Page 18 of Stealing Her Heart
I will live and die for her now.
“Tell me another dream, baby,” I husk as we sink into the water, her eyes soft as they stare up at me. They tell me so much, her eyes. When she is turned on, when she is satisfied, and when she is scared. They're serene now.
Gianna turns in my arms to lie back against my chest, her hands walking up and down my thighs. It becomes almost a massage, the way her hands work my skin and I sigh in contentment. Until she tells me another dream.
“Knowing my brother. He died before I got to know him. He loved horror movies, I remember that. Father let him do whatever he wanted, gave him anything he asked, never kept him from the business. Think he figured those horror movies were nothing compared to real life.”
“Oh, my sweet baby,” I hum, dropping kisses down her shoulder. “Tell me what you do know.”
Something hard, hot settles in my chest. Because now that she has mentioned having a brother that was lost, a faraway memory comes to me. It is broken into pieces, but it tells a terrible tale. One that I must tell her
“His name was Anto. Not Antonio, not Anthony. Just Anto. Whatever he was to my father, to my mother, he was just...Anto to me. He made me laugh, he took me to play with him, he shared his sweets with me. We were close until.... He was just gone. They killed him because of father, but it was me who was punished. They blamed me because they wished it was me.”
“Gianna,” I gasp, just thinking about her trauma, her pain, knowing they punished her, it tears me apart. “Itwas notbecause of you.”
“Now I know that. For a long time...not so much. I miss him. Even if I cannot remember him at all, I will miss him forever.”
Sighing, I tighten my arms around her because I am about to deal a blow. “Gianna...they didn’t.... They lied, princess. All this time...it was a lie. Anto was not taken because of debts the Bianchi owed. Anto wasnotyour father’s son, baby. He was the first-born heir of Antone Scarsi. Your mother...she was promised to him. They were set to be married before your fathertook her for himself. That boy was not his and they both knew it.”
Several moments of silence pass as she lets my words sink in. My hold tightens on her as if I can keep her in one piece after the bombshell I just dropped. Thinking for most of her life her brother was gone, buried beneath the dirt. All along he was out there with his father creating an empire.
Thinking she has been quiet long enough, I get us out of the water. Just as I did the first night, I kept her here almost all night—until I had Stefan take her back home before dawn—I slip my robe over her trembling shoulders. Lifting her again, I cradle her to me as I turn the covers down on our bed, slipping her beneath them.
“Don’t go,” she croaks as I turn to go, reaching for me.
“Oh, baby,” I kneel beside the bed, bringing her reaching hands to my face. I kiss the soft skin inside her wrists, her palm, then her fingertips. “I am coming back. Back to you, to this bed, where I will hold you every night for the rest of forever if you will let me. Let me go grab some food for my little princess. Some wine because we’re going to need some wine.”
Lying back with a sated sigh, she nods contentedly. Curling up with my pillow, burrowing her face in it, she is humming like the sweet kitten she is. I kiss her forehead then rush from the room. I am doing all I promised her. Food, wine, back to bed. Before I go back, I must make one call.
I call her long-lost brother, Anto, one of my best friends and the capo of the Scarsi families. It is time he let his little sister know he is alive and well.
Chapter Ten
Gianna
Somehow, I am living a dream life.
Lying in the luscious bed I never want to get out of, I am lost in daydreams. It was one of the roughest days of my life. But here I am, alive, well, surviving the way I’ve survived everything else. Just like I survived the contempt, the hate, the control my parents showed me for most of my life.
Knowing they had mistreated me most of my life out of guilt or spite for their own choices hit me hard. But as Gabriel explained that my brother, my sweet hero Anto, was not just alive but would come to see me, something inside of me broke free. Those ties that bound me to my parents, that dreamt of their love, of their approval snapped.
Gabriel has set me free just as he promised.
“They kept you guarded, kept you locked away because he had the power to take you from them. I had no idea you were the sister he spoke of. It makes sense that I was so taken by you the night we met. That we were so connected so quickly. Anto is one of my best friends, princess. He swayed the five families to have my back in the war we started tonight.”
Cuddling against him as he feeds me sweet grapes and decadent cheese, I nod. The war. One started because of my father’s greed, his quest for power, his willingness to give up another of his children to the families. He is such a heartless, gutless man that he wouldn’t care what Santino did to me.
If not for Gabriel, I would have been taken in a way I could not come back from. I swore I would not give him my body—but he was going to take it. Even as my head swims with all that has gone on today, all that we’re facing together now, I am smiling up at Gabriel like a lovestruck fool.
“Has anyone ever said how handsome you are, Gabriel Capelli?”
Grinning at me like a handsome young boy, not a hardened mafia boss, he shakes his head. “No. Well, if they did, it would not have counted anyway. Not until you said it would it have counted to me, princess.”
Laughing, I shake my head at him as I feed him a slice of salami. We’re lying naked in his big bed, the fireplace against the far wall flickering as it fills the room with warmth and a lovely glow. A television slid out of the bottom of the bedframe and now plays my favorite Disney movies.
Gabriel told me I could be a sweet little princess the way I always dreamed. I want to be. I want to let go and let him have control because I trust him. Because I need him. I love him. He is the best thing to ever happen to me even if he is a mafia brute who might kill my own parents.
Trying to run from him the way I had, it would have gotten me nowhere. He let me know that Stefan was on my tail the entire time. Turns out that young man has been following me for weeks. Well before the day I caught him. Gabriel also confesses something else after he telling me he was friends with my brother—though he had no idea.
