Chapter 77 The Surrender
GIOVANNI’S POV
I closed the bedroom door behind me and leaned against it, pressing my palms flat against the wood.
My hands were still shaking and I looked down at them, staring at the fingers that had been wrapped around Arya's throat not twenty minutes ago and felt something crack inside my chest.
I almost killed her, the woman who brought me back from the nightmare with nothing but the gentle touch of her hands on my face.
I pushed off the door and crossed the room, falling onto the bed face-down without bothering to remove my shoes.
The mattress dipped beneath my weight, and I pressed my face into the pillow, trying to breathe through the self-loathing that was threatening to drown me.
Those wide, terrified eyes looking up at me as I choked her wouldn't leave my mind. The way she reached for me instead of fighting, tugged at my chest.
I turned my head to stare at my right hand, and a growl left my throat.
"Merda," I growled.
My phone buzzed against my hip. I pulled it out with reluctance. It was Luca and I almost did not respond.
"Boss,” he said, the moment the call connected. “Have you arrived?”
I hummed in response and he cleared his throat before speaking. "I wanted to update you on our guest. He still won't give us the direct connection to Rivera and keeps repeating the same vague information we already have."
"What about the financial records Enzo pulled?" I asked.
He sighed. "Still analyzing. There are layers upon layers of shell companies. Whoever set up Rivera's operation knew exactly what they were doing."
I rubbed my eyes, trying to focus on business, on the problem in front of me instead of the one I just created.
"Keep pressure on him," I said. "But don't break him. We need him to talk voluntarily, or the information is useless."
He muttered gruffly. "Understood. Anything else?"
"No. That's all." I ended the call and tossed the phone onto the nightstand.
The room was silent and I stared at the ceiling for several minutes before finally pushing myself up and heading to the shower.
I needed hot water and some semblance of normalcy before I did anything else.
The shower helped slightly. Not with the guilt, but at least with the physical tension that had been coiling in my muscles since I woke up on that plane.
I dressed in dark pants, and a button-down shirt afterwards. But not that it mattered.
At my desk, I pulled up my laptop and started outlining tomorrow's plans. The Rivera investigation needed to move faster.
The man in our custody would talk eventually… they always did.
But the plans stayed half-written on the screen while my mind kept circling back to Arya.
I knew I was avoiding her by sitting at my desk for forty minutes pretending to work when what I was really doing was trying to figure out how to face her without seeing the fear in her eyes.
A knock at my door disrupted my thoughts.
"Mr. De Santis?" Maria's voice came through, cheerful as always. "Dinner is ready."
"I'm not hungry," I said.
She went silent and I assumed she already left but then she spoke again. "With all due respect, sir, you haven't eaten since you arrived. And Mrs. De Santis specifically asked me to make sure you came down."
She'd asked? I paused, my fingers hovering over the keyboard.
"I appreciate that, Maria, but I really have a lot of work to do-"
"You always have a lot of work," she interrupted, and there was a familiar exasperation in her voice that reminded me she had been working for the De Santis family longer than I'd been alive. "The work will still be there after you've eaten a bowl of soup."
I sighed. "Maria."
"Mr. De Santis. Sir.” She responded and I bit back a smile.
"I am not hungry.”
She wasn’t giving up. "We made that Italian soup you like.”
I closed my eyes. This woman had been making me eat since I was sixteen years old, and somehow, she still won every single time.
My stomach chose that exact moment to growl. "Fine," I muttered. "Five minutes."
"Wonderful! See you downstairs!" Her footsteps retreated, and I could practically hear the smile in her voice.
I closed my laptop and stepped out of the room, heading downstairs.
The dining room was warm when I entered, and I found Arya already seated at the table, deep in conversation with Enzo.
She looked up the moment I walked in, and something flickered across her face but it was gone before I could tell what it was.
"Giovanni," she said.
"Arya," I returned with a nod.
Enzo, to his credit, seemed to sense the tension immediately. He straightened in his chair and cleared his throat. "Boss. Good to have you back. Jet lag treating you okay?"
"Fine," I said, sitting at the head of the table. Maria appeared almost immediately with a steaming bowl of soup, placing it in front of mez
The silence that followed was excruciating.
Arya lifted her spoon and stirred her soup. "Maria makes the best soup, doesn't she?" She said it to Claire, but her eyes flicked to me. "It warms you up from the inside even after a cold night."
Claire, oblivious to the subtext, nodded enthusiastically from where she stood. "Oh, absolutely!”
"It's interesting, isn't it?" Arya continued, her voice perfectly pleasant. "How soup can be so comforting. Almost like a warm embrace or maybe more like..."
She paused, taking a small sip. "Being held. Very tightly around the-" Her eyes met mine across the table.
“… the heart," she finished.
I stared at her and stared back while Enzo suddenly found the ceiling fascinating.
"More bread, anyone?" Claire offered brightly.
The meal continued with Arya making comments that seemed perfectly innocent on the surface but carried undertones that only I could catch.
Every single one was a pointed reminder of what had happened on the plane.
I sat there, my jaw tight, while I took it because I knew I deserved it.
"You know," Arya said, reaching for the pepper, "I was thinking about that game we played. The coin toss." She smiled sweetly at me. "Maybe we should play again sometime.”
"That sounds trrifying," Enzo muttered into his wine glass.
I opened my mouth to respond when Arya reached for the bread basket, and her elbow connected with her soup bowl.
It happened in slow motion; the bowl tipping, the contents sloshing, and then a wave of hot soup flying through the air directly toward me.
I tried to dodge while she tried to grab it but neither of us succeeded.
The soup hit the table, splashed across my shirt, and, thanks to my attempt to dodge, bounced back toward Arya, soaking the front of her sweater.
For a second, nobody moved.
Then Arya looked down at the soup dripping down her front, looked up at me with my shirt equally ruined, her mouth parting open.