Chapter 13: Ask Who Else Paid

Luca's POV

I left Gemma asleep at five, with her hand still open on my pillow.

The Saint's Lamp sat on the dresser where she had set it, and the tag with her name on it lay beside it.

I did not like how pleased the lamp looked.

I dressed in the dark and went down to my study without a cough, because nobody was awake to hear one.

Carla Rossetti was in my chair.

She had her shoes off and her feet tucked under her, and she had poured herself a glass of my father's brandy.

"Your night man let me in," she said. "I told him I'd lost my earring."

"Get out of my chair."

"Good morning to you too." She did not move. "I thought you'd be coughing."

"I save it for people I like."

She laughed, and it was a good laugh, warm and low, and I understood how she had fooled a dozen men with it.

I did not sit.

"You came to say something," I said. "Say it before the household wakes up."

"I came to make you an offer."

She set the glass on my blotter and stood.

She wore a silk robe, and she crossed the carpet slowly, and she stopped close enough that I smelled the brandy and her perfume.

"You paid my mother two million dollars for a wife who hates you," she said. "I'll cost you nothing."

"Gemma doesn't hate me."

"She will, when she's finished using you." Carla touched my lapel. "She does this. She takes what I want and wins it out of spite.

"She had Cesare for ten minutes in her head, and she threw him away to spite me.

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