Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nicolò
She has skin so soft it feels like I’m tracing shapes in butter.
Does it matter that ‘she’ happens to be a relative? Yes it fucking does, but I’m going to let myself forget that. Completely. For the next forty minutes.
That’s the only way I can live with the fact I let her foot rub up against my dick.
I let my stepsister rub her foot against my dick.
And I not only let her, I encouraged it.
I leaned forward, practically trapping her foot between my thigh and my stomach just so I could feel her toes brush against the fabric covering my swollen cock for just a few. Seconds. More.
I resist the temptation to growl a curse into the thickened atmosphere, because what the actual fuck?
I’ve always known I’ll be going to hell.
I’ve made my peace with it. But knowing it’s for ending the lives of men as black market as I am has made it easy to accept.
Figuring I now have to add ‘inappropriate touching of stepsister’ to the list of bad deeds, I’m not sure I’m ready to take whatever punishment awaits a crime like that.
Although, it isn’t the punishment that bothers me. It’s the suspicion deep down in my gut that if I had the chance again to feel a part of her against a certain part of me, I would take it.
I still don’t know why I suggested a movie. There’s no such thing as a day off in this life—I’m surprised she doesn’t already know this. But I have been working my ass off trying to bring some measure of calm to the unions and ensuring my capos’ boots are on the ground and not in some brothel.
I deserve a few hours’ break.
But a ‘break’ is not how I would describe watching a Hugh Grant movie with Bambalina Castellano’s feet on my lap.
I don’t really know what possessed me to take a hold of them.
When I felt her toes against my thigh, I could have ignored it.
I didn’t have to blurt out the fact they were fucking freezing, for her to then whip them away, which the bossy asshole inside of me didn’t like.
I’m achingly conflicted. The warm-blooded part of me wants to salivate over the smoothest skin I’ve ever seen on a leg, but at the same time I want to wrap every blanket in the house around her so no other man can lay his eyes or hands on her.
It must be the brotherly streak surfacing after all these years. That has to be it.
No, that is it.
When my focus on the TV screen crystallizes, I realize the end credits are rolling.
The movie’s over. I glance sideways and there are streaks running down her cheeks.
I know a half-decent brother would choose now as an opportune time to ridicule her for it.
A half-decent brother wouldn’t want to sit quietly and watch the streaks dry over the pink apples of her cheeks.
Without looking my way, she lifts a finger and shyly wipes her eyes, then she flicks them to me. A sweet flush rises up her throat.
“I always cry at the end.” She sniffs guiltily as if to demonstrate the point.
“I can always flick you again,” I offer. “Aversion therapy.”
Her lips contort into a scowl which has the odd effect of mainlining blood to my cock. Jesus, this is all kinds of wrong.
Without giving my wayward brain a chance to think about it, I lift her feet and plant them back on the sofa, discreetly adjust my pants and stand.
Her chin tilts upward. “Where are you going?”
There’s a hint of disappointment in her tone that I shove with both hands to the back of my mind. “Out,” I reply.
“I thought you said you aren’t working today.”
“Who says I’m going out for work?” As soon as I say the words, I know how they sound. They imply I’m heading out for another reason. A reason most probably hourglass-shaped and ill-advised. It’s not what I’m doing but I let the suggestion hang in the air. As much for me as for her.
I’m not the brother she’s beginning to hope I am.
I can follow her around a convention center to make sure no one wraps gag tape around her head; I can break the hand of a man who let vines grow over her precious rose bush; I can let her choose the crappiest movie on earth and fetch popcorn for her to eat, but that’s as far as my brotherly duties go.
I’m not a good man and I’m certainly not a good brother. The more I remember that, the safer she’ll be.
Three days pass before I can bring myself to return to the house. I manage to time it to coincide with my mother and Tony’s return from Boston, so I won’t be tempted to cozy up with my stepsister on the couch with no one else in the house.
“Thanks, love. Ever the gentleman,” Mom says as I lift her bag out of the trunk and carry it into the house.
I drop it at the foot of the stairs and turn to see Mom peering round the door to the kitchen. “Is Bambalina home?”
I take off my overcoat, hoping to remove some of the irritability that just skated over me at the sound of her name. “No idea.”
“Oh.” Mom’s shoulders drop. “I was hoping to talk to her.”
“Call her,” I clip. “She has a phone.”
Mom’s glare burns like a hot poker. “It’s not the sort of thing I’d like to discuss over the phone.”
I hold up my hands and go to walk away but Mom catches my elbow. “Actually, I need to talk to you too.”
A nick of dread appears in my chest. What would Mom want to speak to us both about? I’ve been nice to Lina, just like Mom told me to. I’ve been doing my brotherly duty. What the fuck else do I need to do?
“I need you to do me a favor.”
“Go on.”
“I’ve made Bambi an appointment with a doctor in the City.”
My chest tightens. “What kind of doctor?”
Mom blinks away with a swallow. “Just… a doctor.”
She couldn’t sound any more suspicious if she tried. “What’s the name?”
“Dr. Bobby Bruce.”
The name sounds familiar.
I recall seeing it on a billboard somewhere.
I try again. “Seriously, Mom, what kind of doctor?” I thin my eyes. “Do I need to be worried?”
She breathes in, long and deep, then sighs heavily. “It’s a woman thing.”
The penny drops, along with the advertisement I’ve seen plastered above Times Square. “The gynecologist?”
Mom holds up her hands. “Look, it’s nothing, really. Just a routine exam.”
I turn my head and side-eye her. “If you want me to take her to this thing, you have to be honest with me.”
She sighs again. “Okay, fine. Tony and I have been talking, and with Bambi’s eighteenth birthday just around the corner, we’ve agreed it’s time she started taking birth control.”
Words spew from my mouth like vomit.
“What? Why? She isn’t seeing anyone. Why the hell do you want her on birth control? She’s so na?ve and she’s probably still a virgin—” That last thought makes my chest inflate.
Mom jerks backward at my outburst, her dark, manicured brows dipping to a rare frown.
“Nicolò… It’s what young women do. To be honest, I’m surprised she isn’t on birth control already. I’d have thought her sisters would have seen to that.” Mom seems to offer herself an explanation. “They have had other things on their minds I guess.”
She turns back to me and the matter in hand. “Luckily, I’m here now and I’m looking out for her. As part of the Di Santo’s, it’s doubly imperative that she protects herself from an unwanted pregnancy.”
“Does she know?” I ask, my tone grave. I am not taking my stepsister to a fucking gynecologist without her consent.
“Yes, of course. And she’s fine about it.
” Mom frowns like she’s about to tell me something I don’t know.
“Being the youngest sibling to a daughter already married to a don, Bambalina doesn’t have to remain a virgin until a suitable marriage is made, but there’s no point in jeopardizing her prospects by risking the appearance of a child before that happens.
” She folds her arms. “And she’s a beautiful girl.
It won’t be long before there are grown men beating down the door for her. ”
The whole of my upper torso is vibrating with a sensation I can’t describe. It feels a little like madness and a lot like violence. I want to yell at my mother to drop it, but the socially conforming side of me knows that wouldn’t be a rational response.
“I don’t need to know any of this,” I protest. “Why are you telling me?”
“Because we’ve got her an appointment with the best doctor in the city in two days but neither Tony nor I are able to take her. I need you to drive her there.”
“Why me?” It feels like whining even to my ears. “Can’t one of Tony’s drivers take her?”
“That would be a little impersonal, don’t you think? She needs family with her.”
I force myself to blink in a calm and measured fashion—precisely the opposite of how I’m feeling. “What about her sisters?”
“I already checked. Trilby has an open day at the gallery, Tess is at rehearsals and Sera is simply too far away.”
“The aunt?” I’m clutching at straws now.
“You mean Allegra?” Mom’s frown deepens and I shrug in response.
“She has other plans.”
“What if I have other plans? Things are heating up at work, Mom—”
“I don’t want to know. Just… Take a couple hours, Nicolò, please.”
I bite back every urge to argue, because first of all, my mom has an uncanny ability to out-argue me every time, and second, protesting too much will only raise suspicion, and there is nothing to be suspicious of.
But as I lie in bed watching the clock tick slowly into the early hours, I can’t avoid the truth.
This fucking bothers me. The thought of Bambalina being put on birth control like some bitch in heat doesn’t sit well on my shoulders at all.
But the thought of her carrying some man’s baby makes me feel fucking sick.
I can’t physically or mentally even conjure an image of some man’s hands on her in the first place.
My vision turns red before anything else forms.
My breaths come out hard and forceful, as though I’m bracing for impact. It’s impossible to sleep.
Light slants through the window, between the blinds, and I groan. It’s morning already and I haven’t slept for even a minute. My skin is itching with frustration, my bones restless and my muscles tense.
It’s no use.
Rolling out of bed, I pull on the first item of clothing I see—the gray sweatpants I’d discarded after watching the movie with Bambalina. Then I make my way to the back of the house and through the French doors, grabbing a pair of shears from the utility room on the way.
My bare upper body sizzles against the bitterly cold air, and my sweatpants catch the damp dew as I brush past dead-headed shrubs. I pause for a moment to breathe in the quiet, still air, hoping it quells some of the rage simmering inside me. It doesn’t work.
By the time I’m standing over the rose bush, I’m vibrating with frustration. So, lifting the shears, I take it all out on the vines.