Page 99 of Made for Sinners

But it did.

Because the truth was, I didn’t have an answer.

I nodded, reluctant to leave her side but knowing I didn’t have a choice. “Good,” I said, my voice quieter now.

And then I walked away, my steps measured, my shoulders squared like nothing had shifted inside me. Like I hadn’t just felt my chest tighten at the thought of hernotbeing there when I returned.

But I couldn’t stop myself from glancing back, just once.

She was still standing there, her head tilted slightly as she watched me go. Her face was unreadable again, her expression carefully blank, but I caught the way her fingers brushed against the stem of her champagne flute, fidgeting just slightly.

She wasn’t as unaffected as she wanted me to believe.

And knowing that?

It made me want to tear through this entire room just to get back to her.

Because tonight, I wasn’t just playing the part of the powerful don.

Tonight, I was a man in love with his wife.

And for the first time in a long time, that felt like enough.

But it wasn’t just enough.

It was everything.

25

EMILIA

The bid sheet mocked me.

I stood at the silent auction table, one manicured finger tracing the edge of the clipboard, my movements slow and deliberate, like I was contemplating world peace instead of a month-long luxury getaway in Tuscany. The ballroom buzzed faintly behind me—laughter, murmured conversations, the soft clink of champagne flutes—but here, at the edge of the room, it all felt muted, distant, as if this little sheet of paper held the only sound that mattered.

Someone—some smug, overcompensating donor with too much money and not nearly enough taste—had outbid me.

By five thousand dollars.

I narrowed my eyes at the name scrawled above mine, the black ink slanted and careless, like they didn’t even need to try.

“R. Conti.”

Of course.

The Contis weren’t exactly subtle, and their competitive streaks were practically genetic. But I wasn’t about to lose a villa in the hills of Chianti to some third cousin with a God complex and a gaudy gold chain.

Not when I’d already mentally packed my bags.

I could see it now: drinking wine on a balcony, the sun setting over sprawling vineyards, the scent of lavender and cypress trees thick in the air. A temporary escape from a world where guns and whispered threats were part of the furniture.

No.

This chateau was mine.

I picked up the pen, the smooth weight of it cold against my fingers, and added another ten thousand to the bid. The ink glided across the paper, bold and confident, and I signed my name with a flourish that was almost petty.

There.

---