Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
M y Alessio is having secret negotiations. He’s plotting with someone else to take everything away from me. And he couldn’t even come to me and face me with it.
He couldn’t have told me how he felt. He couldn’t come to me and be be honest with me.
Is that my fault? Or is it just a part of his nature, one that I haven’t taken enough notice of?
Feeling drained, I nod. I understand how it all works.
“It would have belonged to you.” I sigh. “If I hadn’t come along, it would have been yours.”
“If it hadn’t been for you, yes. You came and you… took it. All of it.”
“I took it. And now you want your big uncle from Chicago to come and take it back from the nasty witch…”
“I didn’t say…” his neck reddens. Then his face.
“You want uncle to go get your toy back.”
“Lucia…” the pitch of his voice rises. His lips thicken as his tongue flicks out.
“Nice big uncle will come and get your toy and give it back to you.”
His eyes blaze. “Look…”
“Only you never had it. It was never yours, was it Alessio? When it was in your grasp, I came and I grabbed it.” Suddenly, we’re in rocky territory, a dark place that I have been desperate to avoid. “I took it with both hands because you were too slow to know what to do with it. How to handle it. What it was or what it meant. I took it because you couldn’t.”
“Just because you took it, that does’t mean that it’s yours or that you can do what you want with it.”
“You know, Alessio, it kind of does. That’s the thing about power. Either you handle it, or it handles you.”
Our noses are barely an inch apart. His breath heats my cheeks and I taste him in my mouth. His nostrils flare.
My teeth are closing as I tell him, “If you knew how to handle it, you would have taken it immediately. Or you would have taken it from me.” My eyes narrow. I want to back out of the dark, narrow turn this has taken. It’s too dangerous. My worst secret is too near the surface here. But there’s no way back.
My hands clench and flex. “You really believe that your uncle is here to crown you?”
“You don’t even know him.” The front of his pants bulges fat, hard and perilously tight.
“No, I don’t. But I do know that his nephew is a fool. And I bet he knows it, too.”
“Don’t…” his big hand seizes my jaw. He squeezes my cheeks.
Even in his iron grip, I manage to shake my head. Through gritted teeth I tell him, “He’s playing you, Alessio.”
He snarls, gripping my face harder. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You have no idea.” The heat of his body is unbearably close.
All the muscles on the front of my body zing. All the ones facing him. My chest, arms, thighs and abs tingle and buzz.
My pussy weeps so hard I can hardly keep still and the scent is giving me a dizzy aura.
I’m trying to hold down the shake in my voice as I tell him, “You think you’re an emperor. That you’re about to be crowned in glory.” His lip curls. I say, “You’re a fish on a hook and you don’t even see it.”
He pulls my face nearer. I’m on tiptoes and I’m stretching up. I grab his wrist with both hands. I want to choke him. Choke him and peg him. Even though I know I’m not strong enough. Maybe it’s because I’m not strong enough.
“Alessio,” my voice sticks in my throat as I take in the scents and the heat of his body. “He’s reeling you in.”
“You think you know everything.” The top of his chin quivers. “You probably think you’re smarter than Carlo. But I’ll have to be the one to break it to you, Lucia. You’re not.” A vein in his temple pulses. “You were nothing before we took you in. Less than nothing. Your precious daddy sold you to us. He was going to pay to have you taken off his hands.”
All my limbs shudder as his eyes harden. “The three of us made bets on who would get the short straw. Who would wind up shackled to the blow-in. the waif that floated up from the depths and beached on our porch.”
Moving closer, our noses almost touch. I shout in his face, “You all lined up to get your wicks wet though, didn’t you. None of you waited for an invitation to get up between my thighs, did you?”
“You have beautiful thighs.”
“Don’t try to change the subject.”
My body stretches up against his. The hot buzz in his cock throbs through my skirt. I want to take hold of it. Grip it in both hands. Jam it all the way into my throat.
Then bite it off and swallow it, whole.
A vein in his temple throbs. His neck is red. He steps forward, pressing into me, unbalancing me. Making me almost topple back. He grabs my shirt and bunches it in his fist.
“I’m going to make you swallow my cock.” His voice is thick and hot. “Then I’ll impale you with it.”
Alessio has been forceful with me before. He’s been direct, just like that. Then it was hot. Now, something is not quite right.
There’s a glint in his eye that I don’t recognize. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was on drugs. That can’t be right, though.
I want him, I want us to be together, I’m tense and near desperate to fuck him. But something sounds wrong, something I can’t put my finger on. It’s like the band’s playing but there’s one string out of tune.
We all take our pleasures seriously and I don’t think I would have a problem with anything my men wanted to do, but I would need us to talk about it beforehand.
His hand is on the big silver buckle on his belt. Like Now he’s pulling it out of his pants. We’ve done all kinds of things like this before, but we always have a bond of consent. Even if it’s just a look in the eye. Most important, we all check for signs of agreement — or disagreement. Always. It could be as small as a frown. A turn or a tilt of the head or a lifted finger.
We all have safe words and stop words. And none of us has ever needed to use one of them. The instant anyone has become uncomfortable, we’ve all pulled around them.
I’m feeling like Alessio has been taken over. Like he’s not my Alessio. Or our Alessio. I need Bruno and Carlo’s view on this. but they’re not here. Now I’m wondering if it’s really a coincidence that Alessio picked today, when they’re away at Sky Table Resort.
“Alessio, I have to go.” I bite my lip. Hard. “I don’t recognize you, Alessio. You’re making me uncomfortable.”
“I never knew you were so easily scared.”
“I’m not scared. Not of you. Not of any man. I think you know that. Do not make me prove it.”
“So, what, then? You’re afraid I’ll challenge the rule of the Donna? Threaten the power of the queen bee?”
“This is not you talking, Alessio.”
“It really is. My uncle told me. I said he was wrong. I didn’t believe him.”
“You discussed our private life with him? With Jerry?”
“Don’t you know, Lucy?” Lucy? What the fuck? “That’s what hew came to talk about. Chicago can’t put us up to the Commission. Not while we’re living this way.”
“Living…”
“At least, not while you’re in charge.”
“Okay. Here it is.” I have to stay calm. I know it. But I can’t. I’m getting hot. “Jerry’s got a tune for you to dance to.”
“You know nobody in the Life operates this way.” He waves his hand. “It will come. Maybe. In time. But it’s not how things are. Not now. Not yet.”
“So. Jerry is dangling the shiny object you always wanted, and you dance like a monkey after it.”
“Careful what you say, Lucy.”
“You be careful what you say, Alessio. Chicago and the Commission are jerking you on a chain. As soon as they get what they want, they’ll just let you drop,” I lift my hand, pinching my thumb and forefinger almost in front of his face. His eyes flash as I widen my eyes, I spring my hand open and say, “Plop!”
I watch his face harden. I shouldn’t rub it in. “Straight down into Puget Sound.” His jaw works. I shake my head. “You’ll hardly shake the surface, and you don’t even see it.”
His lips tighten. “You’re so obsessed with your power, your crusade, your battle for recognition,” His nostrils flare and his chest shakes. “and for what? So you can be a hero for a couple of dozen women around the country? A few women who could never in a million years do what you do.” his eyebrow cocks and the side of his mouth twists in a sneer.
“But maybe that’s it.” he tilts his chin, “Maybe you want their admiration. You want your place in the spotlight. The first woman to head up a family in the Pacific Northwest. The first woman Chicago or the Commission ever noticed or paid attention to.” He pulls his lips in and his face reddens. “Well, you got it, okay? No-one will ever take that away from you.”
I just my chin, pushing my face nearer to his. “Right. So now I should go back to baking pies and darning socks. I should pop out some bambinos then put on black and turn into the shape of a bowling ball. Maybe you’d like me better if I sprouted some hairs on my chin.” I’m starting to turn, then I say, “Oh, wait… is that it? Are you looking for an excuse to start banging cocktail waitresses?”
Our eyes lock.
What has happened? We can’t have changed so much in the past hour. Have we turned into an old married couple, tearing strips off each other, squabbling about everything and nothing?
My phone pings. I don’t even register it until the second time. Then I’m aware that I ignored it. I ignore it again.
Alessios phone is buzzing, too. Phones start to ping, all around the outside of our closed room. Alessios and mine ping again. I can hear three or four more from outside. Alessio’s excessive guards, probably.
Alessio and I don’t take our eyes off each other as we reach for our phones. not until we have them up and the screens flash on.
There’s an incident at the Sun-a-do. A club of ours on the far side of the peninsula. Our oldest, most established joint venture with the twelve tribes. Our first nations American partners.
Alessio and I both look up from the text messages. We search each other’s eyes. Could this have come at a worse time?