you shouldn’t have left then.”

“It’s not the fact that I’m out of my very gorgeous, comfortable, well-decorated, spoilt little princess room, Gio,” she bites out. “It’s the company I have to endure. You can drop me off here and?—”

“Shut the fuck up,” I say quietly but deathly serious.

She snaps her mouth shut.

There’s a flutter within me that I can’t explain. But a little voice inside me points out that it’s the excitement that two of the possibly most important people to me are about to be in the same location, and I may be the tiniest bit excited about it.

I may even be eager for them to meet.

As we drive through Giordano’s steel gates, she turns to face me. “Is he a rabid werewolf? Why does one man need so much security?”

I ignore her in favor of parking the car and turning off the ignition.

“Stay here,” I order her.

I expect an eye roll or something similar, but she just looks down at her phone and starts clicking away. I feel a mild headache coming on, brought on by having to deal with Aurora.

I turn away and head into the house.

Entering the house, I find Giordano in the dining room. He’s seated at the head of the table with a newspaper open in front of him, and when I enter, he immediately drops it and takes off his reading glasses.

“This country’s gone to shit,” he begins, staring in disgust at the newspaper before he stabs a finger at it. “The policies they put in place only favor a select few. Now, I don’t mean to be a martyr because I’m in the class of the wealthy who benefit from these policies, but we all know the other classes will try to get back at us and cause problems.”

“I don’t think they should be favored just so they don’t bother us,” I say easily. “It’ll be like giving a hungry kid a tablet so you don’t have to feed it.”

“Hmm,” Giordano replies thoughtfully. “Anyway, about Il Sguardo Nero. I heard something about some big plans being in the works. I don’t get the sense that he’s in the trade.”

By trade, Giordano means the sale of guns and drugs.

I lean forward curiously. “Then what could be his source of power?”

“I’m still looking into it, but I suspect he’s more of a service provider than anything. Mercenaries for hire and so on.”

I raise a brow in surprise. That’s rather interesting. “That gives me an angle I can work from.”

“No, son, don’t do anything yet for now,” Giordano says. “In the meantime, I’ll continue to look into it discreetly. If he thinks we’re coming after him, I don’t know what kind of moves he’s capable of making to stop us. Allow me.”

I nod in acquiescence. I trust Giordano to put as much importance on this matter as it deserves.

“On another note, how goes your fight against the Alba—” Giordano’s words trail off as Aurora is suddenly marched into the room by one of Giordano’s men.

“Boss,” he begins, “I found this one snooping around.”

Aurora quickly tucks something in her pocket, and I make a mental note to investigate what it is. At that moment, embarrassment and fury fill my chest, covering my heart with a layer of ice.

“I told you to stay in the car,” I say coldly.

She gives me a dark look. “I’m not a damn dog. You can’t just order me around or leave me in the car.”

“What you are is a damn stubborn and infuriating woman who doesn’t know when to just quit.”

What she is, is a damn mistake. A mistake I’m addicted to. A mistake I can’t quit even if I try.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me, son?” Giordano pipes up, his eyes unreadable.

Turning to face him, Aurora steps forward boldly. “I’m Aurora Vitale, and you must be Giacob Giordano.” She holds out her hand.

He takes her hand in his with a smile. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

She looks over at me with a dark look. “I can’t say the same about you.”

“Aurora,” I growl in warning.

Giordano chuckles. “Oh, I like her, Gio.”

“At least somebody does,” Aurora says, her eyes still looking intently into mine.

She thinks I don’t like her? If I didn’t, I’d have shot her through the head for what she just did. What did she even set out to find by snooping? Does she think Giordano will just leave a diary full of memories of the past lying around?

I grab her by her elbow, jerking her roughly toward the door, and say, “We’re leaving.”

“You’re hurting me,” she cries.

I soften my hold on her but continue pulling her out of the house.

“Let me go,” she snaps.

I spin around to face her with a glare. “You could have died in here,” I hiss at her.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t.”

I fist the front of her shirt and yank her close to me. “One day, you’ll step too close to the edge, and you’ll fall over. And on that day, I won’t be there to catch you.”

Then, I release her and motion at one of Giordano’s men.

“Take her straight home to the Vitale estate,” I tell him. I don’t wait to see her reaction. I just turn away and head to my car.

“You’re leaving me here?” she croaks out in shock.

I don’t grace her with a response.

When I back out of the driveway and zoom away, she’s still standing there in the courtyard, waiting for the car that is taking her home to be brought around and staring at me with eyes full of hurt.

I don’t allow myself to look at her in the rearview mirror because if I do, I’ll turn the car right around and go back for her.

I need space from Aurora and all the trouble she comes with.

By the time I cross the gate to my house, I realize with self-disgust that I already miss her.