The older man looked at him coldly. “You have until tomorrow to give me your answer.”
“But—”
“Don’t push me on this, Matteo,” Leon warned. “You will marry Natalia and promise to make her a good and faithful husband, or the unity of our two organizations is over.”
Matteo gave an exasperated frown. “Why would you want your daughter to marry someone you know is involved with another woman?”
“You will not be involved with this other woman by the time you marry Natalia. Or after.” The warning in Leon’s voice was very clear.
“I—”
“Tomorrow, Matteo,” Leon repeated in a hard and uncompromising tone. “I hope, for your sake, you make the right choice.” He turned on his heel and left.
Matteo stood at his study window to watch as Leon climbed into the back of and was then driven away in a dark SUV. The tinted windows made it impossible for him to see inside the vehicle.
But he didn’t need to see Leon’s face again to know the other man had meant every word he said.
Matteo either gave his word not to see or speak to Grace ever again, or the Zalotti family alliance with the powerful Mafia don of New York was over.
“Are you feeling unwell?”
“Sorry?” Grace looked at Carla over the top of her computer screen, where she had been working on her next order from one of the main publishers.
The other woman shook her head. “You really don’t seem yourself at the moment.”
She gave a shake of her head. “You’ve hardly seen me this morning.” She had been working on this order in her office for three hours now and still hadn’t got it right.
The fact she was very aware that Matteo had once bent her over this desk before making love to her wasn’t helping her concentration.
“Exactly.” Carla nodded. “Usually, you avoid doing the paperwork until after we’re closed, but today, you’ve shut yourself away in here for hours. You’re also pale,” the other woman continued firmly. “And there are dark circles under your eyes from where I’m guessing you aren’t sleeping.”
Grace smiled ruefully. “Your talents are wasted as my assistant manager when you have these amazing powers of deduction!”
“Ha-ha, very funny.” Carla perched her bottom on the side of the desk. “Have you seen Matteo Zalotti again?”
Seen Matteo? A day and a half later, and Grace could still feel the stretch and pleasure from where his cock had thrust so forcefully into her channel!
And Carla’s observations were right. Grace hadn’t been able to sleep the past two nights. She’d tried everything, a bath to relax her, a cup of chocolate, even allowed Mr. Darcy to sleep on the bottom of her bed for company. None of it had worked. She had still lain awake hour after hour until dawn broke, at which time she’d fallen into a fitful sleep until her alarm went off an hour or so later. Not only was she exhausted, she was heartsick. And deeply in love with a man she couldn’t have.
“I saw him again on Saturday evening,” she answered Carla, knowing there was absolutely no way she could admit to the wild passion of that meeting with Matteo. Grace inwardly groaned every time she thought of the two of them becoming so completely lost in each other that anyone could have walked along that alley at the back of the store and seen them together.
Carla studied her. “You really like him, don’t you?”
She winced. “I’m not sure I’d call it that.”
Carla tilted her head. “Then what would you call it?”
Inwardly, Grace knew exactly how she felt about Matteo, but perhaps it wouldn’t hurt so much if she didn’t say it out loud. “He’s…hard to resist,” she acknowledged self-derisively.
“I can imagine,” Carla acknowledged. “I spoke to Uncle Vinnie after church yesterday, and he says Matteo Zalotti is a good employer.”
“For the head of the London Mafia!” The fact that Uncle Vinnie went to church didn’t make him a good man either.
“Yeah.” Carla grimaced. “Apparently, he’s in some sort of business talks with another Mafia guy from New York and the Russians.”
Grace remembered the two Russians from Bella and Bryce’s wedding, but she hadn’t met another Mafia don. “Are you supposed to be telling me stuff like this?”
The other woman shrugged. “Uncle Vinnie didn’t say it was top secret.”
“I’m sure your Uncle Vinnie thought he could trust in your discretion.”
“The thing is.” Carla winced as she lingered on the other side of the desk. “The guy from New York isn’t only one of the top dogs, he’s also going to be Matteo Zalotti’s father-in-law.”
“What?” Grace felt the blood in her veins turn to ice. All this time, Matteo was engaged to marry another woman? Through all those intimacies he’d shared or taken from her, Matteo had known he was going to marry someone else?
Why was she so surprised? Men like Matteo, powerful and ruthless men who could order death and destruction and knew it would happen with very little effort from them, wouldn’t feel any qualms at all about forgetting a little thing like being engaged when they saw another woman they wanted. And there was no doubting that Matteo had wanted her.
“Apparently, it’s an arranged engagement, the uniting of two powerful families,” Carla rushed on. “But I thought, if the two of you are still seeing each other, that you had a right to know what a bastard he is before he comes round here again trying to sweet-talk himself into your panties with bouquets of flowers.”
Grace’s frown was pained. “She wasn’t at his sister’s wedding with him.”
Carla, bless her, didn’t question how Grace knew that. “Apparently, his fiancée is in Europe at the moment. Probably shopping for her own trousseau. See, definitely a bastard!” Carla added disgustedly.
Grace looked past her own shock, and the gut-wrenching disappointment and anger she felt toward Matteo, to realize from the pallor of Carla’s face that the other woman had obviously been tying herself up in knots all morning trying to
