19. Mario
19
MARIO
T he beeping of medical monitors fills the safe house bedroom as I watch Elena sleep, her hand curled protectively over her growing stomach even in rest. She looks almost ethereal in the predawn light—golden hair spread across the pillow, long lashes casting shadows on too-pale cheeks.
Even exhausted and hunted, she maintains that meticulous composure that first caught my attention.
The past twenty-four hours have stripped away every carefully constructed layer of our game. The Clinton House is probably in pieces by now—Matteo’s men, O’Connor’s thugs, and Calabrese’s soldiers all tearing through my carefully curated sanctuary.
My phone hasn’t stopped vibrating:
O’Connor wants your head on his desk by morning.
Calabrese offering five mil for her location.
Your brother’s men spotted in Brooklyn.
Boss, they’re closing in from all sides.
But for once, I don’t care about the implications. All I can focus on is how Elena looked when she collapsed—her skin gray, lips blue, one hand pressed to her stomach as if she could protect the baby through sheer will.
My heart had seemed to stop until the doctor confirmed they were both stable.
The phone buzzes again. Siobhan’s number. Goddammit. What does she want?
“What?” I snap, answering the phone against my better judgment.
“Now, now.” Her voice holds none of its usual mocking edge. “Is that any way to talk to someone asking after Elena’s health?”
I go still. “What game are you playing?”
“Game? I just find her…interesting.” Siobhan’s tone changes. “A simple party planner, they all said. Just another pretty face organizing galas. And yet here she is, bringing three of the most powerful families to their knees.”
“If you’re threatening her?—”
“Quite the opposite.” Siobhan’s laugh is surprisingly genuine. “I admire her style. Using their assumptions against them, playing the role they expect while building something entirely different. Very…clever.”
The penny drops. “Like using social events to modernize your father’s empire?”
“Finally catching up, are we?” I can hear her smile. “Who would suspect the vapid socialite daughter of revolution? The party planner of espionage?”
“Speak fucking English for once,” I snap, rubbing my temples. I can feel the start of a headache brewing.
“Fine. Here it is in simple terms: Elena reminds me of myself. And I protect what I recognize.” She pauses. “Especially when they’re carrying the next generation of our world.”
“Cut the cryptic bullshit, Siobhan.” I move away from Elena’s bed, keeping my voice low. “You building a shadow empire behind daddy’s back isn’t exactly news. What I want to know is what the fuck you want with Elena.”
“Direct as always.” She sighs, as if I’m a particularly slow student. “I’m proposing an alliance. With her, not you—though unfortunately, you seem to be part of the package now.”
“An alliance.” The word tastes bitter. “And what exactly would that entail?”
“Elena has a particular talent for operating in plain sight. Moving through spaces the old guard doesn’t think to watch. Building networks they don’t even know exist.” There’s something like admiration in her voice. “Honestly, I wish she hadn’t gotten herself tangled up with you. You really do piss me off, Mario.”
I scoff. “Feeling’s mutual, princess.”
“But we can’t all have what we want, can we?” Her tone sharpens. “Your brother on some level, Calabrese, even my father—they’re dinosaurs fighting over territory while the world changes around them. Elena understands that. She’s been quietly revolutionizing how money moves through this city for years, all under the guise of charity galas and society events.”
I think of Elena’s meticulously planned fundraisers, her strategic seating arrangements that have brokered more peace deals than any formal sit-down. “And you want to what? Combine forces?”
“Like I said, I want to ensure the next generation has a future worth inheriting. The question is: are you going to stand in the way of that future, or help protect it?”
“I protect what matters,” I tell Siobhan flatly. “You know that after everything that’s happened.”
“Mmm, yes. Quite the show you’ve put on recently.” Her amusement grates on my nerves. “I’ll be in touch.”
She hangs up before I can respond. I stare at my phone, imagining all the ways I could make her regret her games and double meanings.
But then Elena stirs on the bed, and suddenly Siobhan O’Connor’s machinations seem irrelevant.
Those eyes focus on me—blue as ice but somehow warm, seeing everything I try to hide. Even exhausted, even hunted, they miss nothing. It’s what first drew me to her—that perfect balance of beauty and calculation.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, sitting down beside her.
“Fine.” She shifts, one hand still protective over her stomach. “But I need to know something. Something that’s been bothering me since Bella brought it up.” She takes a breath. “Tell me about Bianca. About that night. I need to understand.”
Dread pools in my belly. I’ve never talked about it—not to anyone, not even Marco or Dante. The memory lives like poison in my blood, a reminder of everything Giuseppe said I would become.
But Elena deserves the truth, especially now.
“I was so angry,” I begin, the words feeling like glass in my throat. “You don’t understand what it was like, growing up as Giuseppe’s mistake. His bastard. The son who should never have been born.”
I move to the window, unable to face Elena as the memories surface. “Matteo was perfect—legitimate, pure-blooded, everything a DeLuca heir should be. When we failed Giuseppe’s tests, I got the basement, the belt. Matteo got second chances. Private tutors. Understanding.”
My laugh carries an arctic chill. “Do you know what it’s like, watching your brother inherit an empire while you get table scraps? Knowing that no matter how hard you work, how loyal you are, you’ll never be more than the whore’s son?”
The words taste like copper and rage. “I planned it for months. The warehouse by the pier—where the rotting fish and diesel fuel would mask any screams. A shipping container modified just so…and sweet little Bianca in her navy school uniform, walking the same route home every day.”
My hands clench as I remember that night. “I called Matteo at midnight. Told him it was his turn to lose something precious. ‘Your empire or your daughter,’ I said. ‘Choose quickly—she’s running out of air.’”
I close my eyes, but the images come anyway. Bianca tied to that chair, her small wrists raw from fighting. She’d tried so hard to be brave, just like Matteo taught her. “Uncle Mario,” she’d whispered, “why are we playing this game?”
“I made sure to smile when I pressed the gun to her head,” I continue. “Made sure the camera caught every detail—the rope burns, her tears, my finger on the trigger. I wanted Matteo to see exactly what his perfect life had cost. What his bastard brother was capable of.”
The confession burns like acid. “I became exactly what Giuseppe always said I was. A monster wearing a DeLuca face. But when I saw her there, so small, so afraid of disappointing everyone…she looked just like I used to, after Giuseppe’s ‘lessons.’ And I realized I’d become him. The thing I hated most.”
Elena’s silence feels like a physical weight. I can’t bear to look at her, to see disgust or worse—pity—in those clever eyes.
“Why Bella?” she asks finally. “After five years of exile, why come after her?”
The laugh that tears from my throat sounds unhinged even to my ears. “How do you not see it? Perfect Matteo got everything. Again. A loving wife, a baby on the way, the fairy tale ending he never deserved.” My voice cracks on the words. “He took a girl who wasn’t even his own child and made her his heir. Built himself the perfect family while I rotted in Boston, dancing to O’Connor’s tune.”
I don’t tell her about those first months after the failed attempt on Bella. How O’Connor’s men held me down in that basement while Seamus reminded me what happens to dogs who bite the wrong hand. Three days in that cold room, chains biting into my wrists while O’Connor systematically broke every promise of protection he’d made.
The scars on my back still ache in cold weather—a gift from his favorite brass knuckles.
“You think exile was my only punishment?” The words taste like copper. “A year of absolute loyalty. Taking the jobs even O’Connor’s most hardened men wouldn’t touch. Building my worth back piece by bloody piece until he trusted me to breathe without permission.”
The bitterness I’ve carried for years pours out like poison. “Meanwhile, my brother, the great Matteo DeLuca, who claims to value chosen family over blood—where was that sentiment when Giuseppe cast me out? When I needed a brother instead of an heir?”
My hands shake as memories surface—Matteo teaching Bianca to shoot, the way he looks at Bella like she hung the moon, how tenderly he touched her stomach when they announced the twins.
All the soft moments a monster like me doesn’t deserve.
“So yes,” I continue, the words bitter as ash. “I came for his wife. His unborn children. Everything he loves, just like he took everything from me. And I had the backing of the Irish mob to do it.”
I finally turn to face Elena, letting her see exactly what kind of creature she’s gotten involved with. “Giuseppe always said I was born wrong. Twisted. A monster.” My laugh holds no humor. “Guess fathers do know best after all.”
“You’re not a monster.” Elena’s voice carries quiet conviction as she struggles to sit up. The movement makes the monitors beep in protest, but her eyes never leave my face. “Damaged, yes. Dangerous, absolutely. But monsters don’t change. They don’t grow. They don’t care for complicated women carrying another man’s child.”
The last words hang between us like smoke, heavy with implication. Something in my chest cracks open at her steady gaze, her complete lack of horror at my confessions.
I turn back to her slowly, waiting for the other shoe to drop—for the disgust to surface, for her to realize exactly what kind of creature she’s let into her bed. Into her life.
But there’s no judgment in those clever eyes. No fear. No rejection. Only understanding, wrapped in something that looks terrifyingly like love.
The acceptance hits harder than any of O’Connor’s punishments, than any of Giuseppe’s lessons.
“How—” My voice breaks. I clear my throat and try again. “How can you look at me like that? After everything I just told you?”
She reaches for my hand, and I move back to her bedside. I let her take it, marveling at how steady her grip is. How sure.
“I’ll never forgive myself for that night,” I admit roughly, the words scraping my throat raw. Each syllable feels like confessing to a priest, like laying my sins bare before something holy. “For becoming everything I hated about our father. For letting revenge poison everything.”
My hand finds her stomach where Anthony’s daughter grows, and the contact burns like confession, like possibility. Like everything I never thought I could have. “But this? You? It’s changing everything.”
“I know,” she whispers, pulling me down into a kiss that tastes like redemption. Like forgiveness I never thought I deserved.
When we break apart, her eyes hold assurance beneath the softness. “So let’s make sure our choices moving forward are better than our choices in the past.”
The words hit like absolution. Like a chance at something more than revenge and violence and living up to Giuseppe’s worst expectations.
She pulls me down for another kiss, this one harder, hungrier. Her fingers tangle in my hair as she arches up from the bed, making the heart monitor spike erratically.
“Elena,” I warn against her mouth, even as my body responds to her need. “You need to be careful. The monitors?—”
“Shut up,” she hisses, nipping at my lower lip. “Help me get these damn things off.”
Her hands are already moving to the electrodes on her chest. I catch her wrists gently. “Let me.”
She shivers as I carefully peel each electrode from her skin, the heart monitor giving one final protest before falling silent. The moment the last one comes off, she’s pulling me back down, kissing me like she can erase every dark confession with the press of her lips.
“You sure about this?” I ask, even as my hands slip beneath her nightgown. “The doctor said?—”
She silences me with another fierce kiss. “I said shut up, Mario.”
Who am I to argue with that?
Moving my hands away from her warm body, I slip them beneath her ass to pull her forward, wrapping her legs around my torso. I push her down onto the bed, grinding my hips into her.
Let her feel how much I want her.
I slide my fingers up along the outside of her thighs, her nightgown bunching up around my wrists. Growling, I tug at the sides of her panties. It’s a fucking joke that she still has them on.
“Someone’s impatient,” Elena says as she pulls back, giggling lightly.
My gaze falls on her kiss-swollen lips and her darkened eyes and the hunger I feel for her grows, evolving into something bottomless.
“Shut up,” I say dumbly.
Elena laughs again before leaning back onto both elbows. She pulls one leg up so it’s bent at the knee against the side of the bed. The other leg is pulled up to the mattress, creating more space between her thighs, and revealing the soft pink of her panties beneath the hem of her nightgown.
“I’m going to fuck you with my mouth,” I growl before I lower myself down onto my hands and knees.
“Such dirty words,” Elena murmurs as her fingers spear through my hair. She slides forward enough so she can rest one of her heels against my shoulder blade and then gently guides my face forward.
Hooking a finger around her panties, I shove them aside and stroke my tongue along her pussy from her entrance to her clit. The taste of her spreads over my tongue and it takes everything in me to not fucking finish right there.
Fuck, she feels so good.
I do it again as my hands spread over the outside of her thighs, pulling her flush to my face. My tongue strokes over her a few more times before I begin to suck at her clit, flicking the tip of my tongue over it just to hear her sigh above me.
“Fuck, Mario,” Elena says, sinking back onto her elbows. Her head falls back and I look up to see how the arch of her back pulls the nightgown taut over her breasts. My lips close over her clit and I lave at it until her hips are rocking up against my mouth. “So good .”
Those words are my unleashing. I haul her forward in one swift pull, my fingertips creating indentations in her skin. She yelps and falls back against the bed. Normally, I would ask if she’s okay, but I’m too fucking gone at this point. I lift her ass up off the bed so I can shove my face right up against her. Elena swings her other leg up and over my shoulder so both heels dig into my skin.
But I don’t care because she tastes so fucking good. The room is filled with Elena moaning my name, singing my praises. Her moans come first as these little whines, but she tries to press them between her lips like flowers in the page of a book. Then, her breath comes as enchanting little pants and the muscles in her belly tense.
I wrap one arm around the back of her thigh to spread my palm over her abdomen, just to feel. The flutter of her muscles when I drive my tongue into her dripping pussy and roll my head from one side to the other so her clit catches on the ridge of my nose drives me crazy.
Elena groans above me, one hand gripping the mattress while the other searches clumsily for my own hand, where it rests over her navel. Her fingernails rake over my wrist before she grabs it tightly in her fist.
“Holy shit,” Elena gasps.
I can’t help it. I grin against her pussy and her heels dig sharply into my back. I wince and I think I see a flicker of a smile on her face. I hum then, all humor leaving me as I continue to work her pussy. Her wetness spreads across my cheeks and drips down my chin.
Elena may be saying something, but I’m not able to make it out. All I focus on is sucking and licking at her like she’s the last drop of water in a desert. I feel the first shake of her thighs as they squeeze around my ears. Her fingers pull sharply at my hair and her voice is a high, a keening moan as she comes against my mouth.
I lick through each rolling wave of her orgasm and don’t stop until I feel her try to push me away. I pull away like coming up from the crest of the ocean for air. My breath comes out of me in little huffs as I tilt my face back to look at her, but my gaze keeps getting pulled back in the direction of her pretty pussy—soaking wet and swollen with need.
Elena yanks on my shirt, and I allow myself to rise up and sit on the bed. She reaches for my shirt and roughly tugs it over my head, tossing it somewhere else. Then she pushes me back until I’m laying against the bed and she’s crawling over me.
“How did I taste?” Elena asks, her eyes practically glittering.
“Like honey,” I answer honestly, stroking my hands up and down the back of her thighs.
Elena snorts. “Such a corny answer,” she teases, but then she pushes herself up onto her knees and tugs her nightgown over her head, exposing her beautiful breasts to me. She tosses the nightgown over my face, and then I feel her fingers tugging at my pants and boxers as she tugs them down, down, down.
She wraps her hand around my cock and I hiss, tearing her nightgown away from my face.
“What’s it like?” Elena asks, almost offhandedly as she watches herself lazily stroke me from base to tip. Her thumb presses against the slit of my cock and I bite back a curse. Fuck me.
“What?” I ask, fingers raking over my own abdomen as I watch that languid roll of her wrist over my cock.
Elena grips me harder, her hand halting somewhere towards my base and I thrust upward into her unmoving palm, wanting friction she doesn’t grant me. I growl.
“Wanting me so badly,” she answers me, “I had to push you off me.”
“I can show you,” I respond, hissing as she strokes my cock again.
She laughs and leans forward slightly, her breasts pressing against my chest. The tip of my cock taps against her belly with each stroke.
“That’s so cute,” she hums as her pace quickens over my cock. I start to rock my hips up into her touch.
“ Cute? ” I repeat roughly, my voice breaking slightly from how I try to keep back a moan. “I’ll fucking show you cute. And I’ve had enough of those panties too.”
I rip her panties away from her and throw the scraps onto the ground. She makes a low noise of dismay as she looks at the tiny lace pieces scattered on the hardwood floors.
“I liked that pair!” she complains.
“I’ll buy you thirty more,” I promise. My thoughts are getting away from me. All I can think about is burying myself deep inside her.
Elena looks satisfied at that and lifts my cock so that it’s notched right against her entrance.
“That’s better,” she says. “And since you promised…”
She sinks down onto me, the delicious slide of her so divine I think I see God. Or God is her. I can’t tell anymore. She rocks slowly back and forth over me and I reach around to grab handfuls of her ass as she rides me, bouncing up and down lightly on her knees.
Her breasts lift and drop with her movements and I remove one hand from her ass to hold one of her breasts, squeezing it and flicking my thumb over her nipple. I drive my hips up into her and she gasps, throwing her head back. I can feel her pussy flutter around me, and then she slowly stops, hips rolling lazily against me instead.
Very patiently—I think, at least—I release her breast and press a hand between her shoulder blades, pushing her down so that her hands are above my head. I shift down so she has the proper angle to rock her hips back onto my cock. I gently trace my fingers up and down the back of her thighs before capturing her nipple in my mouth.
“ Mario !” She cries out as she starts to move again. I only moan in response.
Closing my eyes, I lose myself to just how wonderful this is, feeling her slide around me over and over until that needy, urgent feeling builds low in my abdomen. My mouth is on her breasts, my hands grip her thighs and her ass and I’m so fucking full of her—her perfume, her taste.
Elena pushes back into me wantonly, the wet smack of her skin punctuating each thrust, the breath rushing out of her in moans and little pants. I groan, wrapping both arms tightly around her so I can get my mouth on her breasts again. She circles her hips over me and I hiss in response.
She’s making me feel so fucking good and without prompting, I bring my fingers between us, playing with her clit. Stars begin to dot my vision as she rolls her hips against mine at a stuttering pace now. Uneven, really, as if she’s losing a tenuous grip on reality.
Or it might be me, with how I keep thrusting up into her. Thrust after heavenly thrust.
“Fucking come, baby,” I growl, my fingers continuing to flick over her clit. I can feel myself start to lose control. I don’t know how much longer I’ll last but I want her to come first. “Come all over my cock.”
Elena cries out before she presses her mouth against mine. Our kiss is messy, tongues stroking languidly against each other as her hips pause and then still over mine. But I don’t allow for any pause and start punching up into her, back arching up and off the bed.
She cries out again and then I feel a rush of wetness, her pussy pulsing rapidly around my cock.
My eyes fucking roll into the back of my head as I spill into her, my cry muffled by her kiss. My entire body is a live wire, and I don’t think my mind fully comes back into myself until she’s lying against me, toes tracing up and down my calves with her ear pressed to my chest.
For the first time in a long time, I feel something dangerous spark in my chest.
Hope.