Chapter 16 Noemi
Noemi
The heavy, armored door of the Maybach slams shut, sealing us inside a pitch-black tomb of leather and tension.
Outside the tinted windows, the Lombardi estate shrinks as Dante slams his foot onto the gas pedal, tearing the massive car down the winding driveway.
Matteo is in the passenger seat, his posture rigid, already barking rapid-fire Sicilian into his radio to coordinate the escort vehicles following us.
I sit as far away from Cassio as the plush leather allows, my back pressed against the cold door.
My chest is heaving, my hands are shaking so violently I have to ball them into fists in my lap to keep them still.
The crimson silk of my dress feels too tight, restricting the frantic, shallow breaths clawing at my throat.
Cassio sits beside me, a towering silhouette in the shadows.
He is radiating a heat so intense, a violence so raw and untamed, it feels like sitting next to a live explosive.
His jaw is clenched so tight I can hear the faint grinding of his teeth over the hum of the engine.
He reaches up and violently rips the bowtie from his collar, unbuttoning the top two buttons of his shirt with jerky, erratic movements.
The adrenaline from the terrace finally reaches its boiling point.
"Are you completely out of your mind?!" I explode, unable to hold the words back a second longer. I twist in my seat to face him, hurling my small evening bag onto the floorboards. "You nearly started a war, Cassio! Over nothing!"
His head snaps toward me. Even in the dim light of the passing streetlamps, his pitch-black eyes are terrifying.
"Nothing?" he snarls, closing the distance between us in a single, fluid lunge. He doesn't touch me, but he crowds my space until his chest is inches from mine. "He was touching you! He had his hands on you!"
"He touched my cheek for half a second before I told him to back off!" I yell, shoving my hands flat against the solid wall of his chest. "I had it handled! You didn't need to throw him through a glass table in front of the entire syndicate! Don Salvatore is going to—"
"I don't give a fuck about Don Salvatore!
" Cassio roars, the volume so deafening that Matteo flinches in the front seat.
"He thinks he can save you from me! He thinks you are a victim.
He thinks he still has a right to look at you, to speak to you, to touch you.
I should have put a bullet in his fucking kneecap. "
"He is an idiot!" I counter, my voice cracking with pure frustration. "I don't care about Dario! I told him to leave me alone! But you embarrassed us, Cassio! You acted like a feral animal!"
"I acted like a man protecting what is his!" he fires back, his hands slamming down on the leather seat on either side of my thighs, caging me in.
"I am not a piece of property!" I scream, tears of anger springing to my eyes, blurring his sharp, ruthless features.
"You are my wife!"
"And that means you own me?" I demand, my throat burning. "That gives you the right to treat me like a possession you have to guard from the rest of the world? To lock me in a tower and beat any man who looks at me? Is that what this is to you, Cassio? Just ownership?"
The question hangs in the cramped, suffocating space of the car.
Outside, the rain begins to fall again, a sudden, violent downpour drumming against the reinforced steel of the roof.
Cassio stares at me. His chest is heaving, his dark eyes are blazing with that magnificent, unyielding fire that I have spent the last month fighting. He thinks I’m challenging his authority. He thinks I’m protecting Dario.
But then, the rigid, monstrous tension in his shoulders suddenly breaks.
The feral anger drains out of his face and is replaced by an agonizing truth. It is a look of devastating vulnerability, an expression that a Don is never supposed to wear, especially not in front of his soldiers.
"Ownership is easy, Noemi," Cassio says. His voice drops from a roar to a whisper that completely hollows out my stomach. "I own a dozen warehouses. I own casinos. I own the docks. If someone touches them, I kill them, and then I sleep perfectly fine."
He shifts his weight, moving closer until our knees are perfectly aligned. He reaches up, his large, calloused hands trembling slightly as they cup my face. His thumbs trace the sharp cut of my cheekbones.
"This isn't ownership," he confesses. "This is madness."
My breath hitches. The fight drains out of me instantly, replaced by a deep, terrifying free-fall.
“I hate the idea of anyone else touching you," Cassio murmurs, pressing his forehead against mine, his dark eyes burning into my soul.
"I hate that he knew you before I did. I hate that he made you smile at a Christmas dinner two years ago when I wasn't there. I hate that he thinks he knows what you need, when all I can think about is how to give you the entire fucking world just to make you look at me the way you used to look at him.”
"Cassio..." I whisper, the word tumbling from my lips.
"I am a monster, Noemi," he vows, his fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of my neck. "I am violent, and I am paranoid, and I know I am suffocating you. But the thought of him putting his hands on you... the thought of you ever wishing he had been the one waiting at the altar..."
A ragged, desperate breath escapes his chest. "It makes me want to tear my own heart out."
He lets me see it all.
I don't pull away.
Slowly, tentatively, I bring my hands up. I rest my palms flat against his chest, feeling the erratic, violent thumping of his heart beneath the crisp white shirt. My fingers curl into the fabric, anchoring myself to him.
"I don't wish it was him," I whisper honestly. "I told him to leave me alone, Cassio. I told him I didn't want him."
"Then who do you want?" he demands desperately. He needs to hear it. He needs the verbal confirmation before he completely loses his mind.
I tilt my head up.
"I want the monster," I breathe.
Cassio groans, a deep, guttural sound of pure salvation, and crashes his mouth against mine.
The kiss is an explosion. It’s a collision of heat, desperation, and total surrender.
I open my mouth to him willingly, my hands sliding up to wrap tightly around the back of his neck.
His tongue sweeps past my lips, tasting, claiming, devouring every lingering doubt I ever had.
He hauls me across the leather seat, pulling me onto his lap, his large hands grip my waist with a bruising, desperate strength.
I kiss him back with a fierce, demanding hunger that matches his own. My fingers tangle in his dark hair, pulling him closer, deeper, drowning in the intoxicating taste of whiskey, mint, and absolute power.
For thirty seconds, there is no syndicate. There is no Bratva. There is only the heat of his skin, the frantic beat of his heart, and the terrifying realization that I am entirely, helplessly in love with him.
And then, the world shatters.
A deafening, metallic CRUNCH shatters the silence.
The entire Maybach violently lurches sideways. The impact throws me hard against Cassio’s chest. The screech of tearing metal and squealing tires is agonizingly loud as the armored car spins out of control.
"Ambush!" Matteo roars from the front seat.
I scream as we slam into the median, the car shuddering to a violent halt. My head spins, the sudden whiplash leaves me dizzy and disoriented.
Before I can even process what just happened, the night explodes into a terrifying chorus of automatic gunfire.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
Sparks fly like fireworks as bullets rain down on the passenger side of the Maybach. The heavy, reinforced ballistic glass spiderwebs instantly, a hundred white cracks blooming across the window just inches from my face.
"Get down!" Cassio bellows.
Cassio shoves me forcefully off his lap, pressing me down into the narrow floorboards behind Dante’s seat.
"Stay down, Noemi! Do not move a fucking muscle!" he orders, his hand pressing the back of my head down as far as I can go.
"Boss, they T-boned the lead SUV!" Dante shouts from the driver’s seat, slamming the transmission into reverse. The tires spin uselessly for a second against the wet asphalt before catching, the engine roaring in protest. "We’re blocked in! Two heavy trucks front and rear!"
"Bratva?" Cassio demands, drawing his customized 1911 in a blur of motion.
"Bratva and Irish!" Matteo confirms, his own weapon drawn, his eyes scanning the chaotic darkness outside the shattered spiderwebs of the glass. "I see red armbands! They coordinated!"
"Drive over the fucking median, Dante!" Cassio roars. "Get us out of this kill box!"
BAM! BAM! BAM!
The sound of heavy-caliber rounds slamming into the armored plating of the car is deafening, like sitting inside a metal drum being beaten with sledgehammers.
I squeeze my eyes shut, clapping my hands over my ears, my entire body trembling uncontrollably.
The smell of burning rubber and cordite floods the cabin through the air vents.
This is the war. The war my father warned me about. The war Cassio has been fighting in the shadows.
"The armor is holding, but it won't take armor-piercing rounds!" Matteo yells. He kicks his door open a fraction of an inch and blind-fires three shots into the rain before pulling it shut again. "They’re advancing on foot!"
"Go! Go! Go!" Cassio shouts.
Dante wrenches the steering wheel hard. The Maybach lurches backward, the rear bumper smashing into something solid with a sickening crunch.
He shifts into drive, flooring the gas pedal.
The massive engine howls as the car hops the concrete median, the undercarriage scraping violently with a screech of tearing metal.
We land hard on the opposite lane.
"We’re clear! Heading south toward the cliffs!" Dante yells, his hands moving frantically over the wheel.
"Call Gianni! Get the perimeter team moving to intercept us!" Cassio orders Matteo.