Chapter 22
CHRISTIAN
T he wedding is in the past, and a routine begins.
I turn eighteen and pass my driving test. I’m still with Jero most of the time, but a few times a week, I’m allocated to Carmela-watching duties: her mother’s grave, her father and sister at their brownstone, her favorite café…
Drinking coffee on your own while staring out a window is boring as fuck, but whatever.
I get a coffee out of it, and they do fucking amazing pastries with caramel and icing on the top, so it has some perks.
I usually sit next to the counter and chat with Tony while keeping her in my line of sight.
A random shopping trip is thrown into the mix now and then.
She has school friends, but Ettore questions her afterward in a way that’s more like an interrogation and clearly doesn’t fucking like it, and even that has tapered off.
Then there is a night or two when Ettore goes to his former strip club, now handed over to his brother Bosco, where he drinks, smokes, and gets blown by one of the girls.
Me?
I’m trusted.
Which means I get to watch over his little stolen mafia princess while she’s sleeping.
I realize he meant it in the nonliteral sense, but I’ve always been a bit liberal in my interpretation of instructions, as that former teacher will attest. He probably presumed I would check in with the soldiers on duty at the gate, walk the perimeter, and sweep the home every hour or so to make sure no intruders have miraculously gotten past the soldiers in the grounds…
help myself to a coffee to stay awake… that kind of thing.
I do all of that—got to keep up appearances—but I also indulge myself with a good snoop around. His office is locked and alarmed, so although he has no surveillance, it’s a no-go. But the rest of the home is available, including Carmela’s bedroom…. While she’s sleeping.
I’m obsessed with her.
It gets worse with every passing day.
I have a job here—well, two, both of which involve watching her on behalf of other men. One is my brother, and one is her husband.
Fucking idiots, both of them, if they thought I wouldn’t fall into the Carmela trap. She’s fucking stunning and I can admit that objectively. Fine, so I’m in her room watching her sleep like a stalker while I admit it, but, you know, I take my job seriously.
Ettore is in Bosco’s club tonight, probably getting blown. The house is quiet. He’ll be back somewhere between two and four in the morning. I’ll be dismissed and go home to sleep, turning back up for duty around noon.
I’m trusted.
It’s not like anyone would know what I’m up to. I always get a message from one of the boys when Ettore’s on his way home—looking out for me, making sure I’ve not fallen asleep somewhere and will get a roasting for it.
She murmurs in her sleep, growing restless. She’s curled up on her side with the fingers of her right hand closed around the necklace Dante gave her. Her long, dark hair spills over the pillow and her face. I want to move it so I can see her face better, but I’ve yet to build up to touching.
She murmurs again and rolls over onto her back.
I freeze. I love you, Dante. Did I hear that right?
Yeah, I think I did.
She loves him. She’s still wearing his necklace, so there is that.
Only it doesn’t fill me with the satisfaction it should. That’s the end game, after all, her with him. I’m watching her not because Ettore tells me to, but for my older brother.
I’d do anything for Dante. The same was true for my father and my mother, although she’s living in another country now—family is everything.
But her whispered declaration of love catches me off guard.
I want to touch her. To make her notice me beyond the target for her to slap when she’s pissed and needs an outlet. I can do that, sure, but that’s not all I am. I want her to moan my name while I’m going down on her the way she did for my brother.
I still want to choke her out.
But now I want to do it while her pussy is stuffed full of my dick.
How can I hate her and crave my name on her lips as she comes for me?
She doesn’t know me; very few people do, not the real me. If they did, it would terrify them.
Love.
I’ve never needed it from someone who wasn’t family. Maybe that’s what this is. Maybe because of Dante, she’s now family, and that’s what’s throwing all this off kilter.
Hate me all you like, Carmela, one day you will love me as well.
I step closer, wanting to rip aside the cover that’s in my way.
And why not?
If she wakes, she wakes. It’s not like she’s going to tell Ettore. I have too much on her, too many secrets. Why didn’t I think about that before?
My dick gets hard. Watching her usually wakes it up, but this is full on, pounding against my zipper to get out, level of arousal.
I can do anything I want with her.
Ettore won’t know.
And she won’t tell him. Because if she does, I could tell Ettore how she fucked my brother in the powder room while wedding guests sipped champagne.
I wouldn’t because that would mean betraying Dante, and I would never do that. But she doesn’t know that, and she loves Dante—just admitted it in her sleep—and regular people are not objective when you make threats against someone they love.
Also, she thinks I’m unhinged. I overheard her telling Jessica once. She would believe me if I made the threat.
I really can do anything I want with her.
CARMELA
I come awake with a start, feeling the covers ripped from me. I jolt upright, groggy, having been deep asleep. It takes me a moment to work out where I am.
My scattered thoughts tell me it’s not Ettore. He usually stomps into the room, making noise and switching on the lights without a care in the world before he drops into the bed beside me, smelling of perfume and cigars, and commences snoring.
It’s dark. Someone is standing right next to the bed. I squeal before I realize it’s Christian. And now that I do realize it’s Christian, my heart surges for a different reason.
My eyes swing to the door and then back again. He doesn’t do or say anything. Just stands there staring down at me.
“What the hell are you doing in here?”
The darkened room doesn’t give me much, but I can make out the flash of his white teeth as he grins.
“Whatever I want.”
“I swear to God you’re not right in the head.”
He chuckles, fucking chuckles.
“Get out of my room!” I’m furious. Maybe I should be more frightened, but Christian does a lot of things to me and none of them are exactly fear.
“No can do, babe.”
“Babe! Really? Are you trying to get killed? Get out of my room!”
“Don’t think I will.”
I growl—like he reduces me to being an animal.
Sleep is hard to come by since the wedding, and it wasn’t great before.
I’m irrationally irritated that he woke me up for whatever fresh round of Christian bullshit this is.
Was he bored? Not hit the pissing off Carmela quota this week?
Grabbing the nearest pillow, I throw it at him.
He catches it.
But of course he does… And drops it to the floor next to him.
He nods at the bed. “There are a few more. Might as well exhaust the supply.”
I heave out of the bed, plant my hands on his stomach, and shove.
He has the constitution of a brick wall and doesn’t move an inch. Only now I’m standing in front of him, barefoot and wearing nothing but my negligee. And he’s just standing there, a towering wall of male flesh with a smug grin on his face.
My fingers are curled into his shirt over his abdomen. Distantly, I know I should let go, but I don’t.
A heavy pulse of arousal sweeps through me, coming out of nowhere. This is dangerous in more ways than one.
“Christian.” I try inserting a measure of authority but only deliver confused.
His fingers close over mine, carefully uncurling them and flattening them against his body. At that faint movement, I feel the ripple of abdominal muscles underneath my palms.
I don’t want to notice him. My mental plate is pretty full right now. I don’t need Christian with his slap me whenever you need to mandate, taking greater bandwidth than it already does.
“Get out.” There’s still no conviction in my tone.
“Why would I do that?” His tone drops to a low, intimate one.
“I don’t know… maybe because my jealous, vengeful husband could return at any moment.”
“He could,” he agrees.
Still, he doesn’t release me. And something in the way he says that makes me think he’s not worried about this possibility. Maybe he knows Ettore is far away or busy.
Maybe he likes to live dangerously and doesn’t care.
His jacket is open, and his dress shirt is buttery soft under my fingertips. The material does little to shield him from me.
This is a really bad idea… I try to tug my hands away. He tightens his grip, pressing them deeper against his tight stomach.
“Please don’t.”
“I can’t fucking help myself.”
My stomach takes a slow dip as the admission leaves his lips.
It sounds genuine when not many things that Christian says do.
“I want to taste you. Ever since Dante told me what you taste like, I’ve been fucking obsessed.”
A choked sound escapes me somewhere between outrage and a groan.
“What? I’m not good enough to go down on you? You reserve that for my brother? Or your husband, then?”
“Don’t mention my husband and that in the same sentence,” I hiss. “As if he would ever care about my pleasure.”
CHRISTIAN
The vehemence in her voice unleashes something dark in me.
Of course he doesn’t. He’s an asshole who doesn’t deserve her. He doesn’t deserve to call her wife or to put his hands on her.
I wanted to kill him before this sham wedding took place, and more so now.
Only, Dante made me promise not to, not yet .
Leon said the same. I don’t see them often—the last time was three weeks ago.
Leon sat me down and told me in clear, unambiguous terms, that I was not to go off the deep end…
that going off the deep end would get me killed…
that they had a plan, and I needed to stick to the fucking plan.