“I’m still thinking about shooting you. You can thank Dario for saving your life,” Emmanuelle said, with a little sniff, not looking at him.

Dario sent her a ghost of a smile. “Don’t reconsider on my behalf. He’s been a pain in the ass for the last couple of years, pining away for you. If you aren’t taking him back, put him the fuck out of his misery. It would be a mercy to everyone who knows him.”

The door opened again, and Eloisa stepped inside the dimly lit room and closed the door behind her. She glared at her daughter, and Emmanuelle knew she had deliberately waited before spilling any of the usual venom she reserved for her daughter in front of Henry or her sons.

“I knew I would find you in here with him. Valentino Saldi.” Eloisa didn’t look at the man on the bed, keeping her judgmental gaze fixed on her daughter. “You just can’t leave the man alone, can you?”

“Are you looking for me, Eloisa?”

“Yes, Emmanuelle. I’m certain you were in here groveling, begging him, as usual, to take you back while the rest of us are here planning out how to keep everyone safe,” Eloisa said, her voice cutting. “For once, try to make yourself useful and ask Enzo what you can actually do instead of fawning all over a man to try to get noticed.”

Emme straightened her shoulders, placed her hands on her hips and looked her mother up and down. Never once had she answered her mother back, not in all the years her mother had cut her down and degraded her. Humiliated her. Accused her of being a spy for the Saldis. She was just plain tired of everyone, especially Eloisa. She’d had it with everyone.

“I’m too tired to put up with your nasty insults tonight. If you want to stay and give Valentino your usual dose of ugly snark, be my guest, I’m sure he can more than hold his own against you and will be quite willing to tell you to go to hell. I just don’t want to listen to your crap, and I’m not going to. Stay away from me tonight or leave. We don’t need your help. Your experience with weapons isn’t worth putting up with your vicious tongue.”

She switched her gaze from her mother’s shocked expression to Dario. “Who’s on Giuseppi?”

“Enzo assigned Henry and Eloisa to him full time.” He looked pointedly at Eloisa.

Emme swung around to confront her mother a second time. “Did you abandon your post just so you could harangue me? Giuseppi is a main target.”

Eloisa turned bright red as she first looked at Val and then Dario. She glared at her daughter. “You dare to speak to your mother that way? In front of … of … them?”

“Right now, you’re not my mother. We’re about to go to war with Miceli Saldi. If you’re not capable of staying in your position and protecting an extremely important target, then we’ll assign someone else who can better protect him.” Emmanuelle was unrelenting.

Eloisa opened her mouth twice and then turned on her heel, head high, and marched out of the room, closing the door with a very hard thud behind her. There was silence. Emmanuelle counted to twenty in the hopes that her mother would have made it down the hall.

“Dario, I’m certain you can protect Valentino should any of Miceli’s men make it this far. You can lock his ass in the safe room.”

“You aren’t going to stay?” Val asked.

“No. If Dario needs extra help, he can reach out. Someone will come. I’m sure you’ll be armed. There are a thousand weapons in this house.” She started toward the door.

“Princess, come here before you leave.” His voice had dropped low again.

She stopped with her back to him. Her nerve endings were singing. Electrified. On fire. His to hers. She forced her hand to the doorknob, grasping it like a talisman with her fingers.

“It’s going to get intense, Emme. Anything can happen. Are you really going to leave us like this? Come here, baby. If you don’t, I’ll have to come to you. You know I will. I can’t leave things this way.”

She closed her eyes. That voice played along her nerve endings in a rush of heat. The melody was building fast into something hot and fiery she couldn’t handle, especially since they weren’t alone. The notes became flames, spreading like a wildfire, using the nerves throughout her body as the pathways, so fast, claiming every inch of her and then settling low and sinfully wicked in her sex.

She knew Valentino would leave the bed and come after her. She had known him long enough to know if he said something, he always followed through. That was what was so scary about his declaration of keeping her. He meant it. She heard the bed frame creak. Whirling toward Val, she saw that his hands were planted in the mattress as he swung himself around.

“Don’t be a jerk,” she hissed.

“Then you get your sweet little ass over here,” Val said. “I’m not playing games, Emme. I’m not doing this with you anymore. I explained about Marge. You know I didn’t want her there. I don’t have other women. You can interrogate Dario. He’s always with me.”

“He’d lie his ass off for you, wouldn’t you, Dario?”

“Yes.” Dario didn’t look up from his phone. “Not that he ever looks at other women. Don’t involve me in your idiotic Romeo and Juliet fights. Emmanuelle, go over and do whatever he wants you to do so he’ll shut the fuck up. You’re going to do it eventually anyway. I can’t tell you how truly sickening this is.”

Emme stomped over to Val, glaring at him the entire way, but her heart was pounding and her stomach did somersaults. He looked so brutally handsome, even with his bandages. Maybe more so because of them. She ached inside when she looked at him. Her body burned for his. He burned equally as bad for her. She saw it in the heat of his eyes. At least she wasn’t suffering alone.

Val had turned in the bed, so one bare leg hung over the side. The other lay atop the sheet, bare but bandaged. The moment she was close enough, he reached for her. Curling his palm around the nape of her neck, he drew her in between his thighs. It was too intimate to stand there, close to the heat of him. The sheet might have been gathered around his lap, but it provided little modesty—but then Valentino had never been a modest man. His erection was brutal, thick and unashamed, pressing tight against his abdomen. His sac was heavy on the mattress, outlined under the sheet.

Emmanuelle tried to keep her gaze fixed on his and her hands on his thighs. She shouldn’t have wanted—no, needed—to touch him anywhere else.

“What is it you want from me, Val?” She wanted to make a demand; instead, it came out a whisper.

“Everything, Emmanuelle. I want everything from you.” His palm was warm on her neck, almost too warm. His thumb slid back and forth in a mesmerizing glide over the artery in her neck. “Right now, I want you to kiss me. If anything happens to either one of us, I want that to be the last thing we have.”

“Nothing will happen to you. I swear it, Val. My family is protecting you and your father. They’ll protect Dario. Miceli isn’t going to win this one.”

“Kiss me, Emmanuelle.”

Kissing Valentino was surrendering to him. Giving herself to him, heart and soul. There was no going back from kissing him. Staring into his green eyes, standing between his thighs, feeling the heat of his body so close to hers and the electric charge of their shared firestorm burning out of control, running up and down her nerve endings, she knew it was already too late to save herself.