Chapter Five
Mia
My eyes jerked open, my body nestled against something solid, and warm—that smelt of oranges and soap and sex.
Vito. My billionaire booty call.
A dreamy smile tugged at my lips as I snuggled into his delicious scent, recalling all the ways we’d made love during the night.
God. It had been so intense. Like something out of a gloriously filthy erotic dream.
He’d woken me several times, coaxing, demanding, determined, driving me to orgasm again and again, until we’d both collapsed for the last time at around three a.m.
I blinked, trying to clear my head of the weird dream I’d been having of my mum cooking popcorn—the kernels bursting around me on the stove—while Vito cradled me in his arms, his demanding erection prodding my bottom.
I wriggled, realising the stiff bar nestled against my bum was not a dream. I could hear his heavy breathing against my ear, his face buried in my hair, and his forearm wrapped around my waist.
My one-night lover was still fast asleep. But his erection had a mind of its own.
I smiled even as the sharp pang returned at the thought that our night was nearly over. Because I could see the rosy dawn through the balcony doors, bleeding into the night sky on the horizon.
But then a stream of muffled pops had me lifting onto my elbows. What on earth was that noise? Was someone actually making popcorn?
Vito’s forearm tensed under my breasts as a shout echoed from the garden below us. He shot upright—instantly wide awake. I glanced round, still groggy and confused, when I registered his expression—harsh and unyielding.
The popping noises returned.
‘What is that?’ I asked.
Swearing in Italian, he flung the sheet off and leapt from the bed naked.
‘Under the bed. Now,’ he shouted as he pulled on his boxers.
Three men burst into the suite—the one who had greeted us in the hallway last night and two others. All three of them were carrying assault rifles.
I was still reeling from the sight of the terrifying weapons, which I’d only ever seen before in movies, when one of them shouted to Vito in Italian and threw him another gun—which he caught one-handed.
Too terrified to move, I grasped the sheet to cover my nakedness, although I was shaking so hard with shock I could barely keep hold of it.
Another series of pops, louder this time, was accompanied by the sound of glass shattering and the thunk, thunk, thunk of something hitting the bedroom’s back wall.
‘Mia!’ Vito yelled my name, then dived across the bed to cover me. His body spasmed as he hissed in pain right next to my ear. The men who had entered the suite charged past us and stood in front of the bed like a wall, the rat-a-tat-tat of their guns firing into the night.
The scent of something burning, the flashes of light and those ominous popping sounds became so overwhelming I had to cover my ears.
The surge of panic was so huge it felt like a rope around my neck, even as Vito’s body cocooned mine.
He groaned, then his weight lifted off me.
He staggered, but then he grabbed my arm, dipped down and hefted me onto his shoulder, gathering the sheet with me.
Disorientated and dazed, I blinked at the red stain blooming against the white linen sheet draped over his back.
I couldn’t seem to focus as the carpet drifted past under his feet, aware of his shoulder digging into my stomach.
The sheet had dropped, exposing my breasts.
I was naked in front of all these men with guns, but my mind was numb.
Vito strode from the room, then kicked open the main door to the suite.
He took the stairs down to the lobby two at a time with me bouncing on his shoulder.
I could hear my heart thundering and the chaos around us.
The cacophony of noise was almost as terrifying as the sticky red stain, which was growing on the sheet.
Was he bleeding? Was I? Why couldn’t I feel anything?
Crashing, banging, popping and the acrid scent of burning sulphur surrounded us like some horrifying funfair ride as I rode his shoulder, unable to move, scared to speak.
He shouted orders in rapid Italian to another group of men who had gathered in the main entrance hall.
As they rushed to the front entrance, he dropped me on my feet.
The bloodied sheet fell to the floor, leaving me naked, but I couldn’t move, dazed by the adrenaline charging through my body.
What was happening? In weird slow motion, he tucked the pistol he’d caught upstairs into the back of his shorts and then grabbed the sheet off the floor to drape it around me as if he were covering a child.
Only then did I notice the blood pumping from a wound on his shoulder.
‘Vito, you’re bleeding!’ I whispered, the words like sandpaper against my throat, the noose of panic tightening around my neck.
The housekeeper from the evening before appeared, also with a pistol in her hand. Lorenzo, the burly bodyguard who had been on the yacht, was right behind her, holding another of those fearsome assault rifles, his suit jacket gone, his shirt soaked through with sweat.
‘Gli uomini di Dante,’ he growled, then spat as if the name Dante was a bad taste in his mouth.
‘Padrino!’ the housekeeper gasped, then rushed forward. Dropping her gun into her apron pocket, she pulled out a roll of gauze. She tried to press the bandage to Vito’s shoulder, but he brushed her away.
‘Dopo, non è niente,’ he said, the fury on his face sent shockwaves through me while he spoke to Lorenzo in Italian.
His tone was low, but his voice was steady, his expression unmoved.
He looked calm and cold, his features cast into harsh lines.
I didn’t recognise him as my seductive, playful, demanding lover.
The popping noises faded, drowned out by the sound of sirens in the distance.
Turning, he grasped my arms.
‘You must leave Naples. Now. Lorenzo will take you to London. Never speak of this night to anyone.’
What? Why?
So many questions battered me. But I was shaking so hard I couldn’t make sense of any of them.
‘What about you?’ I forced the question out past the ball of emotion cutting off my air supply. ‘I don’t want to leave without you…’
How could I leave him—when he was hurt?
I hadn’t been hit. He’d saved me from the bullet and taken it himself. That was all my exhausted mind could seem to process.
He chuckled, which seemed incongruous in the circumstances. My confusion spiked—equal parts horror and humiliation. Why was he laughing? What was funny about this hideous situation?
‘You cannot save me, Mia, when I do not wish to be saved.’
What did that even mean? Before I could gather myself enough to ask, he yanked me up on tiptoe.
Clasping me against him, he slanted his mouth across mine, capturing my gasp of surprise and the sob of need.
His kiss was deep, forceful, demanding, pressing my breasts against his chest, almost as if he were branding me as his.
The familiar heat—which he had conjured so effortlessly through the night—made my sex clench and release, my clitoris swell and ache, even as terror and confusion made my heart pound hard enough to be heard in Rome.
But when he thrust me away, the smile was still there, cynical and arrogant and cruel.
‘It was only my cock that wanted you, Mia, nothing more.’
The words were harsh, insulting, making me feel used. I’d known this was a one-night stand, a booty call, a hookup…but it had felt like more when he’d worked me into a frenzy, when he’d held me in the moonlight, when he’d dived across the bed and yelled my name.
‘Get her out. I don’t want her here,’ he said, addressing Lorenzo in English, clearly for my benefit.
‘No, I won’t leave…’ I shouted, feeling bereft. But also confused. I couldn’t leave him, not like this…
I tried to fight off Lorenzo’s hold, desperate to know why Vito was treating me like this…
But the bodyguard’s arms were like iron bands as he dragged me towards the back of the house.
I watched Vito stride towards the front entrance, drawing his gun from his shorts, his body magnificent and apparently unbowed by the injury.
He didn’t look back. Not once.
Nausea rose up my throat, the metallic scent of blood from the sheet wrapped around me—Vito’s blood—curdling my stomach, as I was bundled into a car.
All the fight drained out of me. The strange sense of dislocation, of drifting outside my own body, was weirdly comforting, as if this was all happening to someone else. Someone that wasn’t me.
Lorenzo shouted something in Italian to the driver.
I could see police cars amassing outside the front gates as our car sped through the trees towards the back of the estate.
A gate opened, and the car was ushered through.
Then the driver put his foot down, throwing me back into the seat.
Lorenzo grabbed my seat belt and put it on. Then he handed me my purse.
I looked inside it with shaking hands to find my phone gone.
‘Where’s my phone? I have to call my sister,’ I managed, even now not quite able to forget my responsibility to her. ‘She won’t know where I am…’ I managed.
We were all supposed to be catching our budget flight together this evening, and my luggage was back at the hotel. Why had they taken my phone?
‘Don Vito wants you gone,’ he said, reiterating his boss’s brutal request. ‘She will be informed you have left early… I will give you your phone when we reach London.’
I didn’t object, because I didn’t have the strength to argue with him. In fact, I was unable to feel anything now, not even concern for how my sister would react to the news. I watched, glassy-eyed, while the blood-red dawn edged out the night and we drove through the back streets of Naples.
I stared at the city I had found so exciting, tears scouring my throat and making my eyes burn.
Vito’s face, so harsh and determined, and his hard body pressing into my softness—coaxing me to orgasm, covering me as the bullets rained above us, then thrusting me away from him as if I were garbage—were all I could see, all I could feel, as my exhausted mind tried to figure out if my night with him had even been real…
Or simply a terrifying and unbearably erotic dream.