Chapter 5
Leo
The plane lands right on time. I’d promised Mattia I’d come pick him and Hana up from the private airfield upon their return from Nassau. And here I am, though it’s the last place I want to be.
I don’t know how I’ll look Mattia in the face again, after what happened with Bianca on his wedding day.
The one thing that should never have happened, under any circumstance. If anyone got wind of this, I’ll be dead, and we’ll have a war on our hands. The Albanians will be able to march right onto our territory, and we’d be powerless to stop them if we didn’t want blood—our blood—to spill. Honor bade we surrender because some asshole couldn’t keep his dick in his pants and fucked the one forbidden woman who was to bring peace between our rival factions.
Except, for me, it wasn’t just a mere fuck. I’ve had time to think of our encounter in that bridal suite, and though I can’t say I made love to her—it was lust, not really feelings—it also wasn’t just a small-time fuck, over and done with in a huff of groaning breaths and sweating, heaving bodies.
What it had been? For me, magical. I know it makes me sound like a wuss, like a green teenager with stars in his eyes before the world bitch-slaps a heavy dose of reality in him and then a girl breaks his heart and rids him of this bright-eyed outlook, filling him with bitterness and hardening his soul.
But it had been. The moment we’d spent looking into each other’s eyes, my hand on her jaw, it had built a bridge between us. A whole world of understanding and longing, of mutual desire. It was the moment when you’re with a woman and suddenly, it just clicks. You know you’re going to kiss her, take her home, have sex with her, and still want to wake up next to her the following morning to have breakfast together.
Bianca and I, we could’ve been this couple. We’d have stood a chance if we’d ever been given one. Alas, this was not to be, and I have to remind myself of it every single day. She’s not for me, and never will be.
The plane comes to a stop, then the door opens. Mattia appears in the doorway first, and he turns back after coming down the first step, his hand extended. Hana follows, hand in his. He asks her something, and she looks up and gives him such a brilliant smile, my chest constricts.
So things are good between them. Their honeymoon went well. I couldn’t believe it when he told me they were waiting for their wedding night to sleep together. To be getting married, committing your life to one person while forsaking all others, it stands to reason you’d like to know if you’re compatible in bed, too, I’d think. This doesn’t apply to arranged matches—you’re stuck there, and many in such marriages resort to lovers, sometimes by mutual consent.
Bianca will be stuck in such a marriage soon. I close my fist when I recall this fact. I don’t see a limp, wet rag like Ardian Abrashi bringing her any pleasure in their marital bed. My blood boils thinking of his hands on her, his cock anywhere near her. If I had my way, I’d kill the bastard and annul this contract with the Abrashis. Except, he has a brother, and Jasir Abrashi is known as The Butcher . No one in their right mind would ever send a woman his way—he likes torture, for his enemies and lovers alike.
So unless I killed the entire Abrashi family, I’m at a dead end.
Maybe one day, Bianca will want to take a lover. Maybe I could—
Fuck! What the hell am I even thinking?
“Leo!” Mattia says as he approaches, one arm extended.
I muster a smile, glad the sunglasses are hiding my eyes.
“Welcome home,” I tell him as we hug in greeting.
“It’s good to see you, Leo,” Hana says when Mattia releases me.
Her small hand makes it onto my shoulder, and she raises on tiptoe in her flat sandals to press a kiss to my cheek. I meet her halfway, bending to her diminutive size. She always reminds of how much I look like a giant in Japan, Japanese women being so small usually.
“Come on. Let’s get you two home,” I say, turning to the SUV’s front door. “Had a fun trip?”
Hana blushes, Mattia laughs. It’s good to witness their happiness.
They’re still whispering in a conspiratorial manner when I start us on the road.
“By the way, thanks for the glitter bomb,” Mattia quips. “A warning would’ve been welcome.”
I chuckle. “Where would be the fun in that?”
Hana giggles. “Come on, you sparkled like a Twilight vampire getting out of the plane.”
Mattia snorts. “Do you have to remind me? Team Jacob, my ass.”
“I was never Team Jacob. He’s just got great abs—”
“And I don’t?”
“Not like Jacob’s. I’m Team Volturi, actually.”
In the rearview mirror, I can see her burrowing into his side.
“They’re Italian, too,” she adds, voice low and husky.
I glimpse back and quickly return my eyes to the road. “Gross, guys. Not in the backseat of my car! What are you? Sixteen?”
The last thing I want to see is my best friend checking out his wife’s tonsils with his tongue.
A thought niggles. How does Mattia even know all this about Twilight ? Hana seems like a fan. Did she make him watch the movies? On their honeymoon? If I were with the woman I loved on my honeymoon, I’d spend the whole time ravishing her—it’s doubtful we’d even see the light of day outside our room so much I’d keep her in my bed.
Wrong , a little voice tells me. You’d do everything to make your wife happy.
Even if that meant watching the I-don’t-know-how-many movies in the Twilight saga.
I already proved this, on the wedding day, with Bianca. Everything snowballed between us because I just wanted to see her smile again, make her happy once more.
I gulp hard. Can’t be thinking of Bianca. Not when her brother will gladly eviscerate me when he finds I slept with her right under his nose.
Thankfully, we reach the house in Lenox Hill soon enough. We’ve hardly stepped out of the car when the front door opens and a woman squeals with joy. Hana squeals right back, before running off to hug her friend she seems so happy to see.
Bianca.
I freeze where I’m getting a suitcase out of the trunk. What is she doing here? Mattia didn’t tell me she’d be at his place when he returned. Also, I didn’t ask. Why would I, when back then, when we made the plan to pick him up, I’d had no idea what Bianca looked like now, how her appearance would upend my world, how her body would call to my baser instincts and her very person scorch my heart and lay claim to my soul.
Here he is, that idiot teen again. Guess they’re right in saying a man isn’t really a man until he turns thirty. I’m twenty-eight, so still green by that definition.
“Hey, Leo,” Bianca says with a small wave.
I nod and wave back. She turns toward the house, pulling Hana along with her. Mattia and I are dismissed by the women, and that’s just as well. He doesn’t seem to have noticed anything awkward in the exchange between me and Bianca. And why would he? We know each other, have known each other all our lives. We’re not friends, though, so it doesn’t look weird that we don’t interact beyond polite greetings.
Mattia and I get the luggage and start toward the house.
“All well?” I ask my best friend.
“Yeah.”
“No stage fright?” I playfully throw with a smile.
“My wife had no complaints.”
“Yeah, I could see that. If there’d been a divider window in the car, she’d have fucked you right there behind me.”
He shrugs. “What can I say? I’m a lucky man.”
“Lucky bastard, yeah.”
We’re inside now. Hana jumps to us and snatches a case from my grip.
“Come on, gifts!”
Bianca squeals again, and the two women disappear around the corner toward the kitchen.
“Leo! Get in here,” Hana calls out.
“You heard the lady,” Mattia says.
I shake my head. “You’re totally pussy-whipped.”
“And proud of it, too.”
Fuck them! All that domestic bliss is hard to stomach.
Enticing smells of garlic and herbs scent the air as we turn into the open-plan kitchen.
“You’re making dinner?” Mattia asks.
Bianca nods from where she’s dropped onto her knees with Hana on the rug in the other half of the room that has couches and a massive screen on the wall. The suitcase is open between them.
“ Spaghetti al Arrabiata ,” she says.
“It’s the only thing she knows how to make,” Mattia tells me.
He’s never this chatty usually. Guess Hana’s got her hand in this more open, relaxed version of him.
“That’s not an issue,” Hana says. “Soon, she’ll be marrying an Albanian man. Albanian food is what she needs to learn how to cook.”
There it is, the reminder she’s marrying Abrashi. My jaw tenses as my gaze alights on Bianca. Did she feel me watching her? She looks up then, our gazes locking. Mattia and Hana are bickering like an old couple already—they don’t notice the tightening of Bianca’s mouth, the clamp of her jawline at being reminded of her upcoming arranged marriage. Her body bristles as she straightens, like a hare caught in headlights.
Of course I knew she doesn’t want this wedding. But beyond the fact it’s been forced on her, I never pondered the logistics of it, what it’ll mean for her.
Jasir Abrashi is the kind of man who’ll make the fictional Christian Grey look completely tame and vanilla in his kinks. Is his brother Ardian also into such twisted shit, too? The woman he’ll take to his bed, how will he treat her? Still, there’s some hope she’ll just be his wife, the one he does his husbandly duty with until an heir is begotten, and his fucked-up fantasies will be for his mistress or whatever prostitutes he’ll frequent.
Bianca, with such a man… With any man…
I have to steel myself against the images pouring into my head, keep my hand from closing too tightly on the glass of Scotch Mattia offered so I won’t smash the crystal in my palm and make a bloody mess in this pristine white kitchen.
“Leo, this is for you,” Hana says.
I tear my gaze from Bianca’s and look at her, at the rounded lines of the Cuban rum bottle in her hand. So they did get to island-hop. Good for them. I raise my glass in thanks.
“And this is yours. Got it from this guy who walked the beach every day.”
Bianca takes a piece of string and cloth, it seems, and Hana keeps handing her more stuff. Did she buy an entire shop over there?
“You know what? You should go try them on.”
“Good idea,” Bianca concurs. “Let’s go.”
They leave in a flurry of giggles, and the big room feels empty when they’re gone, like all the air got sucked out and I’m almost dizzy from the lack of oxygen.
“Hana can be a bit much,” Mattia says as he settles on a stool at the island.
I settle down next to him. “Never would’ve guessed.”
“I know. I’m surprised, too.”
“Good surprised?”
He takes a moment to answer. “Yes.”
“Good.”
We sip our Scotch in companionable silence.
“Why Bianca?” I suddenly ask.
I have no idea how the question slipped out. Guess I’ve been thinking about it for the past three weeks, and this is the first chance I’m getting to ask Mattia about his sister being betrothed.
“The alliance?” he asks.
“Yes. Why’d your father do it?”
Mattia snort-chuckles. “Remember what happened to the last person who asked this about my father?”
He received a bullet to the knee, which ended his career as a renowned jockey. Roberto Bonucci had fixed the race where he’d been forced to lose.
“That guy asked to his face. I’m asking you.”
He takes a small sip of Scotch. “It looks good.”
To the syndicate. Someone had to offer their daughter or sister up—he won brownie points this way.
“No one else had a daughter?”
“None eligible at the time.” He shrugs. “Paloma Salvatore only just turned twenty-one. Yesterday, if I’m not mistaken.”
She’s a bona fide Mafia princess. Too valuable to pair off with a lowly piece of scum like Abrashi.
“Hana was showing me her picture on social media. Check her out. You might like what you see.”
My turn to snort. “Three weeks married, and you’re already turning matchmaker. I’m not thirty yet, and I plan to enjoy the remainder of my free years.”
It’s like this in our world—green until a boy turns thirty; then once that age clocks, mammas and nonnas alike are banging on your door asking why you haven’t settled down yet to give them the bambinos they crave, like they want to collect two hundred without passing Go. Can’t win either way.
“At least the old women won’t be beating down your door now,” I continue.
“Yeah.”
It’s disgusting how besotted he looks, how happy. I’ve never envied my best friend before, but today, I want to beat him to a pulp for having found the elusive one to share the rest of his life with. Because I’ve been denied this chance. One look at her, and I knew Bianca Bonucci was all I’ve ever wanted, all I’d ever want.
And she can never be mine.
Giggles reach our ears, and we look up. Which was a terrible mistake.
Those scraps of cloth Hana was giving Bianca? It’s a bikini, proudly displayed on her body now as she walks toward us. Proudly showcasing an almost obscene amount of naked skin, the sinful curves of her alluring flesh.
Dio santo , I’m not a weak man. But this? Lord have mercy.
She’s right there, so near, so delectable, so fuckable, all I want to do is throw her over my shoulder and take her to the nearest bedroom, slam her down on the bed, undo those ties at the side of her hips and in her back with my teeth, before grazing my tongue over her exposed belly, going down into the wet folds of her pussy while my hands grab her bountiful breasts and squeeze, hard—
The glass shatters in my grip. Everyone is startled. Bianca stares at me with wide eyes, mouth parted in a small ‘o.’ All I can think of is pushing my erect cock between those lips, fuck that mouth long and hard, come at the back of her throat…
A garbled groan rises in my throat, but I quell it.
I can’t stay here. She’ll be the death of me. And if I make any move toward her, my intentions will be crystal-clear and then her brother will end me.
The only thing I can and should do? Place the broken pieces of glass on the island then turn around and hightail it out of there as I push my bloodied hand into my pocket to not soil their floor.
A piece of glass is lodged in my skin, and it hurts like a motherfucker.
Exactly like the very thought of Bianca Bonucci slashes into my entire being now.