Or at least he had until recently.

Dominic turned and walked back. “I have one stipulation,” he said, sitting down, putting the bottle on the table and cradling it with his hands. “I’ll do my time for you, but Katherine sure as hell won’t be. I don’t want any misunderstandings. Once the lawyers draw up the papers, Katherine is clear. Completely clear. I’m not leaving London until your hit squad is gone. This is nonnegotiable. You want something. I want something. We’re even.”

“I’m still eating your twenty million.”

“Shut the fuck up, Gora. Quit while you’re fucking ahead.”

It was agreed. While Dominic drank half the bottle, their lawyers made plans to meet at Dominic’s hotel in Rome later that day to draw up the prenup and the preliminary divorce papers. The usual license formalities would be expedited so the marriage could be performed by the end of the week.

Dominic came to his feet. “When I have proof your men are gone, that Katherine is safe, I’ll fly back to Rome. Ciao, motherfucker.”

When Dominic slid into the backseat of his car a few minutes later, he banged on the privacy glass, then held out his hand to Max. “I’ll take that letter back.”

“Things went well then?”

“Not exactly.” As the car pulled away, Dominic folded the letter and slid it into his back pocket. “Give me a minute and I’ll tell you. Right now I’m trying to keep from putting my fist through the window.”

TWENTY-SIX

Dominic arrived at his house in Eaton Place at eight.

Leo and Danny were waiting.

“Tell me again,” Dominic said as he walked in. “Reassure me.”

“Like I told you on the phone, the apartment across the street’s been cleared out,” Leo said. “The owner’s on vacation in Spain. He doesn’t even know Gora’s men were there.”

“What about the surveillance crews?”

“Gone. As of three hours ago.”

“All of them?”

“We followed them to their gates at the airport. Twenty men all told. They left in groups over the course of the last few hours. Some to Bucharest, some to Rome, three to Geneva.”

“Gora’s brown bagging his twenty mil so his wife doesn’t know.” Dominic smiled faintly. “Christ, you might almost feel sorry for the little shit if he wasn’t so totally fucking up my life.”

Danny gave him a commiserating look. “Three months you said?”

“That’s what the lawyers wrote down.”

“You can’t divorce in Italy.”

“Christ no. It will take years. I’ll divorce in France. The papers are already drawn up and signed. At least I can be grateful that my mother had the good sense to be in Paris when I was born; it gives me dual citizenship. A divorce par consentement mutuel is a simple procedure; quick, easy, a rubber stamp by a judge.”

“When do you go back to Rome?”

Dominic scowled. “A couple of days.”

“Are you going to tell Katherine?”

“I’d rather not. I don’t want her living with fear or even the slightest bit of apprehension. And it’s not as though this fucking mess can be easily—and truthfully—explained away with the mafia involved.” Dominic sighed. “So it’s lies, lies, and more lies.”

“And the three-month countdown begins,” Leo said kindly.

“Yeah. At least there’s an end in sight.”

Then Dominic texted Sese. As soon as I get there, you have the night off.

But a half hour later, when Dominic knocked on Katherine’s door, his spirits were low and it showed.

“You’re tired,” Kate said, taking his hands and pulling him over the threshold as Sese slipped out the back door. “Come sleep. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

“I don’t want to talk.” Kicking the door shut, he pulled free of her hands, swept her up in his arms, and strode to the bedroom. “I just want to fuck.” Sex was the constant in his life that overrode all dilemmas and blurred reality—like drugs to a junkie.

“I was trying to be polite.” Her smile was close, her breath warm on his cheek with her arms around his neck. “You look really tired. I should tell Sese—”

“He’s gone. And I’m never that tired, baby. Not with you.”

“How did—”

“Text. I wanted to be alone with you.” He was walking fast down the hallway, indifferent to his surroundings; he swiftly strode through the large, high-ceilinged reception room without a glance, swept past the small dining room that Amanda had furnished with an intimate table for two made by Chippendale 250 years ago for a lady who took her morning chocolate in her boudoir with her lover, the carpet beneath it a seventeenth-century Mogul rug faded to a lush rose that may have come from that same lady’s boudoir. “Did you have a good day at work?” he asked in a cursory way, as if someone had rapped him on the knuckles and demanded he be polite.

“I didn’t wear any clothes,” Kate murmured as the sporting prints decorating the hallway to the bedrooms flashed by. “Otherwise things went well.”

Dominic’s gaze snapped down. “You better be fucking kidding.”

“Just checking if you were actually listening to me, Mr. Knight. You seem to be in a rush.”

“You got that right,” he said brusquely, moving into her bedroom and setting her on her feet. “Take off your robe.” He was ripping off his clothes. “Hurry. I missed you.”