25. Elio
25
ELIO
Now
A fter another eternity in the shower, Georgia finally emerged. That was fine by me. I’d needed the time to get my head in order.
I’d had a moment of temporary insanity, and my body had betrayed me. I wouldn’t forget that act of rebellion. I needed to get myself, and my new wife, under control. What was done was done, and no one would forget what had happened to De Luca. Maybe they’d think twice about skimming from a De Sanctis casino. Now, it was time to let my hostage know how things were going to be. Sure, maybe I’d been lying to myself that I could watch her marry another man, but there was no need to let the loss of my self-control run unchecked.
I was dressed and ready for her when she came out of the shower; I had trapped my swollen cock under my belt to try and get it to behave.
“Here, wear this,” I told her flatly, tossing a ring box across the bed. I hadn’t let her keep on the ring that De Luca had chosen.
She stared at the little box like it was a venomous snake.
“What is it?” she asked, distrustful.
“A collar — so everyone can understand that you have an owner.”
She reached for the box and opened it. A soft gasp left her. I had no idea why I’d bought the rings. It had been years ago. They had reminded me of my mother’s engagement ring and wedding band, I supposed, the ones my father had hawked for money only a week after she’d died. It had been a passing moment of weakness, especially considering that I’d never intended to give them to anyone. Maybe, if my sister ever had a daughter, I’d pass them down.
Now, Georgia stared at the two complementary bands sitting on the plush velvet.
“You want me to wear your ring? I thought I wasn’t your wife… I was just a hostage.”
“To me, yes, that’s exactly what you are. To everyone else, you’re my wife, and God have mercy on the soul of the idiot who dares to forget it.”
She released a soft snort. “Be careful, Elio, I might think you’re protective of me.”
“You’d think right,” I told her. “I am protective of my possessions. My car, my weapons, my apartments… my wife.”
“Wow, fourth after apartments. What an honor,” she muttered.
I watched her slide the rings on and stare at her hand. They looked right there, like they were just made to fit.
I tore my eyes away and shrugged my coat on.
“Where are you going?” she asked and eyed me. She was standing in my robe, and it was ridiculously oversized on her. Her dark curls were piled on top of her head, and she appeared innocent in a way she had no right to.
“Out. The door will be locked, so don’t do anything dumb.” I spun for the door.
“Wait! You’re just going to lock me in? What will I do all day?” She seemed panicked at the thought.
“Sleep, stare out the window, I don’t care. I have work to do. I’m not your babysitter. From this moment on, you will earn freedom from this room with good behavior.”
She glowered at me. “I’m not your dog, I already told you.”
“No, you’re not. I would never own a pet. They’re too emotionally demanding.”
Her eyes flashed at me dangerously.
“I could kill you when you sleep, Elio Santori,” she bit out through clenched teeth.
A dark chuckle left me. “You could try.” I turned away.
“Wait! So, this is my life now? Locked in a room? I’ll go mad.”
“The human mind takes much longer to break than you imagine. With time, we can see?—”
I cut off as she went for me, flying across the room like a possessed woman. I shifted to the side easily to avoid her attack and used the momentum to spin her around, tossing her onto the bed. I followed, caging her in with a hand on each of her wrists, holding her down.
“I told you to stop testing me, topolina .”
“Don’t call me that,” she spit at me.
In my monotone life, her anger was a vivid slash. She was in color, and everyone else in black and white.
“Why not?” I heard myself ask.
“Because it hurts too fucking much,” she responded.
It hurts?
She shoved me with her hips, trying to move me, but her robe had come undone, and her nut-brown skin was glowing against the white terry cloth, and fuck, I wanted to touch her.
My body was waking up, and it knew what it wanted. The only woman it had ever wanted.
I pushed thoughts of licking that soft skin and rolling her over and sinking inside her out of my head. Touching her only spread the poison. It was dangerous.
“Let’s get something straight, here and now. I told you I was good at my job. I’m not just good at it. I’m the best at it. I’ve broken men so hard and well trained, that they could watch their families die without shedding a tear. I’ve lived in hell, Georgia. I was remade there. I brought it with me when I came back to the world. You cannot win against me.”
She stared at me, her eyes glittering. I knew that look. Tears were gathering, and I didn’t want to be around to see them.
“You don’t understand the privileges I’ve already given you. Clothes to wear. A bed to sleep in. Food to eat and served at a table.”
Her brow furrowed, my meaning dawning on her.
I nodded. “That’s right. I could keep you naked, chained to the bed, eating scraps from the floor and pissing in a bucket by the door. That is what the Ravellis no doubt had in store for you.” And they’re still searching for you. I didn’t bother with the last bit; we both knew it, and it was my problem. She was mine to protect.
“Who are you?” Georgia murmured, her gaze running over my face.
I’d taken the contacts out after the shower.
“I know you look just like him, but I can’t believe that you are. Elio Santori might have been a thief and a hustler, and he might have shattered me into tiny pieces, but he was ten times the man you are. You’re not my cittaiolo.”
Each word drilled into my composure, and splinters webbed the surface of my cool.
I had to get out of here.
My jaw clicked when I opened my mouth to speak, I’d been clenching it so hard.
“Like I said. Be good. Don’t make trouble. I’ll see you later.”
I pushed away from her, easily springing up from the bed and heading for the door. I needed to punch something. Anger lashed through me, heady and potent.
I got to the door just as she spoke.
“Can the hostage ask for something?”
I paused for a second.
“What?” I asked without turning.
“A needle and thread. I can stay sane a long, long time, if I have a needle and thread.”
Without acknowledging her request, I strode out and nodded to Ettore, standing guard just beyond the door.
It shut behind me firmly, and I twisted the lock.
“Guard that door with your life.”
I left him to watch the locked door. She wouldn’t find the windows as easy to open in my room as the others. Thanks to my safety paranoia, they were harder to open than any other in the building, except Renato’s. I’d tried experimenting to see if sealing the room up better, making it impossible to enter while I was sleeping, would help with my insomnia.
It hadn’t.
I needed to get Georgia out of here. It wasn’t right to be living here in Casa Nera with a wife. We’d move into my penthouse in Atlantic City, where my personal guard could keep watch over her and there were far fewer men wandering around. My penthouse was where I employed my safety measures that Renato deemed too extreme for Casa Nera.
I headed down the stairs just in time to hear a low whistle.
“Well, well, if it isn’t the trigger-happy groom. Congratulations, brother.” There were few annoyances in my life quite as great as Bran O’Connor, my sister’s new husband.
“Don’t call me that,” I muttered at him, stiffening.
He leaned in and gave me an entirely unwanted one-armed hug.
“Aww, come on man, cheer up. This is your big day. Cracking a smile wouldn’t be the worst thing that’s ever happened.” Bran smirked at me, all confidence and Irish charm.
I’d hate the fucker if my sister wasn’t so utterly enamored, and he didn’t treat her like the queen she was.
“So, what happened? Who’s the lucky lassie to have captured the ice man’s heart and inspired such a takedown at the wedding, no less? I wish I’d been there, I bet it was a hoot.”
“I shot someone in the head, over the altar,” I said.
He just nodded. “And I bet that fucker was asking for it… touching your woman, right?” He elbowed me. “Giada thinks it’s all because Jimmy or whatever his name was needed to be made an example of, but I think I know better.”
I glanced at Bran. His knowing smile made my gun hand twitch.
“A man like you doesn’t lose his cool. He doesn’t make an example without thinking through when and where… This woman is important to you.”
Bran studied me, and I met his probing look as blankly as I could. Clearly, the holes in my facade were only getting bigger, because the burly Irishman nodded confidently.
“I knew it. So, my brother has fallen for some poor soul. I need to meet her and give her my condolences in person.”
“You don’t need to meet her or talk to her, or anything,” I snapped at him, feeling the situation careering out of my control. I wasn’t ready to explain Georgia and my obsession to anyone. I couldn’t even explain it to myself.
“Now, now, don’t be grouchy. We came all the way here to see her for ourselves. Your sister isn’t leaving without meeting the happy bride, you should know that by now.”
Fuck .
My sister Giada was most at home behind a computer screen. Right now, she was doing her thing, making sure that Prosecutor Bellisario got the message that his daughter had married a De Sanctis. Her fate lay in the hands of the De Sanctis family.
I was pacing the wall of windows in her office as Giada worked away. Bran was in the garden with Carmella and Charlie, charming the socks off both women, as was his gift.
I needed to go for a run, or to the range, or just kill someone with my bare hands. My aggression was building up, and it needed out. The box I kept the past in was threatening to burst open, and I didn’t know what the fallout would be. It was unpredictable, and therefore, dangerous.
“So, it’s done.”
“What is?”
She held up one finger. “One, changing the names on the marriage license.” Then another finger went up. “Two, Bellisario will get the message and rat on the Ravellis.”
“Well done.”
Giada raised a hand. “Question. What if they don’t back down once they start getting into hot water in Naples?”
“They barely have a presence here in the US. Once their capo in Naples goes down, they will crawl out of their hiding places and go back to Italy to fight over the scraps of the business or to squeal on each other.” I sat in a leather armchair and tried to calm the fuck down.
“Hmm, like Papa did,” Giada murmured.
Ah, yes, the great, illustrious Santori Senior, who’d barely made enough money being a low-level thug to support his two children, had watched his wife die of poverty, and then turned around and tried to cut a deal in prison, without caring that he’d made me and Giada the kids of a snitch. Once the family he was snitching on got wind of him, he’d been killed. He’d left us a brutal legacy, and we’d just had to get on with it.
Strangely, I hated Prosecutor Bellisario and Georgia more. My father’s betrayal, I’d expected. He’d never hidden the kind of man he was.
But the Bellisarios? Her?
“Sorry, what did you say?” I focused on my sister, suddenly aware she’d asked me something.
“I asked how your little bride is getting on? I was pretty surprised to hear what happened… You did tell me you’d rather die than marry that specific woman. If I’d known it was going to be my own brother’s wedding, I’d have bothered to show up and even would’ve worn a hat.”
She was nearly pouting, and it drew a chuckle from me.
“It wasn’t planned.”
“But why do it? De Luca wasn’t a big deal. Sure, he’d been naughty and got caught with his fingers in the cookie jar, but going by your usual punishments, it was more of a maiming situation. He’d lose a few fingers, or a hand, and learn his lesson. Executed in front of the don was a little much, when he’d just gotten married, no less.”
“And now anyone who’d been thinking of following in his footsteps is discouraged.”
Giada nodded thoughtfully and then smirked. “And you just happened to get the girl… the one you hate.”
“Just business. There’s nothing personal there.” I stared my sister dead in the eye.
She just laughed.
“Sure there isn’t. You’re very convincing, but you forget that I know you. So, tell me about the new Mrs. Santori. You knew her, right? In Castel Amaro? Don’t tell me she was your childhood sweetheart or something.” Giada laughed again.
I saw the exact moment she realized she’d hit close to home.
Her face morphed from amused to stunned. “You’re shitting me. She is? You’ve never spoken about her apart from asking for that report years ago. I thought it was business related… but it looks like it wasn’t.”
“Until ten days ago, she was dead to me. I wish she still was.”
Giada raised an eyebrow. “She hurt you?”
“She destroyed me. She hurt you, too, you just didn’t realize it. She’s the reason it took so long to bring you to the De Sanctis estate to live. She’s the reason I ended up serving my fucking country for the better part of my life.”
“Whoa, wait a second. Are you serious? How can there be a woman who is this important to you, and I knew nothing about her?” Giada exclaimed.
“I told you. She was dead to me.”
“But she’s clearly not dead! You just turned your back on her?”
“She turned her back on me. I don’t mourn the dead, Giada, you know that. When you’re gone, you’re fucking gone, and she was gone.” My voice rose toward the end of my words, my frustration with myself and the circumstances bleeding through my control.
Giada was incredulous. I rarely lost my cool.
She nodded, then reached out a hand and patted my arm. One of the few whose touches I didn’t mind.
“Okay, I get it. She was dead to you… You never wanted to see her again. But Elio, you just married her.”
And there was the fucking irony of the century right there.
“That reminds me, don’t you think that the good prosecutor sent her the backup he was holding over Zio Salvatore? Has she mentioned it?”
I blew out a long breath. The fucking package from her father. I’d forgotten about it completely. That’s how fucked up being near Georgia had made me.
“No, and she won’t. She won’t volunteer anything. I’ll get it from her if she’s got it. Let’s see what he has on us, get rid of it, and leave the rest. Enough to sink the Ravellis forever. They’ll get off our backs as they scramble to stay ahead of the law.”
Giada nodded. “You want me to search her room?” She wriggled her fingers. “I’ve got the expert touch.”
“No. I’ll get it. She can’t lie to me. Leave it with me.”
“Where are you going?” Giada asked when I got up to leave.
I couldn’t bear the thought of going back to my room at this point. I needed to be far away.
“I have to go out. I need to — just be far away from here, at least for a while.”
I stood, and my sister followed, concern filling her face.
“If you want to help me… get the woman upstairs a needle and thread, or something to keep her from trying to climb out the window.”
“Okay, got it. Get your wife a needle and thread,” Giada said, following me.
I went toward the door.
“Giada,” I warned her.
“What? Isn’t that what she is?” Giada protested.
Yes. That was what she was. My wife. Something dark and possessive snaked through my blood at that thought. One of those demons I’d carried back from hell, alive and well inside me.
I turned on my heel and strode away.