Chapter 15
Hollis
A fucking virgin.
I don’t know why my thoughts have locked on that fact, especially after she told me what has happened to her with the Severino brothers.
Her explaining what was going to happen in that SUV with Marcello is proof that things aren’t always what they appear.
I want details. I want to know how many times they forced her to do shit like that.
I want to pull the bullet from Marcello’s brain just so I can kill him all over again.
I consider my own thoughts, thinking maybe I should turn my gun on myself.
Knowing that about her turns me on, and it fucking shouldn’t.
I shouldn’t consider it mine. I shouldn’t look at it as something to take from them, the Severinos, as compensation for all that they have taken from me. I stare at the window, trying to remind myself that it’s a part of her, and she owes me nothing.
I’m not that type of man. If someone were comparing me with Marcello or Alessio, and they knew nothing of the three of us but a list of our crimes, someone could conclude that we were all equally bad.
I’ve murdered without hesitation. I’ve stolen things that don’t belong to me, present company included.
I’ve lied to keep myself safe. Hell, I’ve lied just for the hell of it, but I don’t hurt women.
I don’t take advantage of them or use my cock as a weapon against them.
My entire career, if you can call it that, has been in defense of women that have been taken advantage of.
I’ve spent my adult years doing what my father and Patrick couldn’t bring themselves to do.
They were more afraid of becoming a part of the criminal justice system opposite of what they started.
They couldn’t see themselves going to prison even if it was for the right reason.
They left Ellie unavenged, and it ate away at me as a child.
By the time I was an adult, I couldn’t help but be the opposite of them.
I can’t let injustice stand. If punishing bad people for hurting others lands me in prison or an early grave, I’ll do either with a smile on my face, knowing I helped someone, saved someone from becoming a victim.
She shifts on the chair behind me, the old wood creaking under her weight, and all the thoughts I just had fade away. I hate how my mind hyper focuses on things. She never should’ve mentioned her virginity. Now it’s going to be the elephant in the room.
“How old are you?” I ask, keeping my back to her.
Looking at her would mean watching her mouth, and fuck if my mind wouldn’t conjure up a million things that part of her can do.
“Twenty-one,” she says, having to clear her throat on the last syllable. “Twenty-two in a few months. That’s when I’m supposed to marry Alessio.”
She shifts again, the noise the chair’s making drawing my attention once more.
My thoughts swim, my mind imagining her body under mine, but it isn’t sinking inside of her, being the first person to be there, that makes my cock jerk in my jeans.
Her begging me to stop, asking me not to do this to her, brings that reaction.
I grind my teeth because that’s never been my thing.
I’d never do something like that, but fuck if I can’t stop thinking about it. I crave it from her like a psychopath.
I spin around to face her, liking it a little too much when she jerks back from my sudden movement. She doesn’t trust me, and that’s a good thing. I don’t trust myself right now either.
I open my mouth to yell, to tell her to get the fuck out. The temptation of her will be the death of me, or at least will be the end of whatever morality I’ve held all these years.
I clench my fists, my mind trying to convince me that she deserves pain. She has sat by idly for years while the Severino brothers have hurt people.
I scan her body, wondering which bone Marcello broke when she refused to suck his cock. I simmer with rage, but deep down I know it’s just as much because he’s had her mouth and I haven’t, as it is that he forced her to do something like that in the first place.
“I want you to tell me everything about the Severino family,” I say, my voice low and full of warning, a sort of threat that says she better not deny me this time. “If you’re going to stay, you’re going to be useful.”
“I don’t know where to start,” she says after a long pause.
She nods, her weight shifting once again as if she has to physically prepare herself to speak of them.
“Can you sit?” She points to the chair across from her. “You’re really intimidating, standing there like that.”
The fact that I’m unnerving to her turns me on even further, but I sit. Not because she wants me to, but because standing there any longer runs the risk of her noticing the way she turns me on. It gives her more power than I’m willing to let her know she has.
“There was always talk that I’d marry into the Severino family.
I remember my mother mentioning it when I was still a child.
My mother would mention Marcello taking care of me one day, and I remember wanting to tell her that wouldn’t happen.
Marcello couldn’t even take care of his toys much less another person.
He was always mean and spiteful, even as a child. ”
“I don’t give a shit about your childhood,” I spit.
Her jaw flexes as she grinds her teeth, and I fully expect her to get sassy with me, but she looks down, pulling her hands from the tabletop and placing them into her lap.
“I was trying to explain how I ended up with them,” she whispers, and it feels like a punch to the gut.
How can I want to grip her by the hair, bend her over this table, and fuck her until she screams, but at the same time, want to wrap her in a hug and tell her that she’s safe now?
“Continue,” I grunt instead of issuing the apology that almost threatens to escape my mouth.
“Maybe it would be better if you ask questions, and I answer,” she offers. “That way you only get the information you need.”
She doesn’t say it in a way that sounds disrespectful, but I can still see the sting of being chastised in her eyes.
“How did you end up engaged to Alessio if you were promised to Marcello?”
“I wasn’t exactly promised to Marcello. I think my mother just assumed that with my age being closer to Marcello’s, that we’d end up together.”
“Why the marriage? What benefit is it for you marrying a Severino?”
“My mother’s family was once very powerful in Italy. The needs and expectations changed over the generations as many migrated to the United States. Her family had to fight for what they had. They had to defend their rights and their families.”
“That’s a very narrowed viewpoint on why the Mafia was created,” I grunt.
She frowns at me but doesn’t defend herself before continuing.
“Lucian’s great-grandfather and my mother’s great-grandfather were once best friends, but as things progressed, they each wanted more than half of the pie.
Well, my ancestor didn’t so much want the power and money as much as he wanted the other man’s wife.
There was a feud. Hundreds of men died because of one man’s greed. ”
“Who got the girl?”
She shakes her head as if picturing it all playing out in a memory, despite it occurring long before her birth.
“Severino slit her throat when she confessed she wanted to leave him for the other man. The families were at each other’s throats for years.
They instilled their hatred into their children, but my mother wanted no part of it.
She inherited all of her family’s money after her father died, but she never took on the other baggage.
Connecting the two families was her way of ending the feud.
My mother fell in love with a man that worked for Lucian. ”
“Your father?”
She nods her answer. “He always wanted to be a bigger part of that family, and with his marriage to my mother he was given more power. He ran one of the warehouses for Lucian.”
“And that’s how you were promised to one of the sons?”
She shakes her head. “I had an older brother. Elio was close to the boys. He was loyal to the family because that’s how my father raised him.
He trained with Marcello and Alessio. He was excited to join them in everything, but then he had to be tested.
He passed his test, but it changed him. He killed himself a year later.
I think my mother blamed herself for not listening to her own family when they told her how toxic the Severino family was. She died a year after Elio did.”
Pain laces her words, but she’s strong, somehow preventing tears from falling at disclosing what happened to her mother and brother.
“Before her death,” she continues, “my mother changed her will. My father was no longer set to get her family’s money. She left it all to me. I have access to every penny when I turn—”
“Twenty-two,” I predict.
“Yeah. My mother made no provisions in the case of her death for my father. I don’t know if she stopped trusting him or if she knew him well enough to know that he was desperate his entire life to be a part of the Severino family, that he would give Lucian whatever he wanted.
She didn’t take into account the income needed to maintain the household, and that our lavish lifestyle couldn’t be sustained with the income my father made working at the warehouse. ”
I nod because I can guess where this is going.
“My father felt betrayed by her. I don’t doubt they loved each other, but I think my father loved the aristocratic lifestyle more.
Eventually, he ran out of money and started to steal from the warehouse.
It didn’t take long for Lucian to figure it out.
They keep surprisingly accurate books for such a large criminal organization. Lucian was going to kill him, but—”
“Your father offered him you in trade for his life.”
“I’m simply part of the transaction. Alessio is set to run the family after Lucian steps down, but I think being promised to him instead of Marcello had more to do with the fact that I don’t think Lucian or Alessio fully trusted the younger Severino. He was a lit fuse, unpredictable.”
I think about what she’s told me. “Your father will be dead before the ink dries on the marriage certificate.”
She doesn’t look surprised by my words. She doesn’t look sad or concerned.
“I know. I think that’s why my father insisted that I don’t marry until I have access to the money. He’s been trying to get back in their good graces, but once you betray them—”
“You’re as good as dead,” I interrupt, knowing this is how she sees herself.
I took her, ensuring that she’s going to be another one of their victims.
“How long do you think you’ll survive after your marriage?”
Her lips form a flat line, but I can tell this is a question she’s asked herself. She doesn’t seem surprised by it. She has known for a while that she isn’t going to last forever with them.
“Even if Marcello wasn’t killed, I think Alessio would’ve spent a while torturing me. As long as I could manage tears, I think they would keep me alive. They’d kill me when they were done with me. They’d probably pass me around to their men, and after being tainted by them, I’d be useless.”
She gives me a weak smile, as if thinking of her own death is an everyday occurrence for her.
I’m grateful for the distraction this conversation with her has given me, but I hate the way my gut turns at thinking of her ending up with Alessio. Even if it was a marriage that was sustained over the years and he never laid another finger on her, I hate the image that it brings to my head.