Chapter 53 – Amanda
The feeling of waking alone sent a bolt of panic through me. I kicked the blankets off my naked legs. He was just here. We’d spent an hour wrapped up with one another—despite my hesitation about his stitches!
“Enzo,” I croaked, stumbling to the bathroom.
Empty.
My chest seized tightly. I snatched the comforter as I passed, only because if he left, there might be a guard on the other side of the door. The poor sap didn’t need to die—or worse, have his eyeballs plucked out—because I stumbled into my own living area, nude.
I tore open the door, my husband’s name on my lips.
His head snapped up, black hair shifting as he moved. Inky black pools locked on me. There was so much promise there. What if they’d been rendered sightless? What if the bullet had been a few inches closer to center mass? The blanket fell to the ground, and I rushed across the space.
Vincenzo turned from the computer screen, where he’d been looking at a glittering blue sea and white sandy shores. Arms open, he caught me. I wrapped myself around him. Squeezed tightly. Felt his hard, warm body connected in multiple places against my own.
He was safe.
He was here.
He was mine.
“Fiore, che successo?” the monster growled into my hair.
“Nothing,” I breathed. “It’s nothing; you’re here.”
Vincenzo rumbled. “I am.”
We sat like that for a long moment. I might be naked, and he might have a raging hard erection pulsing against me, but this very second was more than sexual.
It was the soul’s recognition of itself in another.
As my pulse steadied and my breathing evened, Vincenzo began to brush his fingers through my hair.
“I’m working hard to make sure there aren’t days like today in our future,” he explained.
I angled my head up, cheek brushing his chest, to better look at him. “Meaning?”
“Meaning—” He huffed out a breath. “Meaning, I won’t be a mobster forever. I’m taking a page out of Cristiano’s playbook and turning legit.”
I blinked hard, clearing the moisture from my vision that I didn’t remember allowing to form. “Enzo, really?”
“Really.” His jaw flexed. “I want to leave the mob.”
The implication of that statement rocked me. “Don Morelli would lose his best soldier?”
Vincenzo shrugged. “He’ll protest. But my business ventures will benefit the famiglia without direct ties. He’ll have no choice.”
My exhale whistled through my lips. “You know, you said your brother’s playbook, but isn’t he taking it from you?”
The corner of that delicious mouth quirked up. “I never told anyone else that I wanted to become a football legend so I could leave the mob. Only you.”
“Still, it was your idea first,” I protested.
Vincenzo pressed a swift kiss on my forehead. “Either way, we have our work cut out for us if we want that to be our future.”
Our future. I liked the sound of that. So freaking much.
“I didn’t mean to wake you, but I’m glad you’re up.
” Vincenzo scooted in his chair, finger shifting over the mouse pad to wake the screen that had fallen asleep while we’d clung to one another.
He clicked away from the gorgeous looking beach photos he’d been scrolling through, clicked into an email in another tab, and opened a new window. “Look at this.”
I shifted on his lap, not missing the way he quietly groaned as my body pressed into his stiff cock. But the idea of disobeying, of sliding to my knees and enjoying him, faded a moment later when I read what was on the laptop.
Carole had been arrested for multiple thefts at high-end luxury stores. She was also facing charges of fraud and extortion. There was no word yet as to who would be defending her in court, since her husband—the renowned international lawyer—failed to give the reporter a comment.
“The thefts make sense,” I murmured. “But the other charges? I had no idea she was in league with Dad.”
Dad, who was a scheming, lying, manipulative sonofabitch. He tried to sell me twice, and it was due to the man who resurrected from the grave, who’d forced me to marry him, that I escaped.
Vincenzo chuckled darkly. “Those don’t really exist.”
I jerked upright, staring hard at him. “Come again?”
That rough, unforgiving touch skated down my body. “No one makes you feel badly about yourself and gets away with it.”
The weight of his words sent a giddy rush of victory through me. The evil stepmother, the woman I tolerated, was going down.
“But how?” I insisted.
Vincenzo lifted a shoulder in a playful shrug. “I know some guys who can create evidence from a computer screen.”
I wanted to ask a thousand more questions, but his next words chilled me.
“Varga falls next, and then….”
“And then my dad,” I finished. Good lord, it was all coming together. Neat and tidy, there should have been a bow on this turn of events.
Varga might be the active thread, the one who would try to claim his payment. But it was Dad who racked up the debt in the first place. It was Dad who crossed every line to try and pay it back.
It was my dad who saw me as no more than a tool, no matter how hard I worked to prove that I was capable. At least my sister saw him for what he was and cut ties cleanly. It took a force of nature to knock me on my ass, and a living, breathing shadow of darkness to rescue me.
“I should have trusted you from the beginning,” I blurted out, the apology making my tone thick.
“You should have.” Vincenzo pulled me back against his body, pressing another kiss on my forehead.
This one was longer, more suggestive. “But you were right, we didn’t know these new, adult versions of ourselves.
Dio—” he hissed. “I tried to do things slow, but life threw curveballs at me at every turn. The only thing I can say was that every action was meant to keep you safe.”
“You can’t just blame yourself,” I said quickly. “I’m stubborn.”
That earned me a snort. Since his lips were still brushing against my skin, the hot air fanned over my hair.
“I was just trying to take care of everything myself.”
“My big—” he kissed my temple “—bad—” he kissed my cheek “—mobster.”
Then his lips were on mine.
I tasted the red wine he’d been drinking. I felt the life thrumming through his veins. I craved another brush with his darker side. But too quickly, he pulled away, leaving my lips swollen and scorched from the kiss.
“Oh, there’s still work for you.” He said with a husky laugh. “In case you were thinking I was going to have all the fun, don’t.”
I quirked a brow.
“When it comes time to take Varga down, we’ll need your help,” he explained.
The old me would have pressed him for details, needing that tangible hold on control.
It felt simply amazing to let it go.
“Just tell me what to do,” I said with a smile. “I’ll be ready.”
He returned it, but his didn’t meet his eyes. “We missed a chance this week to take him down.”
I gasped, feeling the loss more keenly than if the Powerball had been one number off. What did he mean? We’d been that close?
“Enzo!”
But the monster only shook his head. “The timing wasn’t right.”
“How?” I demanded, knowing already that it had to do with me.
“I wanted you to have a week of normalcy.” His fingers ran up and down my spine. “Starting a new job. Going to the spa. Meals and sleep. You needed that more than we needed to take this fucker down.”
“Really?” I drawled.
But he spoke over me. “We’ll get him, and you were always safe in my city, fiore. Not even a warlord who has a debt over your dad can touch you here.”
I huffed. “I can’t be mad at you for that, but I want to be.”
“You can tie me up in the bedroom,” he promised, and I brightened at the suggestion before he turned serious again.
“But now, it will be a few more weeks before we have another chance to take the warlord down. Until then, your dad won’t be able to find you so long as you stay in Boston and don’t make contact with him. ”
This was the plan. Vincenzo laid everything out for me. He showed me that he trusted me, and it was my turn to trust him.
“Thank you for telling me,” I conceded. “That’s exactly what I needed.”
And before he could say anything else, I added, “Ti amo, Enzo. Ti amo, per sempre.”
Because there was nothing else left to say.