Born in Blood Collection Volume 1 - Cora Reilly Page 0,210

jacket before twisting it in his hand with a calculating look on his face. Then his eyes flickered up to me. “Do you want me to kill him?”

God, yes. I shivered at the sound of Matteo’s voice. I knew it was wrong, but after what Father had said today, I wanted to see him begging for mercy and I knew Matteo was capable of bringing anyone to their knees, which excited me in a horrifying way. That was exactly why I’d wanted out of this life, why I still wanted out. I had the potential for cruelty regardless of how I tried to convince myself of the opposite, and this life was the reason for it.

“That would mean war between Chicago and New York,” I said simply. Not that I gave a damn about peace. The men would find a reason to tear into each other soon enough. Someone always managed to insult someone else’s honor and then all bets were off.

“Seeing your father bleed to death at my feet would be worth the risk. You are worth it.”

CHAPTER ONE

Matteo

The first time I saw Gianna, she was a scrawny fourteen-year-old with a too big mouth, a splattering of freckles on her face and untamed red locks. She was everything a proper Italian girl wasn’t supposed to be, which was probably why I found her entertaining. But she was a kid, and though I was barely four years older, I had already been a Made Man for five years, killed several people and fucked my fair share of women. The moment Luca and I were back in New York, busy with mob business and easy society girls, I didn’t give the rude redhead a second thought. We had enough trouble with the Bratva trying to sabotage our drug labs, and our father had grown too old to handle things as they needed to be handled: with unrelenting brutality. It was time for the old man to die and hand the job over to my brother. Luca was the perfect man for brutality.

* * *

I’d pretty much forgotten all about Gianna when Luca and I returned to New York three years later for his wedding to Aria.

Luca had gotten it into his head that he wanted to see Aria before the wedding. The official explanation being that he wanted to make sure she was on the pill—which was bullshit. I knew it was because he was eager to see how she’d grown up. And damn, the girl had filled up nicely. When she appeared behind her younger sister Liliana in the doorframe to their suite in the Mandarin Oriental, my eyes didn’t know what part of her to check out first. Long blonde hair, stunning blue eyes, narrow waist, lean legs, nice butt and tits. She was smoking hot. She was also Luca’s fiancée and so firmly off-limits. Not to mention that she was a bit too demure for my taste. The way she cast down her eyes whenever Luca looked at her would have driven me insane. Luca was an intimidating fucker, and the girl had been dealt a heavy blow for having to marry him, but she needed to grow a spine if she wanted to stand a chance against Luca. He was used to bossing people around.

Of course, the moment I entered the suite, Aria was the last thing on my mind. My gaze settled on the girl with the flaming red hair who lounged on the sofa, long legs casually crossed and propped up on the coffee table. At once the long-forgotten memory of her rudeness resurfaced and with it my interest in her. She wasn’t the awkward, scrawny girl she used to be.

Definitely not scrawny.

She had developed all the right curves in all the right places, and her face had gotten rid of her freckles. Unlike most girls I knew she didn’t seem impressed by me. To be honest, she looked like I was a cockroach she wanted to squash under her boots. With a grin, I headed straight for her, never one to shy away from a challenge. Especially a hot challenge. What was life without the thrill of getting burned?

Gianna straightened in a jerk, her black boots landing on the ground with a thud, and then she narrowed her eyes at me. If she thought that would stop me, she was thoroughly mistaken. Unfortunately, the youngest Scuderi girl stepped in my way and gave me her version of a flirty smile. “Can I see your