Page 19 of Ruthless Claim

“The work doesn’t stop because I have a wife now.”

She rolls her eyes. “How considerate of him.”

She’s watching me with an expression I can’t fully read. It’s like she’s studying me. “What?”

“Nothing.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “It’s just—Leo at least gave Emma a honeymoon.”

“I’m not Leo,” I remind her, annoyed she’s making the comparison. “And you’re not Emma.”

“No,” she says quietly. “We’re not.”

She finishes her coffee and stands before heading to the sink.

I expect her to just drop it in the sink and leave it for someone else to handle, so I’m surprised when she actually washes, dries, and puts it away.

I didn’t think she even knew how to wash anything.

When she passes me on the way back to the bedroom I catch her perfume.

It’s floral and light and probably ridiculously expensive, because Valentina Santoro doesn’t do cheap.

I should let her go.

We’ve established the terms and the terms are functional distance.

“Don’t take too long in the shower, princess,” I say, because some part of me enjoys my death warrant. “Some of us have actual work to do today.”

She stops and turns around slowly. “I have work too. I’m curating a gallery opening next month.” A pause. “Not that you’d know anything about that.”

I wave my hand flippantly. “Culture doesn’t pay the bills.”

“No.” Her smile is the sharpest thing in this kitchen and this kitchen has knives. “Breaking people’s bones for your uncle does that.”

I carefully set down my coffee cup. “At least I work. What do you do all day? Shop? Have lunch with your mother? Curate, whatever the hell that means, while someone else does the actual work?”

“Vaffanculo,” she responds.

I cock my head to the side. “Did you just tell me to go fuck myself in Italian? You already said that last night.” I mockingly tsk her. “You’re getting repetitive.”

The look she gives me is incandescent.

The fury in it is so clean and complete that for a second I see past the careful front of the Santoro princess and I see just the person underneath it, who is furious and not going to back down from anything.

She is going to be an absolute nightmare to live with.

“I hope Connor works you into the ground today,” she says, with a vicious sweetness that almost makes me smile. “It would save me the trouble of doing it myself.”

“The feeling is mutual, Mrs. Brennan.”

She turns on her heel and goes back to the bedroom. The door closes behind her hard enough that something in the frame rattles.

I look out the floor-to-ceiling windows at Central Park going gray then gold in the early light.

This is my life now.

That woman.

This apartment that belongs to Connor’s vision of what this alliance should look like.