A Scandal in the Headlines - By Caitlin Crews Page 0,60

wasn’t drunk this time.

“I had her first,” Niccolo threw at him, a sly look in his eyes. “In every possible—”

“I won’t warn you again.”

It would be so easy. To simply end this man, as he richly deserved. He was nothing but a parasite, a lowlife. Alessandro didn’t even have to get his hands dirty, the way his father had so enjoyed. He knew which former associates of his father’s he could call to “handle” this. It was part and parcel of his blackened family legacy. It would take a single phone call.

This was who he was. Just as his mother had told him. Just as Elena had accused him. Just as he had always feared.

But this would be justice, that seductive darkness whispered. Simple. Earned.

Alessandro had to force air into his lungs. All the choices his father and uncle and grandfather had made, all the blood that stained their hands as they’d built this family up from nothing and punished whoever dared stand in their way—he’d always looked down on them for it.

He’d never understood how easy it might be to step across that line. He’d never understood the temptation. Or that it could seem not only right to exterminate a cockroach like Niccolo Falco, but inarguably just.

Necessary.

That darkness in him didn’t even seem particularly dark to him today as he stared at the bastard who’d terrorized Elena. It seemed like a choice. The right choice.

But.

But Elena had cried in his arms, and then she’d trusted him when he didn’t deserve it at all. When he’d given her no reason to trust him. She’d married him. He couldn’t understand why she’d done it. He wasn’t sure he ever would.

But it burned in him. It lived in him, bright like hope.

“Be the man who does the right thing,” she’d said once. And her eyes were the perfect blue of all his favorite summers, and she’d looked at him as if he could never be a man like his father.

As if she had some kind of faith in him, after all.

“Why take her at all?” Niccolo demanded, stepping even closer, tempting fate. “Because she was mine?”

Alessandro smiled at him, cold and vicious. “Because I can.”

Niccolo snorted. “You’re nothing but a thug in fancy clothes, aren’t you?”

Alessandro was done then. With Niccolo, with all of this. With who he’d nearly become. With that dark spiral he’d almost lost himself in today, that he could still feel inside of him.

But Elena was like light, and he wanted her more.

“Don’t let me see you again, Falco. Don’t even cross into my line of sight. You won’t like what happens.” He leaned closer then, pleased in a purely primitive way that he was bigger. Taller. That there was that flicker of fear in the other man’s eyes. “And stay the hell away from my wife. That goes for you and your entire pathetic family. You do not want to go to war with me, I promise you.”

Niccolo recoiled, the angry flush on his face and neck bleeding into something darker. Nastier.

“Don’t worry,” he said, ugly and flat. “Once I’m finished with a whore—”

Alessandro shut him up. With his fist.

He felt the crunch of bone that told him he’d broken Niccolo’s nose, heard the other man’s bellow of pain as he crumpled to the ground. Where he lay in a cowardly heap, clutching at his face.

And Alessandro wasn’t his father, he would never be his father, but he was still Corretti enough to enjoy it.

“Next time,” he promised, “I won’t be so kind.”

And then he walked away and left Niccolo Falco bleeding into the ground.

But alive.

“I’m sorry I let him touch you,” Alessandro said gruffly when he swung into the car. Elena sat there so primly in the passenger seat, looking perfect. Untouchable. Her face smooth and her eyes hidden away behind dark glasses. “It won’t happen again.”

“He didn’t hurt me,” she said. Far too politely. When he only frowned at her, searching her face for some sign, she shifted slightly in her seat. “Don’t you have a meeting?”

He reminded himself that he had her torn panties in his pocket. That if he reached over and touched her, he could have her moaning out his name in moments. But he started the car instead, and pulled out onto the small country road that led away from the village and back toward Palermo.

He’d told her Niccolo wouldn’t come for her, and he had. She had every right to be afraid, even angry. To blame him.

He could handle that.