Page 62 of The Red Queen

Her heart hammered in her chest, and a shot of adrenalin rushed through her as her fight-or-flight response kicked in.

She hadn’t been this close to Mateo in months.

“Desiree.” His voice was low, wary, his eyes hard as they surveyed her. “Congratulations.”

Her right hand twitched at her side, and the stub of her severed finger throbbed. It took genuine effort not to reach under her skirt for the knife strapped to the inside of her thigh.

It took her a moment to unglue her tongue from the roof of her mouth. “Mateo, thank you for attending our wedding.” Her voice was huskier than normal, but she managed to eliminate any wobble.

Desi had given Giovanni carte blanche with the guest list, telling him she didn’t care who he invited since she didn’t have any family or friends to attend. Perhaps she should have taken two minutes to go over the guest list and confront him about this idiotic and very dangerous decision. What on earth had Giovanni been thinking?

“I wouldn’t have missed it.”

You probably should have, she wanted to say, but instead smiled and glanced around. “Is Raina here tonight?”

Mateo stiffened when she said his fiancé’s name. Desi had attacked Raina twice, shooting her bodyguard once and both Mateo and Giovanni at their second meeting. She wasn’t exactly on good terms with either Mateo or Raina.

“She saw someone she knew and wandered off to talk to him.” Mateo’s eyes were hard, the silent message one of death if Desi so much as breathed wrong in Raina’s direction.

As if oblivious to the waves of tension all around him, Giovanni chuckled, “Ah yes, she wanted to catch up with Dino. She met him when she was staying here with me last year.”

“I would like to talk to her,” Desi said softly, lifting her eyes to meet Mateo’s. His were hard and uncompromising.

“No,” he said.

Desi narrowed her eyes at him and, for a brief second, she wished she’d managed to blow him up with one of the pipe bombs she’d set up around his house. Then she reminded herself that she was trying to think less bloodthirsty thoughts and forced a smile.

“I don’t think you understand,” she murmured, trying to suppress the hard edge to her voice. “I want to apologize for my behaviour the few times that we met. I never meant to hurt her, not really.”

“No,” he said firmly. “I’ll pass on the message, but you don’t get to talk to her.”

Desi stepped closer to him, lifting her chin in defiance. Giovanni slid his hand up her bicep, wrapped his fingers around it and squeezed in warning. She ignored him.

“You’re telling me who I may speak with in my own home?” she growled in a low voice. “I mean her no harm.”

“Don’t care,” he said coldly, staring back. “You can apologize to me, and I will apologize to her. Take it or leave it.”

“I’m not sorry for what I did to you.” She stared up at him, allowing him to see the glittering hatred in her eyes. “You were my enemy, she is not.”

“Past tense,” he noted. “Iwasyour enemy.”

She gritted her teeth and stood down, taking a step back. Giovanni’s hand loosened, though he didn’t let her go. “You’re responsible for introducing me to Gio. I’m not so foolish as to want blind vengeance when there’s no longer anything to hate you for.”

“I killed your lover,” he reminded her.

She laughed, shocking both herself and the men standing with her. She covered her lips. The flare of heated anger that should have come didn’t. Instead, she felt amusement at his deliberately provocative words. He was testing her, seeing if she could be trusted as the wife of a potential ally.

“The word lover implies love, which was not something I felt for Nicolas Garza. You did the world a favour when you took him out of it.”

Her words were as cool as her heart when she thought of Nico and she realized it was true. She never loved him. He had been her abuser. Any attachment she felt for him had resulted from years of captivity.

Mateo raised a skeptical brow. “This isn’t what you thought when you infiltrated my home and tried to kill us.”

Desi had to fight the anger that threatened. She didn’t like explaining herself and she was still a little unsure in the new world Giovanni was introducing her to. She didn’t know how to tell Mateo that her blind loyalty to Nico had resulted from years of programming and abuse. That when he killed Nico, he severed the invisible binding that held her in bondage to the Mexican cartel boss. It had sent her into a spiral, leading her to target the man she saw as the author of her suffering.

Now… now, things were different.

She didn’t need Nico. She didn’t need anyone, not really, but she wanted one man. Giovanni.

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