Chapter 10
CHAPTER 10
Nero
“ N -nothing,” she staggers back.
“You’re lying to me,” I grit out. The image is burned into my retinas. Dried blood is staining the side of her face where her skin has begun to turn a distinct yellow and purple.
“Please, just drop it, Nero. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m not bloody dropping it. You have two seconds to tell me what happened, or I’m walking in there and asking him myself.”
“Nero—”
“One.”
“I fell, okay!” she screams. “I fell, and I knocked my head into the furniture. Sebastian would never hurt me. He’s not that kind of person.”
He’s exactly that kind of person . A sadistic asshole who takes pleasure in putting down whoever he thinks is weaker than him. Right from childhood, Sebastian has always been a bit of a bully, picking on people he knew couldn’t fight back.
“I don’t care what kind of person he is, Sofia. All I bloody know is that the both of you left the dinner table together, and now you’re here bleeding out and defending him. For the record, I don’t believe your bullshit about falling.”
“Leave it alone,” she snarls. “It’s my marriage, and it’s none of your business. I don’t remember hiring a knight in shining armor, and anyway, I’m not a lady in distress.”
I step closer to her, and she takes a step backward. I frown into the dark. “If you think I’m going to act like I didn’t see this and look the other way, then you don’t really know me.”
A humorless laugh slips out of her mouth. “Yes, Nero. I don’t know you. You’re just some guy that showed up at my wedding ,and God keeps on throwing us into each other’s spaces.”
“This has nothing to do with God,” I tell her. “Or whatever fate or serendipity shit you’re about to spout.”
“Why do you even care?” she roars, thrusting her hands up into the air. “I don’t see what any of this has to do with you. We are not friends, or haven’t you made that clear enough with the way you blow hot one day and cold the next?”
I stare at her. That really is the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Why the hell do I care? Why the hell do I feel like walking back into the villa and blowing Sebastian’s brains out? I’m not even thinking of my revenge or my birthright, now.
The red over my vision only gets darker and darker the longer I stand there and tell myself that I don’t care.
It could have been worse , a dark voice inside of me says. She could have been lying in a pool of her own blood right now, lifeless.
If I don’t get rid of Lucchese soon, he will hurt her. Or rather, he will hurt her far more than he has already done. She tries to wear a brave face, smiling for his dimwitted aunt and cousins while they study her with a magnifying glass and dissect her brutally, but I see how her shoulders hunch into themselves.
I see how she draws herself tauter than a spring and her false smile begins to falter. I see her fist in her dress and shake with repressed emotions.
And that bastard had the guts to bring his whore right here and flaunt her in his wife’s face.
Vittoria is nothing special, as far as I’m concerned. She’s the kind of woman who can make men at a bar start a brawl for who will have the pleasure of taking her home.
But Sofia...
Sofia can make Kings go to war. She makes me want to set Sebastian’s Kingdom on fire with no rhyme, plot, or reason.
“Someone has to care,” I finally say.
“That someone doesn’t have to be you,” she replies. “I set you free from having to burden yourself to care for me.”
“Princess—”
“And would you please stop calling me that?! I’m not a princess. Princesses are things from fairytales that live in gorgeous castles and get to marry the prince. Does this look like a fairytale to you? Blood, and drugs, and family wars?”
“Princesses are the main characters of every fairytale.”
She goes so still that I wonder if she’s breathing. “I’m not the main character in this story. I’m more of a supporting character. One of the extras, even.”
From the first moment I stepped into that church, it’s felt like Sofia Lucchese is the only thing I’ve been able to see. The tunnel vision I have for her is terrifying. If I were any good at drawing, I’d be able to draw her straight from memory. That’s how much I know every inch of her.
“You have no idea,” I finally sigh.
“How would I? The whole world is designed to keep women in the dark.”
“Perfect for you then, since all you ever do is hide.”
“And all you ever do is call me out on what you think you know about me,” Sofia snarls. “I may not know you, but neither do you.”
“Let me take an educated guess, then. You are a sheltered, twenty-one-year-old who’s gone from receiving orders from Daddy dearest to receiving orders from your husband. All your life you’ve been told that your duty is to the men that own you, and you think you’re supposed to fit into the box of whatever they tell you that you are, because you don’t have a choice, because if you toe the line, you’ll be rewarded some freedom someday,” I recite. “But you’re different.”
“No, I’m not! Stop trying to make me into something that I’m not.”
“You hate him. You hate Sebastian, admit it.”
“I don’t hate him.”
Above us, lightning flashes in the sky, and I see how white her face is. “You’re cold. Go inside.”
“No.”
“Get the hell inside, Sofia.”
“I don’t take orders from you.”
“You’re going to catch your death out here. Get inside, now .”
Stubborn, infuriating, hardheaded. Those are just a few adjectives that can be used to describe her, followed by beautiful, alluring, and the only woman I’ve ever been so curious about.
“I don’t need you to tell me what to do. Or take care of me. Or protect me. Or fight for me. I get enough of being shoved around from everyone else.”
My fingers curl into fists at my side. “Someone needs to. Someone needs to care for you. Show you what it means to have somebody in your corner.”
“It doesn’t have to be you.”
“Then who the hell is it going to be?” I step closer to her, my voice low and intense. This time, she stands her ground, her defiance clear in the way she holds herself. “Because it’s definitely not your father, and it sure as hell isn’t the man who put his goddamn hands on you.”
“I told you, he didn’t do this,” her voice trembles. “Why don’t you believe me?”
“Because for some reason I can never understand, you insist on thinking your husband is a good man.”
“He’s not a bad man. There is no good or bad in our world. There are just men who do bad things sometimes.”
I grit my teeth in a mixture of frustration and fury. It is so ingrained in her to think all of this is normal, and maybe at one time, it had been the same for me.
When I got out and saw life outside of the tiny bubble of the Cosa Nostra, I finally understood that the men I used to look up to were nothing but monsters.
I don’t claim to be a good man. I’ve done my fair share of taking lives and using people for my own good, but the one rule I’ve always followed is No Women, No Children. You don’t put your hands on them and neither do you take advantage of them.
A powerful thunder sound booms across the sky, and the world seems to rock with the force of it. The sky lights up, and I see her green eyes narrowed to dangerous slits.
“At least I know exactly who he is,” she continues, voice full of accusation. “Unlike you. You’re different from one day to the next. You think I can ever trust you? I can’t even trust you to be the same person tomorrow, so how am I supposed to believe that you won’t take back all your care when I need it most?”
“I’m not one of the men in your life who has let you down.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She turns around to walk away and my hand lashes out of its own will, clamping around her arm, firm enough to keep her in place but loose enough that if she really wants to walk away, she can.
“I’ve never hurt you, yet somehow, I’m the one who gets all your wrath. How can you stay in this shitty marriage with a man who lives to humiliate you and yet you want nothing to do with me ?” It’s the most confusing part of all of this, and I’ve been wracking my brain wondering why she continues to take it with a smile.
I know for many women born into this life, they have no other choice, but it’s easy to see the resentment in their eyes. Like Sebastian’s cousins and his aunt, they are full of so much bitterness.
“I know it’s not love.” She flinches at the word. “And certainly not your love for money, so tell me what it is.”
“It’s my duty.”
That word! “Does your duty end in a coffin, six feet under?”
She tears away from my hold. “I’m not special! Hundreds of women have done it before me, and hundreds more will do it after me.”
Lightning flashes in the sky again, and at that moment, the skies open up, rain pelting us. Sofia lets out a startled squeak and I immediately grab her hand and begin to lead her to the nearby gazebo that is situated away from the view of the villa.
Trying to get back to the villa in the dark and with the path made slippery by the rain isn’t safe, and I also don’t want to run into someone and have to go through scrutiny.
I’m here to blend in as much as possible, and not draw a big red dot on my forehead by my association with Sebastian’s wife.
Fairy lights strung around the roof of the wooden structure allow me to see her better. Her white dress clings to her slender frame and has turned translucent. My gaze drops down to the gap between her thighs and then makes its way up to the curve of her hip, and where her nipples stand at hard points against her dress.
Her hair is a tangle of waves that fall around her face, making her look wild and untamed. She has never looked so perfect to me. So utterly kissable.
Then I remember her pushing her dinner around her plate with disinterest. “You don’t eat enough.”
“I-I don’t want to argue with you anymore.” Her teeth are chattering so badly that the words can hardly leave her mouth.
I immediately reach for her, and she tries to bat my hand away.
“Stop it, you’re freezing.”
Christ, this woman.
I pull her into my chest and wrap my arms around her body. She still tries to fight me, but eventually, she begins to clutch at my shirt, pulling me tighter into her and making mewling sounds that go straight to my cock.
I suddenly regret my decision to not drag her back into the villa, dump her at her own doorstep and hightail out of there. I’m just a man, a particularly weak one where Sofia Lucchese is concerned.
“Sofia,” I warn, but I do nothing to push her away. My greedy hands slide up her legs inch by inch, taking her dress with them.
“S-so warm,” she moans, the sound ripping at my self-control like sharp claws against threadbare fabric.
“Please…” Please stop. Please don’t stop . I can’t tell which one I mean. She smells like oranges, and her breasts are pressed to my chest, her legs practically climbing me.
“Nero, make me forget,” she whispers, and the last thread of my restraint is ripped apart.
“You don’t know what you’re asking, Princess.”
“Then show me,” she moans. My fingers tangle in her hair, cupping the back of her head roughly as I drag her mouth to mine, urgent, hungry, and desperate.