Chapter 7 Cassio
Cassio
The pieces of the shattered burner phone sit on my mahogany desk like a goddamn taunt.
It’s past two in the morning. The storm outside has finally broken, leaving behind. I am sitting in the dark, a glass of Macallan dangling from my fingers, staring at the jagged black plastic.
Dario fucking Lombardi.
My jaw clenches so hard my teeth grind together, a dull ache is radiating up to my temples. I lift the glass and swallow the bourbon, welcoming the burn as it slides down my throat, but it does absolutely nothing to quiet the violent, roaring inferno in my blood.
She called him.
Less than a week after taking my name, my wife stole a phone, hid in an office, and called the weakest, most pathetic excuse for a mafia prince in this city.
She cried to him. She begged him for help.
She acted like I was the villain holding her hostage, while Lombardi was her tragic, shining knight.
A dark, bitter laugh escapes my chest.
This isn't jealousy. That’s what I tell myself as I pour another three fingers of whiskey.
Jealousy is a useless, weak emotion reserved for men who don't have total control over their environment.
I am Cassio Vellutini. I don't get jealous over a spinster who was shoved onto me to settle a territorial dispute.
No, this is about respect. It’s about honor.
She is a Vellutini now. She wears my ring.
When she sneaks around behind my back to contact another man, a man from a rival family, no less, she isn't just insulting me; she is spitting on my name. She is signaling to the entire syndicate that my house is divided, that I cannot even control the woman sleeping under my own roof. If the Capos find out she’s crying to the Lombardi boy, they’ll see it as a weakness.
And weakness in my position is a death sentence.
I slam the crystal glass down onto the desk.
I stand up, my chair scraping harshly against the hardwood floor. I’m not wearing a suit anymore, just a pair of dark slacks and a black dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar. My blood is running too hot for a jacket.
I need to make her understand. I need to carve the reality of her situation so deeply into her stubborn fucking skull that she never forgets it again.
I leave the study and walk out into the corridor of the west wing. The house is dead quiet, the staff is long asleep, only the night shift guards are patrolling the perimeter. I cross the invisible boundary into the east wing.
The two soldiers stationed outside her door straighten immediately when they see me approaching. They avert their eyes, recognizing the murderous, coiled tension radiating off my body.
"Open it," I command.
One of the men fumbles for the heavy iron key, his hands shaking slightly. He unlocks the deadbolt and steps back, putting as much distance between himself and me as the hallway allows.
I push the door open and step inside, shutting it firmly behind me. The lock clicks into place, sealing us in.
The suite is bathed in moonlight filtering through the massive windows. She isn't asleep.
Noemi is sitting on the edge of the charcoal-gray bed, her knees pulled to her chest, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs.
She’s still wearing the oversized gray sweatpants and the faded black tank top from earlier.
Her dark hair is a tangled mess cascading over her pale shoulders.
She looks exhausted, and shadows are visible beneath her dark eyes.
But the moment I step into the room, the exhaustion vanishes. Her spine goes rigid. Her chin tilts up, catching the moonlight, instantly assembling that impenetrable, infuriating armor of defiance.
"Have you come to break something else?" she asks, her voice hoarse but dripping with venom. "Because if you're looking for electronics, Matteo’s goons already stripped the room bare. You'll have to settle for throwing a lamp."
I walk slowly toward the center of the room, my hands shoved into my pockets to keep from wrapping them around her throat. Again.
"Do you have any idea what you did today?" I ask, my voice comes out dangerously soft. "Do you comprehend the magnitude of your own stupidity?"
"I made a phone call," she snaps, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and standing up. She refuses to cower, even though I have a hundred pounds and a foot of height on her. "I reached out to a friend because my husband treats me like a prisoner of war!"
"He is not your friend!" I roar, the sudden volume makes her flinch, though she holds her ground.
I close the distance between us, stopping just a few feet away.
"He is the son of Don Lombardi! He is a rival.
And you, you stupid, arrogant little brat, are the wife of the Vellutini Don.
If a word of that phone call gets out to the Commission, they will say you are passing information to our enemies. They will call you a rat."
"I was asking him to get me out of here!" she yells back, her hands balling into fists at her sides. "I wasn't talking about your precious territories or your fucking shipping routes! I was telling him that I am suffocating in this house!"
"You don't get to leave!" I step closer. "You were traded for a peace treaty. Your father sold you to me to keep the Russians off his docks. You are mine. You live here. You die here. And Dario Lombardi cannot save you."
"He cares about me!" Noemi screams, her chest heaving, her dark eyes shining with angry, unshed tears. "Which is more than I can say for you or my father! Dario actually looks at me like a human being! He treats me with respect!"
The words hit me like a physical blow to the solar plexus.
He cares about me. A red, blinding haze drops over my vision.
The very idea of Dario Lombardi’s hands on her, of him whispering sweet, pathetic promises into her ear, makes the beast inside me tear at its chains.
It makes me want to burn the entire Lombardi estate to the ground and mount Dario’s head on a spike in my courtyard.
I close the remaining space between us in a heartbeat. I grab her by the upper arms and shove her backward. She gasps, stumbling as her back hits the cold plaster wall beside the floor-to-ceiling window. I pin her there, pressing my body flush against hers, trapping her completely.
She gasps, her hands coming up to push against my chest, but I am immovable. The heat radiating off her skin seeps through my thin shirt.
"Respect?" I sneer, leaning down so my face is inches from hers.
I can smell the citrus of her shampoo and the frantic, intoxicating scent of her fear.
"You think he respects you? He’s a fucking coward, Noemi.
If he wanted you, if he actually cared about you, he would have asked your father for your hand years ago. But he didn't, did he?"
She turns her face away, her jaw clenched so tight the bone looks like it might snap. "Shut up."
"No, let’s talk about your knight in shining armor," I hiss cruelly, catching her chin between my thumb and forefinger and forcing her to look at me.
"He watched you rot in your father’s house.
He let you take the reputation of a bitter spinster.
He took you to his bed, he fucked you in secret, but he never put a ring on your finger. He made you a whore, not a wife."
"I am not a whore!" she screams, thrashing wildly against me, her nails digging desperately into my shoulders.
"Then act like my fucking wife!" I roar back, my grip on her arms tightening until my knuckles turn white. "Act like a woman who understands honor! You are embarrassing me, Noemi! You are tarnishing my name because you can't get over a pathetic boy who didn't even want to keep you!"
"You don't want me either!" she cries out, the fight suddenly morphing into a raw, bleeding devastation.
She stops thrashing, her hands gripping the front of my shirt, her chest heaving against mine.
"You told me at the altar! You told me I was a pawn!
You said you would never touch me! So why do you care if I talk to him? Why does it matter to you, Cassio?!"
"Because you are mine!"
The words rip out of my throat with a primal, possessive violence that shocks even me.
I stare down at her. She is panting, her lips parted, her dark eyes wide and searching mine.
The proximity suddenly stops feeling like a tactical advantage and starts feeling like a trap.
I can feel every soft curve of her body pressed against the hard angles of mine.
I can feel the rapid-fire beat of her heart echoing through my own chest. The hatred simmering between us is still there, but it’s mutating.
It’s twisting into something darker. Something infinitely more dangerous.
The line between killing someone and fucking them is terrifyingly thin. It’s the same adrenaline. The same racing pulse. The same desperate need to dominate, to conquer, to break the person in front of you until they surrender completely.
I look at her mouth. I look at the full, red lips I bruised at the altar. I remember the taste of bitter resentment and expensive champagne.
She notices the shift in my gaze. Her breath hitches. The furious defiance in her eyes flickers, replaced by a sudden, electric awareness. She knows exactly what I’m thinking. She knows the violence has changed temperatures.
"Cassio," she whispers, a warning, a plea, I don't know which.
"You want to talk about Dario?" I murmur, my voice dropping to a rough pitch. I release her arms, but I don't step back. Instead, I slide my hands down to her waist, gripping her hips through the thin fabric of her sweatpants. "You want to obsess over a man who wouldn't claim you?"
She swallows hard, her throat working. "Let me go."
"No." I lean closer, my mouth brushing against the shell of her ear. She shivers violently, a full-body tremor that sends a jolt of pure, dominant satisfaction straight to my groin. "I told you I wouldn't touch you. I told you I didn't want Dario Lombardi's leftovers."
"Then leave," she breathes, though her hands haven't let go of my shirt. Her knuckles are white, her grip is desperate.
"I can't."
The admission tastes like ash, but it’s the goddamn truth.
I can't leave. I haven't been able to stop thinking about her since the moment she walked down that aisle looking at me like I was the devil.
I haven't been able to sleep knowing she is down the hall, wrapped in my sheets, breathing my air, and dreaming about another man.
I want to erase him. I want to burn Dario Lombardi out of her mind so completely that she forgets how to speak his fucking name.
I slide one hand up her side, my palm flat against her ribs, feeling the heat of her skin through the thin cotton of her tank top.
I tangle my other hand in the thick, chaotic mess of her dark hair, wrapping my fingers around the heavy strands and pulling her head back, exposing the long, pale column of her throat.
"I am going to remind you who owns you," I whisper roughly against her skin.
I crash my mouth down onto hers.
It is an explosion. There is no gentleness. There is no romance. It is a collision of two people who despise each other, driven entirely by a dark, obsessive lust.
She gasps into my mouth, the sound is instantly swallowed by my tongue as I pry her lips apart. I taste her. For a split second, she pushes against my chest, a token resistance of a woman who hates everything I stand for.
But then the spark catches fire.
With a frustrated, guttural sound, Noemi’s hands slide up from my chest, her fingers tangle desperately in the hair at the nape of my neck.
She pulls me closer, opening her mouth to me, kissing me back with a ferocity that matches my own.
She bites my lower lip, a sharp sting of pain that sends a savage thrill straight down my spine.
"Goddamn it," I groan into her mouth, my control snapping completely.
I lift her off the ground. She wraps her legs around my waist instinctively, crossing her ankles behind my back. I walk us the three steps to the massive bed and drop her onto the charcoal sheets, following her down immediately.
I hover over her, trapping her beneath me. Her chest is heaving, her eyes are blown wide, dark with an intoxicating mixture of fear and blinding desire. The sharp-tongued spinster is gone. Beneath me is just a woman, breathless and flushed with heat.
"Dario is a ghost," I tell her. I grab the hem of her faded black tank top. "By the time I’m done with you, you won't even remember what he looks like."
She doesn't argue. She doesn't fight me. She stares up at me, her chest rising and falling rapidly, waiting for the executioner to swing the axe.
I assume she knows exactly how this works.
I assume Lombardi taught her the ropes in the dark corners of whatever location they rendezvoused.
She is twenty-four years old, older than a traditional mafia bride.
She’s experienced. She knows the game. I don't need to hold back.
I don't need to treat her like a fragile virgin.
I can take her the way I want to, rough, demanding, and with authority.
I pull the tank top over her head and toss it onto the floor, my eyes dragging over the pale, bare skin of her chest, the delicate lace of her bra. A fierce, territorial hunger claws at my insides.
She belongs to me. She is my wife. And tonight, I am going to claim my property.