Chapter 31
31
GIANNA
Little by little, my breathing slows, and the fire beneath my skin dims to a warm, lazy glow. I stay like this for a while, nestled against him, tracing absent patterns over the inked flesh of Michael’s chest as the steady rise and fall of his breathing lulls me into contentment. “Do all your tattoos have some special meaning, or do you just like looking badass?”
His hand rubs up my spine, the other settling into my hair, idly playing with the strands. “Some do, others don’t.”
I shift slightly to glance up at him. His face is relaxed, eyes half-lidded with satisfaction, and a mop of dirty blond hair falls over his brows. I brush it back, then let my fingers drift to the dark ink lining the side of his scalp. “What about these?”
“They’re lines and bits of code from StarQuest , the video game I created that went viral and made HartSphere global.”
“That’s so cool,” I murmur, examining the cursives and little numbers with fresh eyes. I know of the game, obviously—who doesn’t?—but I’m not really much of a gamer. I should download it sometime. See what all the fuss is about.
Lifting up a little, I press a kiss to either side of his smooth scalp. The movement makes his cock slip wetly inside me, and I feel it twitch, stirring back to life. Heat floods my core in response.
I cock my brows at him, and he raises his hands in surrender, chuckling. “You can’t blame me. You’re naked with my cock inside you, and you’re moving around, shaking your tits in my face. Of course I’m going to get hard.”
As if proving his point, he gets even harder inside me, stretching me deliciously, and I swallow my low moan, not wanting to encourage the rogue. I start to get up from him, dragging his cock out of me, but he grips my hips, holding me still. “No. Stay. I like this.”
“It’s distracting having a conversation like this,” I protest weakly, but I settle back down on him anyway, shivering as goosebumps erupt all over my body, because—who am I kidding—I like this too.
Clearing my throat, I let my gaze wander back to his tattoos. The ones on his scalp continue down his neck in the same intricate pattern. I run my fingers over them, gentle and curious. “It must have hurt to get tattooed here.”
“Like a motherfucker,” he agrees bluntly, and I feel a rush of tenderness. I lean down and press a kiss on his throat—a kiss of empathy, of admiration for the pain endured. The strong pulse beneath my lips reminds me that for all his power and danger, he’s human too. I move my attention to his sternum and chest where the tattoo of the phoenix is. “I got that because I think of myself like the bird. Rising from the ashes of my past to establish the Michael I am now.”
I hum thoughtfully, curiosity burning through me about his past, his parents. From Gracie, I’ve gleaned that his father was probably not a good man, but his mother remains a complete mystery. Gracie never mentions her, and Michael avoids any reference to his parents altogether. I wonder if I can ask now…
“I can hear your thoughts loud and clear, Gianna. Ask your questions. I’ll answer the ones I’m comfortable with and ignore the rest.”
“Alright,” I murmur, but at the last second of asking about his parents, I chicken out. Instead, my gaze drifts to his left arm where an elaborate garden of different flowers twines down from his biceps to his wrist and fingers in striking black and white—with one vivid exception. A burst of red, orange, white, pink, and yellow bulbs with green stems.
Tulips.
I trace my fingers over the flowers, lingering on the colored tulips. “Did you know that my middle name is Tulipa? You probably do. What a coincidence, right?”
“It’s no coincidence, it’s because you were born to be mine.” His voice brooks no argument, and warmth blooms in my chest.
I like that thought—the idea of cosmic forces creating me specifically for him, of some divine hand nudging my parents to name me Tulipa after flowers that clearly mean something to him.
“What do they mean? The tulips?” I ask, desperate to understand this piece of him.
His hand resumes its hypnotic stroking of my spine, and I shiver, instinctively snuggling into him as I wait for his answer.
“It’s complicated. A long story,” he says after a weighted silence, and I sense his withdrawal. I move to get up from his chest, but his arms tighten around me, keeping me captive. “The flowers are a symbol of the connection between the guys and me. My brothers.”
Oh.
Something about the way he says it makes my throat constrict. I press a hand over his heart, sensing there’s a sad story behind those simple words. Why else would a bunch of men with no blood ties become so fiercely loyal to one another —and not only refer to themselves as brothers but truly believe they are family?
“It’s so long, I’m not even sure where to start. And we sure as hell can’t talk about it here,” he finishes evasively.
Oh no you don’t , I think, pushing away from him with a determined shove. I will not let him retreat now, not when I’m finally getting a glimpse behind the curtain.
“Tell me, right here, right now. Pete is gone, and he’s going to stay gone until we leave this office.” And I have a disturbing feeling in my belly that if I let Michael dodge this now, I’ll never get him to tell me about it again.
His hips shift beneath me, stirring his cock inside me?—
I narrow my eyes on him.
Oh, you asshole. He’s trying to distract me with sex?
“This isn’t fair, you know?” Frustration leaks into my voice. “I’m an open book to you because you already know everything there is to know about me. Hell, you probably even know things I don’t know about my own life.” That last part is meant as a guilt trip, but something flickers in his eyes that makes me believe he might know something I don’t.
His gaze holds mine, then he sighs. “Fine. Come back here.” He frames my face between his palms, stroking his thumbs gently over my cheekbones. I lean into his touch, my eyes fluttering shut with contentment. His hands slip into my hair, and I sink into his body, ear pressed against the warmth of his bare chest.
Michael stays quiet for a long moment, and I don’t push. Instinct tells me he needs the silence, space to gather his thoughts.
The anticipation builds within me like a crescendo.
Finally, he speaks.
“If I’m going to start from the very beginning, then I’ll say it all started with an incredible young woman.” He pauses, and I hear a different note enter his voice. “Yes, it started with a girl. Emilia.”
His tone softens with the name, and I tilt my head up to catch his expression, my stomach knotting at what I find. His face has changed—his features gentler, his eyes distant, filled with an unmistakable affection for this Emilia. A vicious sting of jealousy bites me, but I push it down, forcing myself to be rational. Because somehow, I know this story isn’t going to be a romantic one. At least, not his.
“She got transferred to the high school the guys and I were attending at just sixteen. Smart as hell—so much so that she skipped two grades and landed right in the middle of our senior year. The guys and I were intrigued. Maybe even a little jealous.”
He chuckles, the sound fond with memory.
“The day we met her, we were shittalking— loudly —about this ‘genius girl’. Didn’t realize she was right behind us. And let’s just say… she had a lot to say to us about that.”
I can picture it so clearly—a group of arrogant teenage boys taken down a peg by a brilliant girl two years their junior. The image makes me smile despite my lingering jealousy. “I like her already.”
“So did Rafael, apparently. I expected him to be pissed—he hated when people talked back to us—but for some reason, he was amused. Declared to the whole school that she was under his protection. No one dared to mess with her after that. Maybe he even started liking her right then, just because of her spunk.”
Of course Rafael would be drawn to someone like that.
He pauses again, and I rub my hand down his chest soothingly, waiting patiently for him to continue. He’s not just telling a story—he’s reliving it.
“That same day, she got assigned as Rafael’s tutor. He’s smart, but you see, back then, the last thing on our minds was school. Rafael’s father was the don, and my father—” He exhales sharply. “My father found him useful. Took me to their house a couple of times. So by then, the guys and I were friends already. We couldn't wait to officially join the outfit and be part of the feared Moretti family. We ran errands for the syndicate any chance we got.
Something dark flashes through his expression, but he doesn’t linger on it.
“Anyways, Emilia tutored Rafael and began to sit with us for that first week. She and Rafael constantly argued. Maybe because they were both similar in a lot of ways; demanding and controlling. But by the end of the second week, her father was brutally murdered…”
A chill runs down my spine.
“By Alfonso Moretti, don of the Moretti family… Rafael’s father.”
My jaw drops in shock, and I push away from Michael’s chest to gape up at him. No. Fucking. Way.
Rafael’s own father murdered his friend’s dad? The pieces of Rafael’s complex personality begin to click into place.
Michael smiles slightly at my reaction, and lifts his index finger under my chin, gently closing my mouth.
“Tomassi Rossi, Emilia’s father, was a detective who had been sniffing around Alfonso for months. Nobody really knows how he died, but it was clear as day who the killer was.”
I shake my head slowly. “Emilia must have been devastated. How did she and her mother even cope with such sudden loss?”
“She didn’t have a mother. Lost her at a young age. No relatives, either.”
My heart constricts painfully. Poor girl. I can imagine exactly what she went through. Suddenly losing your parent and being orphaned is a trauma that reshapes your entire existence. I know that pain intimately, though unlike her, I had somewhere to go, someone to take me in. No matter how horrible my uncle and his family were to me, I still had them. And despite how everything went to shit between us and Dario’s subsequent death, I’m still grateful to Uncle Aldo.
But she had no one. No one .
“She must have been out of her mind with grief because she took her father’s gun and stormed into one of Alfonso’s warehouses,” Michael continues, and my heart plummets into my stomach. Oh God. No. That couldn’t have ended well.
“The guys and I were out running some errands for the outfit, and when we got back, what we walked into was…” His jaw goes rigid. “It was horrible.”
I hold my breath.
“The men at the warehouse had overpowered Em. They had already roughed her up—payback for whatever fight she put up—and they were in the process of taking her clothes off and…” His throat works as he swallows hard, his voice trailing off, thick with barely controlled rage.
I don’t need him to complete the sentence to get what nightmarish scene they walked into that day. And although I’ve never met nor heard of the girl before, white-hot anger rushes through my veins on her behalf. She was just a grieving child, and those monsters tried to violate her in the worst way possible. I wish I had been there with a gun of my own?—
“We were all young, but that was our friend. And Rafael, who was usually the most level–headed amongst us, just… snapped . He took out his gun and started shooting.” Michael glances at me. “So we took out our guns as well and joined him. Wiped them all out.”
I let out a slow breath. Good. They fucking deserved it.
“We took Emilia to a hospital to get checked, and that was where Alfonso found us.”
My stomach twists. Oh, fuck. The man couldn't have been pleased about losing his men, but surely he understood they had to?—?
“Alfonso grabbed us all—Em included—and tortured us in his basement. Nearly killed us. And he made his son watch, tied to a chair, because this wasn’t just punishment. It was a lesson.”
“A lesson?”
“He wanted to make sure Rafael never disobeyed him again. Wanted to drill it into him that caring about people would only bring him pain.”
“Jesus. That’s—that’s not a father. That’s a fucking monster!” No wonder Rafael is the way he is.
“That’s why he got along so well with Bradley Hart.” Michael’s laugh is hollow, devoid of any humor, and I wince, wrapping my arms around him protectively. Bradley Hart—his father. Even though the man died long ago, and I never met him, I know he sure as hell wasn’t winning any father-of-the-year awards.
I make a mental note to ask Michael about him later.
“Alfonso wanted to draw out our deaths, so he locked us in that dark, cold basement and took Rafael upstairs, leaving us there to bleed out from our injuries.” He turns the inside of his elbow towards me and guides my fingers to the pit where a bright purple tulip bud unfurls prettily.
My lips part, brows furrowing as my fingers tug gently at the raised skin beneath the ink. “He—he pierced right over your vein?” I ask, horrified. “That bastard. That scum of the fucking earth. I swear to God, I’m going to find his grave and?—”
Michael covers my hand with his own, stilling my touch, and rests his brow against mine. “Easy tigress. He doesn’t have a grave. People he had wronged found his dead body and… well, let’s just say they tore him apart.”
A satisfied hum leaves me. “Good.” His lips tilt up in a small smile, and he leans forward to press a soft kiss on my lips. I let myself sink into it for a second before pulling back. “How the hell did you guys escape?”
“Well, unfortunately for Alfonso, his plans backfired. After making Rafael watch us suffer, he turned to his son, untied him, and beat him angrily. He shouldn’t have untied him.” Michael’s smile widens, wolfish now. “He expected him to be too weak to do anything after taking so many hits, but Rafael got up slowly, got his hand on a gun, and shot his father point-blank. He saved our lives.”
I’ve never been a fan of Rafael, and I doubt we’ll ever be friends, but hearing this, a little of my ice towards him thaws. Maybe I’ve judged him too harshly.
“After that, we left town,” Michael continues. “Went to Manhattan where we tried to survive by any means—stealing, petty crimes. Emilia did some waitressing. We all crammed into this shitty little studio apartment in lower Manhattan and just… figured it out.”
“How long?” I murmur.
“A year.”
He pauses.
I wait.
When he doesn’t say more, I nudge. “And then? After the first year?”
More importantly, where is Emilia now ? The trauma they survived together forged an unbreakable bond between the guys. Surely it connected them to her just as deeply. So where the hell is she? Did she somehow… die? My heart clenches at the thought. God, I hope not.
Michael runs a hand through my hair, sighing. “After that first year, to celebrate coming out of it all alive, we decided to get a tattoo over our scars, wanting a similar design in solidarity and a way to declare our loyalty and commitment to each other. Emilia suggested we get flowers. Something pretty to cover up the ugly, and we agreed—though I made it very clear I wasn’t getting some pansy-ass flower like roses tattooed on my body.”
I laugh, because I can practically hear him saying that in my head.
“The other guys agreed with me, so we each did our research on what flower we’d proudly wear on our bodies. I was going to go for foxgloves, but I kept getting drawn back to tulips.” He looks at me, something softer in his gaze now. “Guess the universe was preparing me for you.”
I like that, so I kiss his chin to let him know that. “I’m glad. Even though you didn’t choose it with me in mind, it still feels like a part of me is on you.” Unable to resist, I take a gentle nibble at his jaw. “What happened after you got your tattoos?”
“Well, that same evening, Emilia disappeared—left a vague goodbye letter and was just… gone. Rafael wasn’t the same after that, and a few weeks later, he left as well. My father died around that time, and I inherited his money, so I used it to send myself to school and got out. We all lost touch after that.
His voice drops slightly. “But five years later, Rafael showed back up in the city and sent me a message. No matter how long had passed, he was still my brother, so I went to meet him—only to find Maximo and Romero there as well. It was like no time had passed.”
“That must’ve been really nice,” I murmur, imagining the reunion.
“It was.” He gives me a small smile. “Not too long after that, Emilia came back to the city as well, and for a little while, she and Rafael dated. The man was obsessed with her and called a meeting to announce he was going to marry her.”
I arch a brow. “And?”
He exhales sharply, his jaw tightening. “Then a lot of shit went down. It turned out Emilia’s dead father wasn’t so dead after all—and worse, he was trafficking little girls. It was a whole lot. The man ended up getting killed by some law enforcers—FBI, if I’m not mistaken—and after that, Emilia disappeared again. We lost touch with her.” His face closes off, his whole energy shifting, and I recognize the emotion instantly—anger.
I want to press him for more details about Emilia’s dad. How could someone who was previously dead miraculously be alive? Did he fake his death? And how the hell did a man go from being a detective fighting for justice to trafficking kids ?
But when I glance out the window, I realize it’s getting really late. Pete must be getting so angsty waiting for us. “You guys never saw Emilia again after that?” I ask Michael as I slowly get up from his lap, wincing as his cock slips out of me. My core clenches wantonly at the loss, and little aftershocks of pleasure send tingles down my spine.
He licks his lips, eyeing my body lasciviously. “Not until last year when she suddenly showed up again—tried to kill Maximo and kidnapped Elira.”
“What?” I frown at him, sure I must have misheard, as I step into my panties and shrug on my bra.
“Yeah…” He stands up as well and tugs his pants up over his hips. “Thankfully, no one got hurt. She disappeared again, and I’ve been looking for her ever since. This time, I’m determined she won’t remain hidden for as long as she did the last time.”
I shake my head as I pull my dress on, giving Michael my back so he can zip me up. Could the trauma she went through have messed with her head? I can’t even imagine suddenly discovering my parents weren’t dead after all—only to find out on the same day that they weren’t the heroes I believed them to be. And then to lose them again all over again?
Like Michael said, it’s a whole lot.
“Don’t look so gloomy. We didn’t turn out so bad, did we?” Michael frowns slightly when I turn to face him. “And if you’re worried about Emilia, don’t. She’s fine.”
“How can you know that?”
“I just do. Trust me,” he insists and presses a deep, distracting kiss to my lips. I barely have time to process before I’m melting into him, and when he finally pulls back, I’m panting for air, my brain foggy. It takes a second to remember what we were even talking about.
Michael picks his shirt up from the floor, the muscles in his arms and chest flexing with the movement, his tattoos shifting like they’re alive.
“You know, I’ve always wanted to get a tattoo. Something to remember my family by. But I’ve always been scared to get one.” My hand goes to my necklace, glad I at least have that.
It wasn’t just the pain that kept me from getting inked, though that was part of it. It was also Aldo—how he would have reacted to me ‘tainting’ my skin. He was always very vocal about how much he hated tattoos and even flat-out forbade his men from ever getting one.
“You’d look very pretty with ink on you.” Michael’s eyes darken as his gaze sweeps over me, like he’s already imagining it. “What do you think you’d want to get?”
I frown, trying to think. It’s been so long since I considered the idea that nothing comes to mind. My eyes flick to the ink on his skin, then I say slowly, “I think for my first tattoo—to thank you for my new job—I’d get anything you want, wherever you want it.”
But it’s not only to thank him but because I also trust his judgment.
His gaze turns predatory, and he leans into me until I think he might kiss me again. “Anything I want? Wherever I want? You sure you want to make that offer to a man like me?”
We literally just had sex, but my heart starts pounding like I’m brand new to his touch, my tongue gluing to the roof of my mouth so all I can do is nod wordlessly.
“Look forward to it, baby.” He smirks, then presses a slow, lingering kiss to the corner of my lips.