Chapter 6 Giovanni #2
With this relentless need to keep nature in sight, she is like a wild creature, desperate not to be tamed.
“Do you ever feel as if the world is closing in on you?” She stretches out beside me, a glass of red wine in her hand. “I mean, do you find the city claustrophobic?”
I swallow a large mouthful of wine. “Whenever I feel like the city is too loud, I close my eyes and think of home.”
“Why do you stay here?” Her eyes search mine for the truth.
“Here is where there is money to be made.”
She casts her eyes down momentarily. “There’s more to life than money though.”
“I know, fiore.” I take her glass and set our drinks aside. “One day, I will give up this way of life and enjoy the rewards.”
She nuzzles my hand with her cheek. “How often do you go back to Sicily?”
Not often enough.
“A couple of times a year.”
I still haven’t told her that I’m flying out in the morning. I don’t want to spoil the moment, but I don’t want her to think that I’m keeping secrets from her.
“Fiore, I have to fly to Sicily tomorrow.”
She pulls away, her shoulders instantly bunching up around her neck. “Tomorrow?”
“I’ll be gone before you wake up.”
“Does this have anything to do with Amber’s father?”
“No.” The lie comes too easily. I’m doing it to protect her, I tell myself. The less she knows about him the better until it’s all over. “I have business with an old friend.” It’s true enough.
“When will you be back?”
“In a day or two.” It would be impolite to visit the don, gather the information I want, and then leave without accepting his hospitality. “Ric will stay here with you. Whatever you need, wherever you want to go, he’ll arrange security for you, and he won’t leave your side.”
“Or he’ll have you to answer to?” Her eyebrows slide upwards, but there’s a hint of amusement in her eyes.
“You learn fast.”
“That’s not all I’ve learned since I met you.”
She unbuttons my shirt and drags it over my shoulders. Pushing me back onto the blankets, her tongue traces a line down to my nipples. She sucks on them, nibbling them between her front teeth until they’re engorged, her fingers already working on my waistband.
Licking her lips seductively, she unfastens my pants, lowers the zipper, and tugs them over my hips, discarding them somewhere behind her. Then, she slides her hand inside my boxers and strokes my cock.
“Where exactly did you learn this, fiore?” I place my hands behind my head while I watch her.
“On a penthouse rooftop somewhere in Manhattan. A guy I met not long ago. Good-looking, smooth talker, wears designer suits. You might know him.”
“No, doesn’t sound familiar.”
She smiles, and I lean forward, wrapping her hair around my hands and forcing her head down to my cock. “Suck me, fiore.”
“You’re so bossy.” But she springs my cock free and teases it with her tongue.
Holding her head still, I guide my length into her mouth, testing how deep she can take me. She gags halfway, but then she finds the right angle and eases herself onto me slowly.
“You’re so fucking sexy, Meggie.”
I guide her mouth up and down my length, and I’ve never felt anything so goddamned amazing. I feel my precum squirting down her throat, and her teeth bite into me as she swallows.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”
Her eyes slant in my direction, but she doesn’t speak because she has her mouth full. I watch her until my orgasm is close to exploding, then I pull out. In one easy movement, I’m on my knees and Meggie is facing away from me on all fours, her ass in the air.
I slap her ass through her shorts. “This will never do, fiore. I want to see you when I fuck your brains out.”
Her giggle sends a thrill of excitement through me. She straightens and drags her T-shirt over her head. She’s naked underneath. She twists her upper body around to kiss me over her shoulder, and I crush her breasts with my hands, squeezing her nipples between my fingers.
“Is that a promise?” she asks, her voice husky.
“Always.”
My fingers find the zipper of her shorts.
I drag them down over her hips and past her knees, adding them to my discarded pants.
She’s wearing a black thong with tiny diamantes stitched into the back.
I tug the thong over her ass with my teeth and reach around her hips to cup her pussy with one hand, inserting a finger inside her.
“You’re dripping, Meggie.”
The thong comes off. I’m too impatient. I wish I could take her with me to Sicily, but for now, I want to taste every inch of her so that I can carry this memory with me while I’m gone.
With my free hand on the back of her neck, I push her back onto all fours, my finger finding its way deeper inside her. I slide it out and rub it between her lips.
“That’s all you, fiore.”
“Hmm,” she groans, gripping my hand tightly and licking me clean.
Then, spreading her ass wide, I murmur, “I’m going in.”
She supports her upper body on her forearms, and spreads her knees apart to let me in. Her pussy tightens when I slide my tongue inside her. She is already panting. I find her clit and suck until my lips are numb and her body is jerking with the power of her orgasm.
I don’t give her a chance to recover.
I ram my cock inside her all the way. She buries her face in the blankets, her hands scrunching the material tightly.
Leaning over her, I stick my tongue in her ear and whisper, “Come for me, amore. Come all over me.”
My hips pound against her ass until we both collapse into a sweaty spent heap in front of the window, then I wrap my arms around her and hold her close to me, our limbs entwined, her hair tickling my face.
The heat hits me the instant I step out of the private jet in Sicily.
Sandro, the driver employed by my father since I was a little kid, is waiting for me with the family Alfa Romeo, windows rolled down to allow the Sicilian breeze in when we’re on the road.
“You’re looking well, Giovanni,” he says as we take the road to Don Calderone’s hilltop villa. “Will you be staying a while?”
He doesn’t need to remind me that I’ve been spending less and less time at the family home since our parents died. I hear it in his voice, the unspoken words. The heir to the Sabatelli family’s business is neglecting the home and the life that gave me the privileges I now enjoy in another country.
“A couple of days.”
He keeps his eyes on the road. “And will you be back in the summer?”
“I haven’t planned that far in advance.” It’s a copout, and we both know it.
“My wife and I,” he begins. “We miss you. We miss your smile, and your laughter, and your gratitude.”
I imagine that he doesn’t see much of that from Bianca and Enzo.
Sandro’s wife, Giulia, has been our housekeeper since I was born.
Our family home is as much their home as it is ours, and I couldn’t imagine a world without them in it.
Even though I don’t visit as often as I should, their familiar presence is always in the back of my mind.
I am comforted knowing that they are always there taking care of our home.
We don’t speak much for the remainder of the journey. Our silence is comfortable, like old friends with a lifetime of shared experiences knitting them together.
He drops me off outside Don Calderone’s impressive remote villa with a promise to return when I am ready to be collected.
It has always worked this way between us; he knows me and my siblings better than we know each other, and he will be waiting for me when my meeting with the retired mafia boss is concluded.
Don Emiliano Calderone is waiting for me on the rear veranda in the shade of a fragrant lemon tree overlooking his olive groves.
The villa is large, the exterior walls whitewashed to reflect the heat, the plants vibrant, a family home that should be filled with the laughter of their grandchildren.
But instead, it is silent apart from the shrill hum of the grasshoppers and the birds calling to each other from the treetops outside the windows.
“Giovanni.” He rises and pulls me into a bearhug, kissing both cheeks before sitting back down in his rocking chair. “You are looking well, despite the New York climate and pollution.”
I smile. I forget how clean the air is here until I return.
“As are you, Don Emiliano.”
His hair is white but still thick. There are more lines at the corners of his eyes and creasing his forehead than there were when we last met, but his eyes are still bright, and he is still the smart man I knew before.
“Retirement suits me well.”
His wife Caterina appears then with a pitcher of homemade lemonade and two tall glasses. She sets the tray down on the table between us and kisses my cheeks. Her palms, when she folds my hands into hers, are warm and scratchy.
Caterina pinches my cheeks. “Still so handsome, Giovanni. You will make a wonderful groom someday. And what beautiful children you and your future wife will have.”
I smile. It is their way to be vocal and exuberant with their affections.
“Have you met someone? Is that what you’ve come to tell us?” She takes the seat beside her husband and reaches for his hand.
“No, that isn’t why I’m here.”
It is good to know that they always have my best interests at heart. I don’t know if I would be quite so generous if our situations were reversed.
“We don’t see enough of you these days. You know that our door will always be open for you,” she continues.
“He knows this, cara.” Emiliano raises his wife’s hand to his lips.
I imagine this is me and Megan in forty years’ time, sitting in the shade of a lemon tree, peaceful and contented and happy, and am instantly flooded with guilt at the images in my head.
This is one of the reasons why I avoid coming back to Sicily.
When I am in New York, I learn to compartmentalize my two homes, it is the only way to stay focused.
But when I am here, the feeling of homesickness swells inside my gut and tarnishes the life I have built for myself in the city, painting it dull-gray, and turning it cold.
“Will you visit their graves while you are here, Giovanni?” Her eyes fill with tears. Fifteen years, and still the pain is as raw as it ever was.
“I will try to make time.”
How can I tell them that I haven’t factored time for visiting graves into my busy schedule? That there is someone special in New York whom I want to hurry back to. That I can’t even remember the last time I visited the graveyard.
“I still talk to Elisabetta.” Caterina blinks, and a tear trickles slowly down her cheek. “She is still watching over you.”
Elisabetta was their daughter.
She was killed in the same car crash that killed my parents.
We’d known each other since we were babies. We grew up together, played on the beach together, learned to swim and climb and ride bikes together. Elisabetta was my best friend. She was beautiful and as dark and tanned and sultry as Megan is light and fair and bubbly.
We always knew that our families would want us to marry when we grew up, and we accepted this with gratitude.
Not all mafia offspring got so lucky when it came to choosing their future spouse.
We were so close that we could finish each other’s sentences and choose each other’s meals in a restaurant.
We each knew when the other was feeling down or happy or worried. We were a great match.
Elisabetta had been finalizing wedding arrangements with my parents.
I should’ve flown to Sicily the day before.
But I canceled my flight because of a business transaction that I was waiting to close on, a deal that would eventually result in the purchase of the hotel and casino resort in Manhattan.
That was the day they were killed.
I’ve never forgiven myself. I should’ve been here. If I’d traveled here as planned, they wouldn’t have been in the car on their way back from Syracuse. The accident would never have happened, and they would have all lived.
“Caterina, let the man be.” Emiliano holds his wife’s gaze, his voice dragging me back to their homely veranda surrounded by the scent of lemons and jacaranda. “It is still as difficult for him as it is for us.”
His wife studies my face, and her expression crumples. “Oh no. You still haven’t let it go, Giovanni, have you.”
She is right.
I haven’t let it go.
I will never stop trying to prove that their deaths were not accidental.