Chapter 6 #2
“My family is dead because of that girl!” I surge to my feet, the chair scraping harshly against the floor.
“She led them into that ballroom. She smiled and played the innocent princess while her father’s men unleashed a hail of bullets.
She stood there and watched while they were slaughtered, and she was happy they died. ”
“Was she?” Sofia’s voice cuts through my rage. “Do you know that for a fact? Tell me, Vincenzo. When you look at Adora Montoni, do you see your enemy? Or do you see another one of his victims?”
I open my mouth. Close it. It’s the question I’ve been avoiding asking myself since I realized who it was in the laundromat who kicked me the knife. That wasn’t the action of a self-serving, bloodthirsty mafia princess.
“She’s Don Agnello’s daughter. How can she be anything but loyal to him?” I say finally, but even I can hear how weak it sounds.
“Are you sure?” Sofia holds my gaze. “You said she ran away. That her father’s capo was torturing her. That she helped you kill Dervishis when she didn’t have to. Does that sound like a woman who knowingly goes along with her father’s crimes?”
I don’t answer. I can’t answer.
With a sigh, I sink back into my seat.
Matteo has been silent through all this. Now he leans back in his chair, a calculating look in his eyes. “If she’s a victim, use that. Make her want revenge on her father too. Turn her into our weapon.”
I think of Adora’s face as I destroyed that photograph. How broken she looked, sitting in the ruins of her happy family’s memories.
Revulsion lances through me, sharp and sudden.
“No,” I say.
Both Sofia and Matteo look surprised.
“No?” Matteo repeats.
“I won’t use her like that.”
Sofia’s expression becomes knowing. “Then perhaps ask yourself why you keep finding excuses to see her instead of putting a bullet in her head.”
My jaw clenches. “I’m gathering intelligence. Watching the house. Waiting for the right moment.”
“You kissed her,” Sofia says. “Many times now.”
I fumble for an explanation. “It was strategic. To throw her off-balance and show her I’m the one with the power. To make her think I want her.”
“And do you? Want her?” Sofia asks.
“Of course not.” The denial comes too quickly, too harshly.
Their silence feels like a live grenade.
I think of Adora in my arms, her body fitted against mine like she was made to be there. Her desperate kisses in the laundromat. The way she melted into my body, seeking my warmth. The devastation in her eyes when I destroyed her photograph.
Matteo and Sofia exchange a look.
“You know what bothers me most about what you did tonight?” Sofia says. “Don Agnello destroys what people love. He takes away what gives us joy. Our family. Tonight, Vincenzo, you did the same to that poor girl.”
“I’m an assassin,” I remind her with a stony glare. “I’m no better than him. I kill people for money.”
Sofia stands and comes around the table.
She cups my face in her hands, forcing me to meet her eyes.
“You’re an assassin, and you’ve killed many dangerous men in our world.
But to my knowledge, you’ve never hurt a woman.
Are you still the man your mother raised?
Or are you turning into what you hate the most? ”
Mom was strong and principled. She had lines she wouldn’t cross, even in our world.
Sofia releases my face and steps back. “You want justice for our family? Fine. Kill Agnello. But don’t become him in the process. Don’t destroy innocent people because their last name is Montoni.”
Matteo is watching me closely. “The engagement,” he says suddenly. “You demanded Adora from Agnello. Are you actually going through with it?”
I think about that. Binding myself to Adora legally, publicly, and irrevocably.
Making her mine in every sense of the word.
My wife. In my bed. Those beautiful eyes looking up at me with something other than fear.
Her body against mine, not just in stolen moments, but every night.
Waking up to her warmth, her sighs, molded to me like she was made for me.
My body responds before my mind can catch up. Christ. I shift in my chair, trying to ignore the tightness in my jeans.
The idea of making Adora Montoni my bride should repulse me.
Instead, my chest tightens with what might be anticipation.
She’s mine.
No one else’s.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you better figure it out,” Matteo says. “Because the men need to know what we’re doing. Are we at war with the Montonis, or are we forgetting about revenge and moving on? They need a don who can decide.”
“I never wanted to be don,” I remind him bitterly.
“None of us wanted this, but here we are. What does Agnello think you want?”
“The marriage,” I say. “I made it clear. Give me your daughter, or I’ll take her and kill you.”
“And what do you want?” Sofia asks.
I think of Adora sobbing on her bedroom floor, surrounded by the pieces of her family portrait. I think of the velvet box. The eagle-and-raven necklace I commissioned for a bride I was supposed to become engaged to seven weeks ago.
My answer is raw and savage. “I want Agnello dead.”
It’s the only answer I can give right now. The only answer that doesn’t make me feel like I’m betraying my family’s memory.
Matteo leans forward. “If you marry her, you become Agnello’s son-in-law. You’d have access to his home, his businesses, his inner circle. You could destroy him from the inside.”
“Or,” Sofia says pointedly, “you could actually build a life. Create something good out of this tragedy. Honor the alliance your father wanted.”
I laugh bitterly. “With the daughter of the man who killed him? Who killed your son? That’s not honor. That’s betrayal.”
Grief flashes in Sofia’s eyes, and her body tenses. “Do you really think your family would want you to destroy an innocent woman in their name? Is that how you think I want you to honor my son’s memory?”
I clench my hands on the sides of my head. I don’t know what’s right anymore. All I know is that every time I close my eyes, I see Adora’s face. Her tears. Her desperation.
I remember in vivid, hungry detail the way she kissed me back.
“Get some sleep,” Sofia says, standing. “We all should. Things will be clearer in the morning.”
“What about the Dervishis?” Matteo asks. “The stolen weapons?”
“I’ll deal with it tomorrow,” I reply.
Matteo nods reluctantly and stands. He kisses his mother’s cheek, claps me on the shoulder, and heads out the back door to his car.
Sofia lingers in the kitchen. “Vincenzo?”
“Yeah?”
“Your father’s ring.” She nods toward the study. “It’s waiting for you.”
The Vici don’s ring. The raven carved in obsidian, set in silver. The symbol of leadership and responsibility, and everything I don’t want.
If I put that ring on, they really will all be dead.
I can’t do this by myself.
“I’m not ready,” I say.
“You’ll never be ready, but that doesn’t mean you’re not the man for the job.” She pauses at the door. “Think about what kind of don you want to be. The kind who destroys, or the kind who builds.”
She leaves me alone, and I sit there for a long time, staring at nothing, but thinking about everything.
Finally, I force myself to stand. My body feels heavy, like I’m carrying the weight of the dead.
I walk to my father’s study. Moonlight streams through the window, illuminating the desk where my father used to work. This is where he built the Vici empire into something formidable.
Where he arranged my engagement to Adora Montoni.
The ring sits on the desk, exactly where Sofia left it seven weeks ago. The obsidian raven gleams.
The Dervishis are encroaching. The Lucanias are losing faith. The men are restless. And instead of leading and rebuilding, I’m obsessing over a girl I should kill.
Do I put on the ring, take my revenge, and move on with becoming Don Vici? Lead my men to destroy the Montonis like they destroyed us?
I open a desk drawer and take out a velvet box. Inside is the eagle-and-raven necklace I commission for Adora as an engagement gift. I imagine fastening it around her slender throat and murmuring to her how beautiful she is.
Across the city, in another too-quiet house, Adora Montoni is probably still on her knees, trying to piece together what I ripped apart.
Do I give her this necklace and make her mine? Claim her as my bride the way my father wanted and put the desire for revenge behind me?
I sink into my father’s chair and stare at the two pieces of jewelry.
Two paths. Two futures. And I don’t know which one to choose.
I don’t remember falling asleep.
One moment I’m sitting in my father’s chair, staring at the ring and the necklace. The next, I’m in the laundromat again. But this time it’s different. Clean. No bodies. No blood.
Just Adora.
My body cages hers, and she’s pressed against the washing machines, her back arched into mine. Her honey-blonde hair is loose around her shoulders. She’s wearing that same pale blue hoodie, but it’s sliding off one shoulder, exposing the smooth curve of her neck.
“You owe me a kiss,” I murmur against her throat.
“I know.” Her voice is breathless and wanting. “Take it.”
So I do.
This kiss is slow and deliberate. Consuming. Her hands slide up my chest, fingers curling into my shirt, pulling me closer. She tastes like honey and forbidden fruit.
My hands find her waist, her hips, sliding beneath the hem of her hoodie to caress her bare breasts. Her nipples tighten against my palms. I pluck them, and she gasps against my mouth. The sound goes straight through me like chain lightning.
“Vincenzo.” She breathes my name like a prayer.
I lift her onto the washing machine, stepping between her thighs.
She wraps her legs around my waist, pulling me flush against her.
I’m so hard, and my cock is tight against her sex.
The friction makes us both groan. Her head falls back, exposing the long line of her throat, and I trace it with my lips, and then with my teeth, marking her.
“Mine,” I growl against her pulse point.
“Yours,” she agrees, her fingers threading through my hair.
I capture her mouth again, deeper this time, more possessive. Her tongue meets mine, stroke for stroke, her inhibitions gone, replaced by raw need. One of her hands slides down my chest, lower and lower, until she finds my waistband.
Adora plays with the button on my jeans. She puts her lips against my ear, and whispers, “Make me yours.”
I jolt awake, gasping.
The study is dark except for the moonlight streaming through the window. I’m still in my father’s chair, but I’m no longer just sitting. I’m hard as steel, my jeans uncomfortably tight, and my heart is pounding like I’ve been running.
The dream hasn’t faded. Adora is still with me, eager and tempting.
Desire courses through me, and I realize I haven’t come in seven weeks.
I’ve been dead inside ever since the massacre.
Without stopping to consider whether this is a good idea, I unzip my jeans, thrust my hand inside, and grasp my cock.
I groan in desperation as my thumb caresses my swollen head.
I can still feel Adora. Taste her. Hear her voice saying my name with breathy desperation and promising herself to me.
Yours.
I imagine her parted lips sucking the tip of my cock, her amber eyes teasing me.
I gather her honey-colored hair into my fist, and she opens her lips wider to take me all the way to the root of my cock, my veiny length disappearing into her mouth.
She sucks me in long, languid strokes, her tongue caressing me in ways that make my vision blur and my control shatter.
Everything narrows to the heat of her mouth.
“Mine,” I pant, fisting my cock up and down with desperate, hungry strokes. “Mine.”
I come in an explosive rush, my cum spurting all over the front of my shirt, and melting over my still-moving hand.
Finally I go still, and I stare around the darkened room, my panting breaths filling the silence as I wonder what the hell just happened. Cum is glistening on my knuckles.
I reach for a tissue and clean myself up. Then I stand and pace to the window. The city spreads out toward the horizon, dark and full of secrets. Somewhere out there, Adora is sleeping. Or maybe she’s awake too, haunted by my nighttime visit.
I feel a gnawing need to see her again. To touch her and make that dream real.
I push my hand through my hair. Christ, I’m losing my mind.
I turn back to the desk, to the two pieces of jewelry still sitting there like questions. The ring. The necklace. Revenge or redemption?
An idea begins to form in my mind, dark and calculating.
What if it’s not one or the other?
What if I can have both revenge and Adora?
I need to see her. Not break into her room like a criminal or corner her when she’s vulnerable. I need to take her out, and Agnello needs to know about it.
On a date.
It sounds absurd, going on a date with the woman who helped her father slaughter my family, but it’s perfect.
Strategic. It’s not a real date because I’m using it to discover how to truly devastate Don Agnello.
I’ll figure out what he loves most, and I’ll grind it under my heel.
I’ll make him suffer for what he did to my family.
Then I’ll kill him.
Seeing Adora again, making her smile at me instead of cry because of me, showering her with the attention and affection that she’s not getting from her father, will help win her to my side and infuriate him. Adora is the key to getting closer to Don Agnello and figuring out his weaknesses.
The plan is strategic and calculated.
It has nothing to do with the fact that I can’t close my eyes without seeing her face.